Toronto

I've been meaning to write something for a while now, but I keep thinking that not much has happened that's worth writing about.
Well, looking back it's been a pretty good start to the year.
Toronto for example has had quite a few things happen to it:
- The price of gas (petrol) has risen to $1.05 per litre and everybody is complaining!
- There's been 8 shooting related deaths in Toronto this year. Mostly in other neighbourhoods but there was one just one subway stop up from us!
- There's been 2 train derailments. One in the subway system out east which shut the line down for about 36 hours. Affected about a million people trying to get into work and home again.
- There's been a lot of snow, not record levels but February has been a cold snowy month. Just when we thought the winter was over and all the snow had melted, we had lots and lots come back down. Temps this week are back in the -6 region.

As for us, the last 9 days were pretty exciting. We purchased a city pass, which is a discount ticket book which gives entry into 7 of Toronto's attractions.

So last weekend we went to the Royal Ontario Museum and saw the dinosaurs.
After that we tried to go up the CN Tower but it was snowing and cloudy so not really worth it.



The next day we woke up early and the skies were blue. After a nice warm brunch at a local cafe, we headed into town, but the clouds had come back. So to pass the time we used the next ticket in our book and went to the Hockey Hall of Fame. A very cool place with memorabilia from Canada's rich hockey history. I even got to stand next to the coveted Stanley Cup. It has more history than the America's cup, and has been through more iterations too, the shape of the cup has changed about 4 times since it was first created.



After learning about hockey, we looked outside and the clouds had cleared. We fought our way through the freezing cold to the base of the CN Tower, only to be informed that it was too windy and the top section was closed! Hah, as Wellingtonians we laugh in the face of high winds, but were unable to do anything about today's problem.

The rest of the week passed in the way any other working week does, but we had the resolve to get back up the CN Tower.

So when saturday rolled around, the weather was beautiful and we headed into town.
After getting lost driving around the mall parking lot looking for a park (that's a whole other story) we caught the subway into town to take one last stab at getting up the CN Tower.
After a short wait in the lines, we were scanned for bombs and allowed up in the glass elevator.
It travelled vertically at 55kmh for 58 seconds to ascend to the first viewing level of the tower.
We had a quick look around the main level, jumped on the glass floor as you do, then went up to the sky pod.
This is what we came for; another hundred metres up and with a full and unobstructed view of Toronto. On a clear day you can see all the way to Niagara Falls.