Toronto 9th and 10th August 2016

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Toronto 9th and 10th August 2016



We flew from Seattle to Toronto with Air Canada (3 ½ hrs flight turning our clocks forward 3 hours) arriving at 6.30pm. We picked up our hire car at the airport (booked months ago which worked out to be very wise due to costs nearly doubling if we booked later) with GPS and drove straight to the Holiday Inn Express.



Toronto is the most populous city in Canada and the provincial capital of Ontario. It is located on the north western shore of Lake Ontario. Toronto, with a population of 2.6 million.



Toronto has a very large transit system, the third most heavily used in North America (after New York and Mexico City). It consists of buses, streetcars, subway lines, and the quasi-subway Scarborough Rapid Transit line. Buses and streetcars are prone to get caught in Toronto's notorious traffic during rush-hours, though some streetcar lines have dedicated lanes. We used the street cars easily as the maps were great.



I visited the CN Tower in 1992 when I was on my 6 week study tour of the UK, USA and Canada but the difference this time is that I am not travelling in December. It was bitterly cost then!! Toronto is one of the very few cities in North America (and the only city in Canada) to retain itsCN Tower— The tallest free standing structure in North America, at over 500 metres tall. There is a glass elevator to the top so you can see the city whilst in the elevator. The view is incredible and there is a glass floor, which for some is very scary to walk on. There is also a revolving restaurant, which offers spectacular views as the sun sets over the city.



There was a 1 ½ waiting time and I saw that the Blue Jays baseball team was playing at the Roger’s Stadium which was next door to the Tower, so I decided to do that instead of the Tower. Sheryl and Tom were happy to wait to go up the Tower and as it worked out, they only had an hour to wait to get to the observation deck.



I loved the atmosphere in the Rogers Stadium. The Canadians love their baseball and the Tonontarians love their Blue Jays team …. which lost. Everyone around me was really into the competition, as well as on their phones!!! It was about a 15 minute walk back to our hotel which I enjoyed.



Rogers Centre, formerly known as SkyDome, is a multi-purpose stadium. Originally opened in 1989, it is not only home to the Toronto Blue Jays, but also to the Canadian Football League's Toronto Argonauts, the site of the annual International Bowl American college football bowl game, and as of 2008, the National Football League's Buffalo Bills' second playing venue in the Bills Toronto Series. While it is primarily a sports venue, it also hosts other large-scale events such as conventions, trade fairs, concerts, funfairs, and monster truck shows. The stadium was renamed "Rogers Centre" following the purchase of the stadium by Rogers Communications in 2005.



The next day we explored many of the areas of the CBD including China Town, Little India and Little Portugal, eating and drinking our way around the beautiful sites, soaking up the atmosphere and being continually amazed and interested in the differences in the regions.



Little Italy/Portugal Village was full of restaurants ideal for watching the world go by. We had a lovely meal there as well as sampled the local beer which went with oysters – I was the only one to have them. Yum!!



Chinatown, is an ethnic enclave in Downtown Toronto with a high concentration of ethnic Chinese residents and businesses extending along Dundas Street West and Spadina Avenue. First developed in the late 19th century, it is now one of the largest Chinatowns in North America and one of several major Chinese-Canadian communities in the Greater Toronto Area.



We also visited Kensington Market, once a centre of Jewish life but has morphed into the centre of Toronto's bohemian scene. We were assaulted’’ by sounds and smells unlike anywhere else in the city, as the narrow streets bustle with immigrants, punks, and yuppies alike. Stores include surplus shops, coffee houses, small restaurants (including vegetarian), clothing vendors, and record stores. Fish and fruit markets are also present in great numbers, and the area is experiencing a boom of South American food stalls of late.



The Toronto City Hall was one of the many impressive buildings. Two buildings forming an apparent semi-circle (though in fact from overhead the circle hemispheres can be seen to be asymmetrically oblate so they say) overlooking Nathan Phillips square, which has a very popular skating rink in the winter. Architecturally stunning, it is one of those few examples of 1960s-era ultramodernism that manages not to look dated decades down the line. Next door to Old City Hall (currently the court house) which has a more classical architecture. As a side-note, images of Toronto City Hall have played stand-in for many science fiction film and television locales, including consistently being used to represent Star Trek's Federation Headquarters ever since the original Star Trek series.



Before leaving Toronto we visited Casa Loma. Our visit to Casa Loma was a step back in time to a period of European elegance and splendour. The museum is the former home of Canadian financier Sir Henry Pellatt complete with decorated suites, secret passages, a 250 metre long tunnel, towers, stables and beautiful 5-acre estate gardens. It was really interesting and worth the visit.



It was goodbye to Toronto after 2 ½ days. Wow, we packed a lot in but loved the town. And it was good to see it is the summer time without the wind-chill factor of -20 degrees and a metre of snow covering the city when I was there in 1992. We were now off to Niagra Falls.

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