Giant Ice Blocks and Shards of Glass

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This morning we’ve got “timed entry” tickets for the famed CN Tower which is only a block or so from our apartment. We were warned when we bought them not to turn up early, and to not bother turning up at all if we were going to get there late. We walk out the apartment block door straight onto the end of a queue. We’re still a few hundred metres from where we need to be, so I think we’re now in real trouble. Oh hang on, these guys aren’t going to the Tower, they’re queued up to get into today’s double header baseball games between the Toronto Blue Jays and the evil empire from Tampa in Florida. They're on at the Rogers Centre which just happens to be right at the base of the Tower. We’ve heard that Canada is a one baseball team country, and the locals here sure do seem to love their baseball…. and particularly the Blue Jays. Apparently when the Blue Jays play in some of the more northern American cities such as Seattle, Blue Jays fans from all over Canada suddenly surge southwards, and then often outnumber those pesky American locals.

The CN Tower was completed in 1976, and from then until 2007 was the tallest free standing structure on the entire planet (the oil sheikhs from the Middle East then decided enough was enough and built the Burj Khalifa in Dubai to crush the resistance). The CN stands for Canadian National, the company that built it - they’re a railway company. I’m not quite sure why a railway company would want to build a communications tower; train driver’s not getting good enough reception perhaps. It’s a jaw dropping 553 metres tall. Our ears are popping in unison as we catch the lift up to the main observation deck at a lowly 338 metres. We seem to have picked a good viewing day; the sun’s out and we can even see the outlines of buildings at Niagara Falls on the skyline across Lake Ontario, some 60 or so kms away. We can also see ant like figures through the open roof of the Rogers Centre directly below us preparing the field for the game.

Issy thinks she can feel the Tower swaying in the breeze. I wasn’t sure there was any breeze; anyway I wonder what it feels like up here when it gets really windy. Apparently the Tower closed for a while in December 2021 because strong winds blew some of the glass out. And in 2018 some gigantic chunks of ice blew off and crashed onto the roof of the Rogers Centre, puncturing it and causing the Blue Jays to postpone a double header. And then there was the time they had to close the nearby freeway (yep, that’s the noisy one we hear through our cardboard covered apartment windows day and night) after a giant ice block blew off and smashed the window of a taxi nearly half a kilometre away. Not to worry however; we pass the entry to the emergency exit stairs, all 1,000+ of them. There are a lot of people up here and the stairs don’t look very wide. If push came to shove I think we might be safer up here. The stairs look like the perfect setting for a stampede …. and even if we did manage to get to the ground safely there could still be the small matter of shards of broken glass crashing down from half a kilometre above us.

We decide that the view from here isn’t quite good enough, so we catch another lift up to the so-called SkyPod at 447 metres above the ground. That’s better, now we can really see the curvature of the earth.

Emma heads back to the apartment for a nap while the rest of us head off to take in the very attractive Toronto Music Garden down on the waterfront. It’s quiet today, aside of course from the constant honking of car horns, but we understand they frequently host classical musical performances here during the summer. We walk back along the waterfront past Toronto’s version of a lakeside beach. There’s sand with people lying on it, near water, which I think probably qualifies it as a beach, although the complete lack of anyone, anyone at all, actually venturing into the water might perhaps put paid to that notion. I don’t think there are any sharks here, so just too cold perhaps?

We collect Emma and head into Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada, which is also at the base of the CN Tower. It’s very large and impressive, with a long walk-through tunnel under the massive main pond which is full of all the usual offerings of sharks, giant stingrays, etc..

And so ends another day. But wait, our shoddy, eye-wateringly expensive apartment (the one with cardboard taped over the windows where the glass is supposed to be) never fails to disappoint. It’s after midnight when clang goes the fire alarm with enough force to wake the dead. After a few minutes it’s replaced by an announcement telling all residents to evacuate the building. … well it might have said that. … the subcontinental accent was so strong that it could have said anything really, but we decide to play it safe and pile down the fire stairs onto the footpath. Emma looks particularly resplendent standing out here in her pink pyjamas. We start to wonder how seriously people here take their fire alarms. The building seems be heavily occupied at the moment, and a bit of quick maths tells us that with 67 floors of 12 apartments each, and perhaps say three people per apartment, we should be sharing the footpath with about 2,000 other residents. So where are the other 1,980? Anyway the fire brigade turns up, tells us it’s a false alarm and we all go back up inside again. That was exciting, although I’m still putting my money on the building’s security guards “accidentally” scorching a couple of pieces of toast to break the boredom.

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[Home and Away]

Dinner...
If you like Thai food, the Mengrai Thai is near you. I'm a FB friend of the owner/chef Sasi. When you rate your accommodations, I hope you give it such a bad rating that no one ever goes there.

[DaveandIssy]

Rating the accommodation
I’m salivating when I think about what I’m going to put in the review!