TORONTO HIGH

On-off bus tour of the City today.  Toronto is not without its charming spots, but essentially it’s just a big city, cleaner than most, but not overly interesting.  First stop on our tour was the “Castle,” called Casa Loma, the former residence built in the 1930’s by financier Sir Henry Pellatt.  It has secret passages and an 800-ft tunnel to the stables.  Sadly, Sir Henry died more of a “Hank,” the result of his own business miscalculations and some dirty dealing by the Ontario government.  Henry lost the Casa, went bankrupt, and ended up just down the street in a basement flat along with his faithful butler.  We only did a drive-by so the pic is from the moving bus.

Next up was the Queen’s Quay harbor area which lies along Lake Ontario.  On the way, we passed some decidedly unclassic architecture grafted on to an older building.  There’s a bunch of stuff here like this, but it all seemed more gimmicky than thoughtful.

At the harbor, we did pile out of the bus to do a walkabout, and to patronize the local market.  Despite the scenic attractiveness, fishing is prohibited due to pollution.

Our guide was an erstwhile young guy who was trying w-a-y too hard with the jokes.  He was not deterred by falling flat repeatedly.  Tough audience, our tour group.  Here he’s pointing out some building that was covered with gold (the real deal) back before it went crazy.  Since Mom (foreground) can’t hear him anyway, she’s looking elsewhere.

Like virtually every area throughout Toronto, this neighborhood is filled with high-rise condos.  I swear 75% of the population lives in one.  The gold-covered (including a window film) building in the distance, behind the boat’s smokestack, was built by a Canadian bank.  Gold reflects sunlight quite well, so the building has very low air conditioning costs in the summer.  Not so great for the building across the street in the direct path of the reflected rays.  It’s owners sued because of its higher energy costs to run its own coolers.  They lost when the judge pointed out that they had lower costs for heating in the winter due to the same reflected light.

The dockside market reminded me of San Francisco’s Ferry Building market, only bigger and better.  Everything from butchers to baked goods to . . . Basmati?  Yup, a store devoted to selling only varieties of rice, most of which I’ve never heard of.

Toronto is home to a thriving film industry, poaching all sorts of productions from Hollywood and standing in for a variety of cities like Boston, New York, Chicago, etc.  A lot of stuff is filmed down in the old distillery district, where they’ve preserved all the old brick buildings and cobblestone streets.  Three Men and a Baby was filmed in the building on the right.  Others include Brokeback Mountain, A Christmas Story, Chicago, Good Will Hunting, etc.  On good-weather weekends, this place is packed with festivals, concerts, and the like.

Some of the juxtapositions of old and new in Toronto are pretty cool, like this one of the original “flatiron” building (that’s right, it predates the more famous NYC one) fronting the two skyscrapers (CN Tower at the extreme left).

Our tour ended at 2:00 and we all returned to the hotel.  Loni and I did a bit of walking around while Mom took a snooze, and came across this multi-pedal “march” for cancer.  They pedaled it around town with a police escort front and rear.

Like San Francisco, Toronto has trolley cars.  Lacking hills, no cable cars.  Los Angeles these days would kill not to have abandoned its trolleys back in the late 50’s.

Dinner this night was out of town at a place called The Old Mill Inn.  I think our tour is signed up for Early Bird Specials wherever we go, as we seem to be eating between 5 and 6 o’clock each day.  This place was nice enough, but, save for us, totally deserted.  Actually, the salmon was done quite well so, although no raves, no complaints either.

After dinner we went back to downtown Toronto for our visit to the CN Tower.  Our timing wasn’t so hot, as the sun had set and the low clouds were rolling in along with a few raindrops.  The CN Tower is a communications and observation tower standing some 1800 feet tall.  It was completed in 1976, becoming the world's tallest free-standing structure and world's tallest tower at the time.  Those records have been eclipsed, but it’s still pretty impressive.

At the top, you can walk the entire perimeter to view the city 360, but the conditions made for less than ideal picture taking.  The runway belongs to the municipal airport, but they don’t allow any jet traffic, other than emergency stuff like transplant organ delivery.  The main international airport is about 40 km out of town.  There are some glass areas in the floor where you can plant yourself and look straight down.  Loni wouldn’t step on them, neither would Mom.  And I’m the one who suffers acrophobia.

On the side that faced the city proper, the knuckleheads in charge of the place had installed a Coke machine that was brilliantly lit from within.  It cast a reflection on the dark glass that ruined nearly all my photo attempts.  This was the best that I (and Picasa) could do.  That’s our hotel to the lower right, with the neon sign at the top.  Guess from this point, it IS all down hill, at least for the first 1,800 feet.