US / Canada / French Canada Tour 09

After the fairly unsatisfying lunch - we hit the streets to the gay part of town (aptly named "Church" street...). Toronto has a fairly bigish gay scene and it was used (X-Files style) to shoot the Queer as Folk US TV series. Things didn't really feel happening (cause it was mid-afternoon) - but there was one club packed to rafters - full of retirees or something.

It sort of felt like Toronto had been beaten rather hard with the ugly stick. There was some gawd awful architecture to be had, and everything was rather flat. Ant made the comment that Tornoto reminded him a bit of Melbourne - flat, with trams...

Anyhows - we did some walking down Church Street in the direction of downtown Tornoto. We checked out the main train station (in order to work out where we had to catch the train to Nigeria falls the next day). Everything felt rather dead - lack of people, lack of shops (a lot of closed down things about) - perhaps it is the GFC at work here?

From the station - we travelled down the "Sky Walk" - a fairly gawd awful Cameron Offices / Belconnen Bus Interchange vintage above ground concrete pedestrian overpass which wouldn't look too out of place in a zombie/apocalyptic movie. Again -there was a complete lack of people which added to the errie feel of the place.

The Sky Walk links the train station to the CN Tower - the world's largest free-standing structure... or something. Sort of think like the Telstra Tower or a Communist Communications Tower (which are sort of the same thing) - and you have the CN Tower. At the base of the tower - there were plenty of "Ticket Offices" and some bizare "eco herb farm" - but no tourists or open ticket offices... We managed to find an open ticket office - and forked out $28CAD for a ride up to the tower and the "Sky Ball" (no it isn't a porno - rather an extra lift up to a higher observatory). We bailed on the "3D ride of Tornoto"... We may be tourist suckers but aren't complete tourist suckers...

It all felt really dead quiet (ie: no tourists) and felt like this could be a bit of a money-losing operation. Let's hope they could afford the upkeep on the lifts. After the ticket guy (who seemed a tad gay) commented on my negative body language - we made our way through the 2 mile queue area (sin tourists) before heading up the lift. At the observatory level - you got to see a fairly decent view of Tornoto and surrounds - pity that Tornoto was raped by the ugly stick tho...

Of interest was the "Glass Floor" - where you could walk out over a "glass bottom floor" and look at the ground. I did a bit of dancing around and jumping (to freak Ant out). After 5 minutes - Ant finally found the courage to walk out by a couple of inches onto the glass floor (but he had to hold me and was somewhat shaking violently the whole time).

The Sky Ball was another lift ride up - with even less tourists - but funnily enough - it was the sameish view.

We headed back to the hotel - when suddenly there was a bit more life in Tornoto. Probably had something to do with it being 5pmish.

It was sort of hard to find differences between here and the US (except for the funnier accents - "It's aboot dignity. It's aboot respect."). The food seemed the same. The shops seem the same. The TV sort of seemed the same... Oh well...

We made our way past the Wushu hoards to chill for a bit at the hotel. I've been on a fitness kick ever since the calorie-horror that was NY - so I did a bit of a gyme session at the 27th floor gym where I almost got a swift kickbox to the head by a Wushu competitor from Russia or somewhere who was going a little bit too crazy near me while I was on the exercise bike.

For dinner - we headed back out to Church Street where we went to a sort of "Mod-Oz" restaurant which doubled as a bar. I had a pizza, Ant had a steak and the 50 yr old woman who served us (who looked a little out of place working as a waitress at a flashy club) was super friendly and very interested in our itinerary (just like the Canadian Immigration peeps). Until next time... XOXO...