Toronto

Monday September 22…10:15pm

We left Ottawa early Sunday morning to drive down to Toronto to meet up with Ruth’s cousin Helen and her husband Tony. They are visiting from England for a few days and we’ve been looking forward to spending some time with them again.

We took our little car down, and we weren’t sure that it would fit all our luggage and us at the same time. So we stopped in at the hotel and dropped off our bags before going to pick up Helen and Tony near the airport. We couldn’t get into our room yet, but at least we could put our bags into their storage room. We found out at the time that the hotel is sold out for the period we are there. Funny thing, we are located very near the corner of Church and Wellington in Toronto, and that is the area of Toronto that has become the “gay” district. So I make sure that Ruth is holding my hand very tight when we are walking down the street. We are on the 21st floor and have a nice view of downtown and can see the CN Tower from our balcony.

This morning, we took the subway from Yonge and Bloor down to Union station and then walked to the Island Ferry terminal. It cost $5.40 per person for a return trip ticket and that was after the 10% discount we received from a coupon we got in our hotel lobby. We had a choice of 3 destinations to the Toronto Islands and we chose to go to Hanlon Island near the Island Airport. We then walked the 4 km’s to the Centre Island ferry terminal, as well as walking around the Centreville Amusement Park. The amusement park was closed during the week in September, but we did get to see the animals at the “Far Enough Farm”, a zoo type of place with farm animals.

Helen and Ruth

Roger's Centre (Skydome) and the CN Tower taken from Hanlon Island

Second oldest lighthouse in Canada on Toronto Island

Toronto skyline

When we arrived back on Toronto mainland, we decided to try and take the underground “PATH” system from the Island Ferry Harbour all the way to the Eaton Centre at the corner of Yonge and Dundas. This is an underground system of walking tunnels that takes you through many shopping areas without you ever having to go outside. As you walk, you go through the ground and lower levels of the major skyscraper buildings in Toronto. So when we got to the Bank of Montreal building we took the elevator up to the 69th floor in order to find out if they had a free viewpoint. Turned out that the 69th floor is taken up by the Xstrada Mining Corporation and the reception girl was nice enough to let us in to see the view from their conference room once we explained that we were cheap tourists who didn’t want to pay the $21.95 that it cost to go up the CN tower. Too funny…she was a nice lady and we are thankful she let us in to see the view!

Tomorrow we are going to the Kensington Market area, and then to Red Lobster downtown for supper (Ruth has a gift certificate) and the to see the Yankees take on the Blue Jays. Should be a fun day!

Toronto from our 21st floor hotel room