Toronto

I had a plan for our only day in Toronto, as we’d seen a lot of the downtown and college area of the city the previous evening, we were going to get a TTC (subway) to Union Street, walk to the CN tower and then make our way to the harbour before heading back up to Yonge Street.  After a wonderful breakfast at Fran’s we caught the TTC to Union Street and a wandered over to the CN tower and Toronto Blue Jays home stadium.  On the corners of the building they had caricatures of people watching a game one of whom had his hand held up in a v sign with his fingers held under his nose like a certain Austrian megalomaniac.  After having a look around we knew we weren’t going up the tower, too expensive/lines too long/look how high it is!  

We began walking towards the harbour that was when I saw a train, then a mural of a train and finally a train museum.  Before he could say anything I’d paid the entrances fee, a whopping $5.  It wasn’t anything we hadn’t seen a million times but there was a chance to drive a train, or at least a train simulator.  We waited and waited for GO to have his turn.  When he was in the drivers seat he was instructed in what to do by a young lady who to me anyway, looked like a female GO.  She talked him through the whys and the wherefore’s and he was like a kid in a sweet shop, so happy, smiling and joking away.  Once his shift was over we made our way out of the yard and came across a beer tent.  Then there were two, then three, it looked to us like some sort of beer festival.  We enquired as to the cost, $30 each entrance and then $10 for drinks tabs. We looked at each other and walked away which ich when we saw the line, outside the fence there was a queue of over a hundred people waiting to get inside.  We had somehow managed to gate crash Toronto’s beerfest.  We giggled as we past by beer, cider and gin tents and helped our selves to drinks, okay it was water but it was cold and wet and hit the spot.

We didn’t really know what to expect when we got to the harbour but I knew I was in need of a sit down. We found a huge pub called the Amsterdam Brewery it was heaving and the line went around the building we managed to get in and bypass the crowd by sitting at the bar.  We order a couple of fruity beers as we felt it was too early to be drinking, mine was a Radler and GO had a red berry beer. After spending way too much time at the bar and watching as the place filled to the brim we set off along the water front not really knowing what to do.  It was getting hot, I’d forgotten my hat and damned if I was going to but another one.  We nipped into the Toronto Modern Art Gallery a white space with amazing air con.  There were a few exhibitions on but we only explored two.  The first was a interesting piece about scam emails they artist had videoed people reading the scam emails that we all get and he played over thirty on TV’s it was quite a sensory overload.  The second was a German artist from Dresden who had three different installations the first was a silent disco type of affair, the second was a boat ride across a fjord and finally in the third rooon was a story of how a group of vigilantes in a Supermarkt  in Germany had interfered with a young boy who was suffering with mental health issues and the harassment eventually led to his death.  It was thought provoking stuff.

We carried on along the harbour stopping for a selfie here or there when a lady offered to take one of us, I knew there’d be a catch. Before handing back the phone she told us about her church and how they were looking for more “friends”.  We always find the strange ones.  We had seen pretty much all we wanted to see so I wasn’t sure what there was left to do when I remembered that Toronto had its own flat iron building.  On our way winding through the streets and avenues we had our first (and not our last) Tim Horton’s, it wasn’t great but it was sustenance.  It was getting hotter and hotter with the mercury hitting 30 degrees, we sought some shelter in the shade of a large fountain.  It took me a to notice why everyone smiled and stopped for a selfie, it was a doggy fountain.  All of the water spouts we statures if different dogs. So ridiculously cute.  We were right behind the flat iron building but before getting to it I took a detour, this became something of a habit, into a store with air conditioning and it was bliss.

You can see why TV and movies at filmed in Toronto it looks so much like New York it’s crazy, each building and street looks familiar if it wasn’t for the politeness of everyone you’d believe you were in New York or on a movie set.  Speaking of which on our way back Downtown we literally stumbled onto a film set, I have no idea what was being filmed but I enjoyed watching them shoot a group of people walking down the street again and again before finally the director yelled. “That’s a wrap let’s do the indoor scenes now!”  Just like that everyone was gone.  It was surreal, I wonder what was being filmed, probably just a commercial. 

I decided that I really wanted to visit Chinatown as it kept coming up on the map, we took the TTC to King Street and got off at the nearest station