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Published: November 17th 2012
Raging tempest
Niagara Falls from aboveHaving finished work in York on a monday afternoon, I had no sooner moved out of my apartment than I was setting off on a four-day cycling trip through the nearby Yorkshire Dales; after which I returned briefly to York to return my hire bicycle and collect my backpack, before hopping on a train bound for London... which unfortunately due to a signal failure was delayed by more than two hours, meaning it was eleven o'clock at night by the time I arrived at my mate Gurj's place in Paddington.
To make matters worse, after only getting about three hours sleep that night I had to be up at 5am on saturday (16th April) to get out to Heathrow for my 8:30am flight to Toronto; but far worse was the fact that I then had to take my connecting flight from Toronto on to New York (which of course was delayed by two hours) even though I didn't want to, because I had found out only the week before that if I didn't take it I would lose my return flight back from New York to London!
And while all of this was going on my case of 'the
Breathtaking border
American and Canadian Falls on the Niagara River squirts' that had plagued me during my cycling trip had returned, so the poor girl next to me on the first flight had to keep getting up so I could go to the toilet again; while my second flight was in a tiny little 50-seater plane that got blown around all over the place coming in to land at Newark Airport - although it was pretty funny to realize that the frightened Chinese woman sitting next to me on that flight was probably even closer to shitting herself than I was! ;-)
After finally making it into New York City in the pouring rain, I spent a few hours basically hanging out as close as possible to the public toilets in the main bus terminal - possibly not the best place to meet people in a big city, I admit - before hopping on an overnight bus to Buffalo; and then switching to another bus for the short ride across the US-Canadian border (via the Fort Erie Peace Bridge border crossing - where I got my two-year Canadian working holiday visa without any problems) and then onto Niagara Falls.
Niagara Falls was very cool (well, actually it was
The drop zone
Close-up view of Niagara Falls pretty damn cold!) so I took an elevator up to an observation deck in a tower that overlooks the whole river/waterfalls/gorge area; and then continued along the Canadian side of the river right up to the edge of the Horseshoe Falls (which are bigger and more impressive than the American falls). Then while I was inside the visitor centre/shopping mall next to the falls it started raining pretty heavily; then hailing; and then when I finally went outside to walk back to the bus station it started snowing quite heavily... in the middle of spring!
From Niagara Falls it was only a sixty-mile bus ride to Toronto, so it was on the sunday evening that I finally made it back to Toronto - a day-and-a-half after I had landed at Toronto Airport - having taken two flights, seven trains and three buses to get there from the Yorkshire Dales; and all in just three days! Unfortunately though the weather wasn't much better in Toronto than it had been at Niagara Falls, wıth the temperature hovering around zero degrees for most of the three days that I was there, and the sun only making the occasional fleeting appearance.
And
Towering above
Looking up from the base of the CN Tower even more frustrating was the complete absence of a decent internet cafe anywhere in the city - since the one advantage of having bad weather whilst travelling is being able to catch up on e-mail correspondence without feeling guilty for not being more active - once the library had been ruled out for being too slow and the hostel likewise for being too expensive.
Thus my first full day in Toronto was spent wandering (briskly) along the edge of Lake Ontario, before stopping off opposite the CN Tower to do a tour of the Steam Whistle brewery, which occupies one-third of the Roundhouse - one of the city's most historic and attractive buildings, being shaped like the letter 'c' and having been used to service train engines back in the nineteenth century.
The following day I was back at the CN Tower, this time to take the elevator up to the Skydeck on the '114th floor' almost 350 metres above the ground; before taking another elevator up to the Skypod on the '147th floor' (in inverted commas because there don't seem to actually be any 'floors' in the CN Tower apart from the Skydeck and the Skypod!) which
Vertiginous views
View from the CN Tower's Skydeck at almost 450 metres above the ground is allegedly the highest viewing platform on a man-made structure anywhere in the world... though I suspect the Burj-al-Khalifa in Dubai may have smashed that record, along with every other record for height that has ever been set.
* Interesting side point: despite feeling less than comfortable on the elevator to the top of the 300-metre-hıgh Eiffel Tower two years ago; and scared shitless on the external, rotating 'elevator' to the top of the 150-metre Euromast in Rotterdam three years ago; I had no concerns whatsoever going up to the Skypod at 450 metres above the groud this time around! Having said that, only one month before my terrifying encounter on the 'Euroscoop' in 2008, I had sat almost nonchalantly atop Preikestolen in Norway (better known as Pulpit Rock - a 25-metre-wide square horizontal ledge that juts out from the face of a 600-metre-high vertical cliff-face) wıth one leg hanging over each side, whilst posing for photographs! So perhaps I have some sort of 'selective vertigo'?!?
Anyhow, having admired the views and snapped off plenty of photographs atop the CN Tower (which at almost 550 metres in total is easily the
City skyline
View of Toronto from Lake Ontario tallest buıldıng in all of North America) I headed back down to ground level to take a ferry - on which I was the only passenger - across to a small group of islands that sit just a mile or two offshore, offering a quiet haven just ten minutes away by boat from the hustle and bustle of Canada's biggest city.
And whilst it was certainly a most relaxing way to pass a couple of hours, wandering from island to island (which apart from the main one, which contains an airport, are all quite small and inter-connected by footbridges) there was something just a little off-putting about walking through Toronto Land - a theme park obviously aimed at families wıth young children, which occupies most of one of the smaller islands - during the off-season, when there wasn't a soul to be seen apart from the odd maintenance person applying a new coat of paint to one of the buildings, and the animals who were obviously enjoying every minute of their last few days of peace and quiet before the Easter holidays would herald another season of screaming, obnoxious children!
My third and final day in Toronto was
Solitude
View of Toronto from the Toronto Islands mostly spent indoors out of the cold, though I did venture out in the evening to partake in that most quintessential of North American experiences - a game of baseball! So it was off to the Rogers Centre (formerly known - and more appropriately so, since it sits at the foot of the CN Tower - as the Skydome) that I headed, only to watch the Toronto Blue Jays go down to the New York Yankees 5-2! Oh well, at least the roof was closed to keep the cold out!
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