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Published: October 23rd 2009
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Our Toronto hostel
The Canadia - nice and cosy inside. Au Revoir Paris and hello Toronto. Bit of a shock to arrive there as it was freezing cold - we had some cold and rain in Paris but this was bone chilling cold. First impresions were that it was very like Australia - streets set out in grid patterns, big wide roads but there were a lot more skyscrapers that what we had been used to.
We were only in Toronto for two days. On our arrival day we did the usual thing of dropping our bags off at the hostel then heading out with map in hand to discover what was out there. We had booked a 2 night special package which included a brewery tour and a day at Niagara Falls. We decided to head off to the brewery tour as there was free beer on offer - not that either of us are big drinkers but free stuff - we love it.
It was a small boutique brewery Steam Whistle, which used recycled glass for its bottles, painted on the labels rather than used stick on labels and generally seemed to take a green approach to making beer. Pilsner lager was what they churned out -
not bad I guess but give me a glass of cider any day of the week.
After the brewery tour we decided to head up the CN tower - isnt that what everyone has to do in Toronto? We had hoped to get up there in daylight but had not counted on the size of the queue to get in there. Every man and his dog was there so it took us an hour to even make it to the lift. Once up there the views were sensational - it was night by this time so all the lights were on and it looked amazing. We stepped outside and almost had our eyeballs frozen - it was blowing a gale and it was icy as - we quickly got back inside behind the warmth of the glass. We were able to look down the glass bottomed floor but that was not as spectactular as it would have been during the day - nevertheless, we still got to look down. Took us almost as long to get out of the place - I think it was our first experience of queuing to get out of an attraction.
We had
Maids in the mist
about to get soaked tea at a liocal pizza place - no wonder the Canadians and Americans have an obesity problem - the servings were huge - they may have seemed cheap too until the tax was added on at the end and of course, the tip. One of my bug bears of travellling in Canada and the US - why cant they just charge what things cost instead of adding on tax and expecting a tip.
Next day we were up early again and off to Niagrara Falls. Luckily we got a really sunny day though it was icy cold still. We were all given blue poncho raincoats to wear on the boat to protect us from the mist on our ride on Maid of the Mist. Falss were spectacular and it was weird to watch all the blue raincoats crowding around on the boat. On land there were yellow raincoats - these people had chosen to walk behind the falls - hard to say who got wetter.
After a few hours we were back on the bus and headed off to look at various other attractiions in the area. One of which was Niagara on the Lake purportedly one of
Whoa
that's a lot of water the prettiest villages in Northern Canada. It was very nice - perhaps not a rival for Bruges though. A lot of the houses there were weatherboard and I could not help wondering how people kept warm in them.
After our two day sejour in Toronto it was off to the Big Apple
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