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Home » On The Road, Snapshots

The 416 Escape

Written by on June 25, 2007 – 7:05 pm19 Comments
Looking For A Way

Look­ing For A Way

Right after com­ing back from Win­nipeg, Feng and I drove to Toronto to… yeah, to escape Ottawa for a lit­tle while.

I had landed in Toronto quite a few time since it’s Ontario’s big hub. The city was my first stop in Canada when we came from Brazil in 2002 and I went numer­ous time since then. How­ever, I never really had the chance to explore it since I mostly went there dur­ing win­ter time. Oh, and I was broke, too. So I was look­ing for­ward to explor­ing the big city.

We started off from the hos­tel and walked down Yonge Street, Toronto’s busiest dis­trict. I felt so good to see peo­ple — not that I’m say­ing Ottawa is dull. It’s just… qui­eter. Toronto has a really big Chi­na­town unlike Ottawa’s which is fairly small and quiet. I hadn’t seen big bill­boards down­town like that since China.

In Chinatown

In Chi­na­town

Yonge Street

Yonge Street

The hos­tel had a really nice rooftop from where we could see Toronto’s sky­line (and smoke cig­a­rettes while try­ing to hold the cam­era still for the night pictures) :

Toronto Skyline

Toronto Sky­line

Toronto Skyline By Night

Toronto Sky­line By Night

We vis­ited the CN Tower and took the ele­va­tor up to the last floor. Lucky me, I don’t have ver­tigo… There’s a glass floor on top of the tower and walk­ing on it is the weird­est thing : a view of 1,122′ straight down can be extremely scary. I mean, the glass is only 2.5 inches but I knew it wouldn’t break. Yet, it’s dis­turb­ing… although I got used to it after a few attempt.

CN Tower

CN Tower

Walking On Glass Floor

Walk­ing On Glass Floor

On Top Of The Tower

On Top Of The Tower

Seating On Glass Floor

Seat­ing On Glass Floor

We took the ferry to Toronto Island, 20 min­utes away from the city. It’s a com­plete dif­fer­ent atmos­phere : so quiet, so green, no cars and an okay beach by Cana­dian stan­dards (yes, I grew up on the Atlantic side of France and we used to have nice beaches before the oil slick).

Toronto Island

Toronto Island

Toronto Skyline

Toronto Sky­line

Toronto Island

Toronto Island

Toronto From The Island

Toronto From The Island

I love Toronto. The busy streets, the sky­line, the diver­sity, the water nearby (okay, there’s the Ottawa river here… but it’s not quite the same), the buzz. I’m sick of Ottawa, I just want to go trav­el­ing again. Gotta get through the sum­mer.

Related posts:

  1. A Sun­day In Toronto
  2. Win­nipeg Adven­tures In Friendly Manitoba
  3. Kens­ing­ton Market
  4. Tourists in Toronto
  5. Toronto By Night

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19 Comments »

  • Zhu says:

    Ryan : You’re the sec­ond per­son men­tion­ning the Vegas glass floor. I have to go there one day !

    Wat : don’t be jeal­ous, LA guy :$

    Dinah : I totally under­stand that ! I’m from a medium city in France, but I like big cities, for the cul­ture, for the diver­sity, for the con­ve­nience of pub­lic trans­porta­tions etc. Where do you live right now ?

  • Dinah says:

    I’m in North­ern Ontario…a beau­ti­ful place, but my town has less than 1000 people…

  • Paper Fan Club says:

    Toronto is nice, but it’s no Win­nipeg! :) Great pics, zhu.

  • Getty72 says:

    Wow, amaz­ing pic­tures. I too have landed at Toronto air­port on occa­sions when I have flown over to attend meet­ings at Honda’s Car Man­u­fac­tur­ing Plant in Allis­ton. Unfor­tu­nately, all I have seen of Toronto is from a taxi window.…so it is nice to see what I have been miss­ing. The CNN Tower with the glass floor must have been a true experience…you have me wrig­gling with envy!!

    On that note, I’m off to Istan­bul from 24th –27th July for a few more days of meet­ings at Honda Turkey. I’ll be sure to take my cam­era this time and will write a post from my hotel room dur­ing the evenings.

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