Friday July 14 – Toronto

Although our Itinerary says today is “Day 1” of our tour, nothing is organised, so we slept in a little.

After a late (for us) breakfast, we walked a few blocks to catch the hop-on-hop-off bus, and sat back for an enjoyable 2hr bus ride around the city streets. Toronto is very large, the largest city in Canada, ahead of Montreal and Vancouver. It has a financial district that has most of the office buildings. All of the other tall buildings (and there are LOTS) are largely residential! Some streets are tight and the long double-decker open-top bus had a hard time getting round some corners! The day was grey, cloudy, and a little cool in the shade of the buildings, and cold sitting in the open on the bus.

(Ice) Hockey Hall of Fame

Dog Fountain - for dogs to drink. Spouts coming from dogs mouths. There is one tiny kitten sitting there too!

Lots of huge LED advertising signs everywhere

  

Example of housing

Extension to art school was built over the original building, with crayons/pencils holding it up!

This car, with wheels constantly rotating and lights flashing (showing that the news is always breaking) pushing through wall of newspaper offices

local police car

We had lunch in an eatery near the hotel, then walked back down to the water to catch a boat that took us around the islands just off the shore of the lake. By now the sun had some out and burnt off all the low cloud, so now we could see the CN Tower. Due to unusually high rainfall and snow-melt, the level of the lake had risen a good couple of metres so the low-lying islands are flooded and closed to the public. This is a blow to tourism as they are a popular place to go. From the boat we could get a great view of the Toronto skyline.

Low cloud lifted to see the CN Tower

Canada goose - these are seen in parks and on lake edge

Part of Toronto skyline - most of the buildings are residential towers.

at the water front - a kind stranger took our photo

Flooding on the islands - docks under water

Outdoor stadium under water

Daredevils on an adventurous outing hanging off the top of the CN Tower, way above the city

With a double ice-cream to fuel us we walked along the foreshore for a while. We were caught in a little rain shower so took shelter under a building awning. The Indy race was a few kms away so we could hear it clearly. 

Trains in Canada

Trains pulled (or pushed) by diesel engines

trans-continental train

We had shared a dinner in the Library Bar of the hotel, at a table next to a window.  There was a pile of books on the windowsill, for curious eyes, and in the top one was what appeared to be a library borrowing card until we realised it said ‘dessert’ on top. It was the dessert menu! Of course we had to try one! Very nice, and not too much when shared between us.