View all our photos of Toronto
When we arrived in Toronto the first time around, a little tourist weary and looking for a rest, the city didn’t feel as bustling as we thought it would, or packed with obvious sightseeing destinations.
It’s a good thing we had time to come back and dig a little deeper. Toronto feels like an Americanised Melbourne, the comparison extending to Toronto having street-cars, what we would call trams in Australia. It doesn’t have the spectacular sights but there is a good vibe to the place with cool bars and good food.
We were lucky to make it back to Toronto at all. I made a navigational error and we missed the correct turnoff which would have taken us past downtown and via a very simple method to the hostel we were staying at in Kensington. By the time I realised that we had gone too far we were at the airport and stuck in traffic. When I say stuck in traffic this is not just some Sydney-sized jam. We were on a freeway merging with another freeway, and I think there was a different freeway running in parallel. It felt as though there were a good ten lanes attempting to squeeze together as we tried to get to an exit ramp. We managed to get off the freeway and turn around but the situation going the other way was not a lot better. Missing that turnoff added about two hours to our trip, which would have been bearable if not for the fact that we had to return our rental car to the heart of downtown on Friday rush hour, and both Sarah and I had planned to meet friends for a drink. So we crawled through downtown Toronto past the construction and lane closures, throwing in desperate u-turns and cursing the one way streets as cyclists whizzed by. We eventually got to the underground car rental return in time and emerged blinking into the evening light, a crazed look in our eyes, to gratefully suck down the closest alcoholic drink.
Not only did we have drinks lined up, but also tickets to the ball game that night. The Toronto Blue Jays versus the almighty Yankees. I’m not a massive baseball fan, cricket’s more my go, but the games are not a million miles apart in sentiment and it was a really fun night, in large part because of the hot dogs. Sarah and I got kind of a gourmet dog with beans and then proceeded to pile a ridiculous amount of free toppings on top. The photo of me eating the hotdog captures the moment I turned into a hotdog zombie and had just one purpose, to eat hotdog flesh. The game was great as well. Toronto took an early lead then Swisher brought a few runs home for the Yankees to make it 3-1. The game was tied deep into the ninth innings and to be honest I was praying for a run of any kind just so we could leave and either sleep or have a few more drinks. My new hero Molina brought the Blue Jays home with a homer that just snuck over the fence at centre field. It was impeccable timing as the drive was starting to catch up with us.
At the game with us were Chab and Jon, friends we knew from Sydney who live in Toronto now. They took us to some cool bars and we had some refined tequila, more the sipping than shots variety. On our previous visit we went to a gritty blues bar where we were outnumbered by the roadies and random drunks. The place had atmosphere in spades and only lacked sawdust on the floor.
We stayed in a different hostel on our return in a funkier part of town. The trade-off was a shared bathroom and a dingy room overlooking the fire escape. Such is the lot of a budget traveller. We stayed in Kensington. The photo of the used car filled with plants probably tells you all you need to know about the trendy kind of place it is.
We had the best grilled cheese sandwich here from a place called The Grilled Cheese. There seems to be this trend in North America of places specialising in just one thing and trying to do that one thing perfectly. The Grilled Cheese nailed it with this sandwich. The cheese was the perfect temperature between buttered toast. We had the variety with mushrooms. All are served with a side of crisps and a pickle. Damn, it really hit the spot.
The next day we groggily emerged from our tomb-like room to attend our other pre-booked Toronto event, a TIFF screening. TIFF stands for Toronto International Film Festival, and it’s kind of a big deal. It’s one the premier festivals of the year and attracts all the big names. We didn’t see any big names, but you never know, that guy at the Inuit Art Museum *could* have been famous. We’re a bit out of touch.
We went to see the one film that fitted our schedule and that we had could get tickets for, the latest Bruce Beresford feel good flick, which was fun but nothing special.
And with that we rolled off the line for the CN tower, one of the tallest structures in the world. As you will be able to tell if you gallantly look through all the photos we took in Toronto, the CN tower pokes it nose in everywhere. It’s always peeking over the top of buildings to see what you’re up to, butting into scenes where it’s not wanted. What better place to escape its pervasive prescence that inside its slender body. This is not a quick process. Somehow other people have heard about the CN tower as well and wish, as we did, to ascend high into it. We lined up for almost an hour to get in the lift, and this is after lining up to get the ticket and going through this very strange security screening where you’re blasted with jets of air. Once you get in the lift it goes up at a scarily fast rate making your ears pop. The elevator has glass sections in it so that you can begin one of many vertigo experiences right from the start. The view from the glass-walled observation deck is spectacular. It feels like you’re in a plane coming in for landing. One level below this they have the glass-floored observation floor which could support some random number of elephants or an almost infinite number of jumping children. It really is a long way down and you can’t help but picture the glass giving way and that delicious to imagine feeling of tumbling out of control to your doom. Or you can just go to the outdoor observation area and get a cold blast of wind in the face as you look out over the vast Lake Ontario.
The lake is too toxic to swim in so apart from the yachts swanning around there is not a lot of water sport action. On our previous visit to the city Sarah and I came across a fake beach next to the lake with deck chairs and umbrellas, attended only by a smattering of other tourists. The clouds had descended and summer was wistfully skipping away for another year.
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