Vaguely Travel: Chapter 5

Hey guys! This is a blog update about Toronto. I'll be honest, I didn't write much of anything while I was in Toronto. Truth be told, I caught some kind of cold/flu thing on the train between there and Winnipeg and wandering around and taking pictures was all that I was capable of, creatively. So this blog entry is going to be light on words. A relief for all of us, I'm sure.

You can see how the landscape has changed. We're in lake-country now.

Toronto is very much 'the big city'. It has sidewalks crowded with people and a skyline crowded with skyscrapers. As such it was a little bit imposing for a shy person like myself. Also, it's worth noting that at this point my trip was really speeding up- I only spent a single day here! I still managed to see a lot of the big sights, despite these obstacles. Wow, aren't I the best?

Toronto's Blue Jays stadium. Notable for being an engineering feat in its time with the first fully retractable dome roof. Torontans (??) are big on baseball, apparently. It almost seemed like everyone was wearing some object of Blue Jays memorabilia while I was there. Does the government give these out, maybe?

These public pianos were all over the city. A very pleasant concept and a great use of public space. Almost everyone tried to play that one song that everyone does on the piano. You know, the famous one.

This was in the port area, bttw. Continuing with the theme of nice public art. Toronto is a very welcoming city.

Uh, I think you messed up your sidewalk there, dude.. Might wanna get that looked at.

This place was probably my favorite thing about Toronto. It's called 'The Music Garden'.

Yo Yo Ma designed it in cooperation with the Canadian government as a place for the public performance of art.

It had these different areas each dedicated to a different art, all of it landscaped beautifully. I can say without irony that it 'lifted my spirits' to walk through it. That is not a phrase to use lightly.

Well, while we're looking up.. might as well go up the CN Tower.

Yes, it's ANOTHER space-needle-lookin thing. However, this one is pretty significant. It reigned as the highest free-standing tower in the world for quite some time. 1976 til 2010.

At some point during this time it was declared one of the 7 wonders of the modern world. How many do you think you can name? I'll tell you that the Golden Gate Bridge and the Empire State Building are in the same club.

Toronto is located on the shore of Lake Ontario, one of the great lakes.

Even at this point in my life, it feels a little weird to walk on a glass floor this high up.

Just some nice skyline action

I took a brewery tour! Steam Whistle is a very good beer.

It's brewed according to both exacting purity standards and exacting environmental standards. 2nd greenest brewery in the world (after Fat Tire in Colorado, fyi)

Toronto's central station. Another one of these cities that has a cool network of underground tunnels throughout downtown for use in wintertime, by the way.

Toronto is also the home of the Hockey Hall of Fame. I don't know who did these sculptures, but I assume he must be a local (it's his stuff on the stadium as well).

Some church, I don't know. I do remember that it was on 'Church Street' and that there were 2 other equally impressive churches nearby. That is an accurately named street.

I like this picture a lot.

Overall Toronto has a little bit of that New York feeling of being a city that is both venerably grand and sleekly modern. You see a lot of these kinds of contrasts among neighboring buildings. Original name of Toronto, by the way? York! I know, right?