Then we went to Toronto, during which time is when I wrote most of this entry about Ottawa. It started to rain, so our tour was put off until tomorrow and we had the night to ourselves. So we took the Toronto transit system - the subway down to where they said was a good part of town to go to, which was between Queen and King streets. We found a subway station (which we later found out was connected directly with our hotel…oops), and got a day pass, which to my surprise covered both of us. The station was pretty dead, but the train arrived in only 3 minutes from when we got there. Once we got in the car, we noticed it was very clean, and the seats were similar to the Bee-Line buses seats. We noticed that our station, North York Civic Center station, was near the top of the map, and King was near the bottom, but then we started to move, and their phrase “Ride the Rocket” was quite fitting. We went downtown in only 19 minutes, which surprised both of us. So we got back up to the street level and started looking around to see what Toronto had to offer, and the answer was quite a lot. Think of it as NYC but cleaner, and there was a lot of stores. We walked uptown, and saw a lot of different things - food, electronics, Internet cafes, camera stores, and a bunch of other random things, including a few adult stores. One thing that we noticed about Canada in general was that things tend to close early, and Toronto was no exception, save for the restaurants and Internet Cafes. We first found a Bistro, but the service was so slow that we left, and ate at an Indian restaurant instead. At the Indian place, the service again was slow, the Lasis weren’t big enough, and the food…was weird. I’ve never had such rich and tomato tasting red sauce, and I couldn’t finish it. Leon did not fare any better, in fact it was worse - his Saag Paneer was very green and spinach-y, and it made him sick to his stomach. We continued walking north and saw the gay part of town, as well as Chinatown after it. Then we were exhausted so we got back on the subway, and headed north. About two stations before our stop the train conductor said it was out of service and to grab the next train. Thankfully, even at 10:30 PM it was only 2 mins. Then we got into the hotel directly from the station. We went swimming for about 30 mins, then we went to sleep.
The next day, we got up around 7 and had breakfast downstairs, which was complimentary again. This time, still runny eggs, but pancakes, french toast, bacon, sausage, toast, fruit, juices, and cereal were there. Decent overall, but the fruit wasn’t so great.
Then we looked at a local government building and took pictures in front of it. Then we went to the CN tower. The tower is the tallest freestanding structure in the world. At the tour we went through the strangest security system I’ve ever seen. It consisted of a machine with about 30 different air jets and a camera, along with a security guard manning it. Then we took an elevator ride up the tower at 15MPH, lasting 58 seconds. We looked out over the city which was a vast panoramic view of the city. Then we went downstairs and stood on the glass floor, which was all that separated us from the ground. I initially was not very happy with this idea. Leon jumped on floor and didn’t fall through, so I joined him on it. After the novelty quickly wore off, we went downstairs and left after visiting the gift shop. Then we headed toward Niagra Falls.
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