Going
back... way back...
"Well I wouldn't mind going to
Canada, I've heard the views are
fantastic. The flights are bit pricey but
I don't think it's too bad once you're
there."
"Yes, I've thought about going there
before too. It'll be a bit different from
my trips to America!"
"Shall we do it then? Go to
Canada?"
"OK! It'll have to be next year
though, I'm broke."
And that's how it started. It would be a
couple of years before we went, mainly
because of money and taking time to
organise, but it would be well worth it.
Five hundred quid each and some time
later I had two plane tickets in my hand
along with reservations for the hotels
and various trips. I was quite impressed
at how much we'd got for our money, the
flights alone can cost upwards of 300
quid, luckily we'd shopped around and got
a good deal.
Our 500 quid got us: flights and
transfers, four nights in Toronto, two
nights in Niagara, a harbor tour, Maid
of the Mist (of course) and probably some
other stuff that I can't remember. I also
took 150 quid ($300 CAD or there a-bouts)
cash and my trusty Visa (kerr-ching!).
And so it was, on Saturday 9th of June, I
was getting out of bed at 4am (completely
against my principles), John met me at my
house looking equally bleary-eyed and my
parents gave us a lift from Leeds down to
Manchester Airport. A couple of coffees later and I was starting to get excited,
then we heard the terminal being
announced said one last goodbye to my Mum
and Dad and hurried down to duty-free.
There was no need to rush though, after
five laps I'd picked up some cheap vodka
and was trying to resist the CK Eternity,
then I had an idea "If I go for a
slash they'll announce they're now
boarding" I thought. Ten minutes
later we were marching down to the
departure lounge to our long and boring
flight. It seemed
to take forever to arrive in Toronto
International Airport, but once we were
there it was all go. Soon we were in
downtown Toronto at our hotel relaxing,
the air was very hot and dry outside and
it was a relief to be in the shade. The
first thing we did was try out the air
conditioning (vvvvery nice!), get changed
and go out again.
 We
didn't really need the guide books to
find our way, we just headed toward the
dominating tower looming above us - the
CN Tower. As you can imagine the worlds
tallest building looks quite impressive
when you're stood at the bottom of it
looking up, it stands at 1815 ft (and 5
inches). (The official site is
www.cntower.ca). It has six (glass!)
lifts that go up on the outside, it only
takes 58 seconds to reach the top! We
paid our $22 and made our way past the
various displays to the lifts. It was
quite breath taking when the lift first
starts to move, then you suddenly emerge
from the base of the tower and you have
an ever-improving view of Toronto. The
porter had barely finished reeling off
her fact about the tower when we had got
to the top, actually it's not quite the
top (more later) but it was still
incredible! This level is encode in
glass and has the 360 Restaurant (expensive) and the glass floor.
Unfortunately
the pictures of the glass floor didn't
come out very well, but there's a big
section of the floor that's made from
glass! You can see all the way down to
the Sky Dome (baseball stadium) and the
tops of birds flying below. Scary. Me and
John both made our way gingerly onto the
glass, the first step is the hardest,
then it's not so bad. It's completely physiological, the glass can withstand 14
large hippos but it still worried me when
I saw kids jumping up and down trying to
break the floor!
 Our $22 got
us a ride up to the top level, the
"Sky Pod", this is the little
ball visible on the photo. The Sky Pod
has just iron railings to keep you in,
all the way up here the wind is stronger, this exposure makes you realise just how
high you really are!
You can see from the view just how flat
this part of Canada is, and you can
appreciate the height of the tower a bit
more. I'm pretty sure that if we'd have
know the area better we'd have been able
to see the hotel from up here.
Although
the tower and the view from it was pretty
awesome, I'd imagined that it would be
taller. You can't see an American film
without a view of the empire state
building or statue of liberty or
something, and they all look huge.
Remember that the CN Tower is bigger than
all of these, but you wouldn't have
thought so to look at it, I've come to
the conclusion that TV can create huge
misconceptions.
Anyway off my soapbox and on with the
story!
Through the glass floor you can see the
Sky Dome, the base ball stadium. As it
was on our list of "things to
do" we made our way to the ticket
office and arranged to see a game the
following day. It was around this time
that we realised we hadn't had a thing to
eat since the flight. We were hungry!
After walking around for half an hour we
got back where we started, a nifty Mexican grill called "The Lone Star
Cafe", highly recommended. A fit
waitress seated us and showed us the
menu, the food was cheap and the beer
cold. Stuffed, we made our way back to
the hotel.
A couple of hours sleep and a few vodkas
later we were looking for a place to
drink, it sounds stupid but there weren't
really many places! I think we had a pint
or two, then pissed off back to the hotel
ready for the next day.
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