Toronto is the largest city in Canada, and a very
cosmopolitan one at that. It has a much more relaxed and nice feel than most
American cities. I spent only two nights here, but I managed to fit in Niagara Falls,
the Skydome, the Eaton Centre and the CN Tower. The tower was unfortunately shrouded
in cloud for the whole weekend, when we had dinner at the top all I could see out the
window was blurry lights from below. The food was good though!
The Eaton Centre in Toronto is one of the best
shopping malls in Canada, and although not quite on the same scale as the West
Edmonton Mall in Alberta, it has a lot to offer. Like in Montreal, it is connected
to various downtown offices and hotels (including mine) with a rabbit warren of shopping
strips.
Niagara Falls is not a sight to be missed. Very
impressive in itself, the falls are spoiled by the garish town of Niagara which sits
right next door. Much nicer was the town of Niagara-On-The-Lake just down the road.
The falls have been known to completely freeze over, and since the dams were built which
power New York City, the flow of the whole river can be controlled to alleviate erosion
or torrents. The first person to successfully survive plunging over the falls was
an old woman in a barrel, 100 years ago.
This is a shot of some of Toronto's modern office
buildings. The gold one uses glass plates which contain real gold dust.
The Royal York Hotel, owned by the Fairmont Chain,
in turn owned by Canadian Pacific (rivals to Canadian National, who built the CN Tower)
was where I stayed for the weekend. It had scarily long old corridors and reminded me
of the hotel from "The Shining".
Toronto's Skydome is the home of the Bluejays,
who were whipped eight nil by Oakland Athletic when I saw them play.
Who should have been sitting watching the game but
none other than Mr T! Every so often the jumbotron would find him and play the music
from the A Team! What a claim to fame!
