We had a three night stop in Toronto. Get this, 6 million people live in Toronoto. 6 million! That's a lot. Apparently a third of the Canadian population live within five hours of Toronto. I considered it to be the New York of Canada.
I still had a bit of a cold, so took it easy on the drinking while in Toronto. Probably a good plan seeing as I was getting worried about flying the following Wednesday with blocked sinus'.
Our hotel was very central to the city centre, making it a walkable distance to our dinners and sight seeing. We walked down to the CN tower, one of the worlds tallest buildings. The view from the top was stunning, I hadn't realise how BIG Toronoto really was. In every direction there was blocks of high rises, houses, more high rises, more houses, more high rises, you get the picture. I guess I should have expected it given the population! At the bottom of the tower was our next stop - a brewery tour around the Steam Whistle Brewery. A boutique brewery housed in an old train turnstile building.
My next stop after the brewery was the Canadian Postal service. My bag was 10kg overweight, and I was getting grief from our bus driver about how heavy my bag was. So it had to be posted home. A piece of advice for you - it costs twice as much to send a box home to NZ from Canada as it does from USA. But it was fast, home in under a week! If you're counting, that makes 5 boxes I've posted home so far, and now that I'm in LA, I probably have another box to send too. Shopaholic much?!
The third day in Toronto was a day trip to Niagara Falls. I had always heard that the Canadian side was much better than the American side, but I didn't know what that meant and now I do. There are two major falls - the American falls that are wide with lots of rocks at the bottom and the Canadian falls that are a horseshoe shape. They sit side by side, but from the Canadian side of the river you can see both falls front on. To view them from the American side, you'd only see the side of the falls, not such a great view. We dressed as smurfs in the blue condoms and boarded the Maid of the Mist boat cruise. It rained at this point, but it didn't matter, the mist from the falls meant you got wet regardless.
The American National Park Society(?) has been set up to preserve the natural wonderment that is the parks, and to avoid what has happened at Niagara Falls. The Falls themselves are beautiful and awe inspiring. unfortunetly, you turn around to find miles of shops, restaurants, kids amusement rides, icecream shops and enough neon lights to rival Las Vegas. It was actually kind of depressing to see such an obvious cashing in on a natural wonder.
I was feeling much better as we left Toronoto and headed back into the USA.
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