Day 9: A Little More Touristy

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Before I get started on today’s adventure, it has come to my attention that certain parties would like to see photos of Julia, Data and me, the people we are staying with and where we are staying, as opposed to the “artistic” photos I have been posting. I have been taking these photos (mostly referring to the photos of who we’ve been staying with), but not posting them because I pretty much assumed that nobody cared who we’re staying with. I have, however, been uploading some of these photos to my SmugMug (link to the right). Of course, I haven’t been keeping up with the whole SmugMug thing over the last few days (mostly because it’s a pain in the ass to have to add labels and keywords to photos over and over again), but I have done a retroactive update to the galleries tonight and will try to upload photos there every time I post from now on. I am not going to promise I’ll post photos of people we stay with in the blog, but I have been and will continue to upload more photos to my SmugMug than I post here. In any case, you can see larger versions of the photos on SmugMug and even buy prints if you so desire.

Moving on … I should warn you, long post coming …

Today we left Data at the condo and went for a long walk around Toronto. First, we went about four blocks south so Julia could drop some film off at Black’s camera. Then we walked north about eight blocks to Bloor Street before heading east to the Royal Ontario Museum. While standing outside of the museum taking photos, a nice guy stopped by to talk about cameras and computers and gave us some ideas for places to go both here in Toronto and Vancouver. From there, we went south again to the University of Toronto. Then we made a beeline south and west on College Street to Little Italy for dinner. We ate at an Italian (duh) restaurant with a nice patio called Café Diplomatica. They had great bruschetta and I liked their cheese tortellini with rose (tomato cream) sauce. Julia wasn’t thrilled about their minestrone soup and the Sicilian crepe (frozen crepe stuffed with ice cream) was also a little boring.

After all the walking we had done, we decided to take the streetcars from the restaurant to the Blue Jays game. It was a pretty simple process and we only had to change cars once. When we got to the Rogers Centre, five minutes before game time, there was a decent crowd at the box office. Shortly after getting in line, some guy came up to us and asked if we wanted free tickets. Although this would normally be the start of a bad murder mystery, this guy seemed nice and said he had been given the tickets at work and couldn’t use them. We accepted and were able to see the game for free. The seats we had weren’t great, but the stadium (which is quite nice) was pretty much empty, so we were able to move around a bit. If it weren’t for the fact that they make so much money, I’d feel bad for the players on the Blue Jays because they basically have to play in front of an empty stadium for every home game. After the fourth inning it was 3-0 Blue Jays, so Julia and I decided to head out (there were very irritating people nearby). As we left the stadium, we decided to try a veggie dog from the hot dog vendor, which was better than I expected.

At this point, the light was still fairly good, so we decided to spend the money we would have spent on baseball tickets on a trip up the CN Tower. It was about 8:30 p.m., I’d guess. I asked the woman at the ticket booth if there was a wait and she said “about 10 minutes.” The light looked great for photos, so we bought tickets to the topmost observation deck. Once we got up to the first (of two) observation decks, we learned that we would have to wait in line to go higher. What they didn’t tell us was that the line was over an hour long. This was frustrating, especially since the light had been so good for photos and was already mostly gone. Once we got to the top, the view was spectacular, but it was difficult to photograph because there were extremely bright red and white lights shining directly up into the windows from below, which cast a nasty glare on almost every photo I tried to take. Afterwards, we spent a few minutes playing around on the glass floor before heading down to Union Station and taking the subway back to Rita’s. I should also mention that Rita was good enough to walk Data twice while we were gone, after she got out of work.

Now, once again, Julia and Data have fallen asleep. Tomorrow’s plan is to take the car and bring Data to a beach park where he can supposedly be off-leash so that he can get another workout. After that, we are going to make dinner and dessert for Rita and then do something simple, like see a movie.

Here are today’s photos. As always, click “there’s more to this” to see the rest.

The view from the top of the CN Tower.

The Royal Ontario Museum.

A closer view of the Royal Ontario Museum and the reflection of the street.

A building at the University of Toronto.

The CN Tower as seen from the University of Toronto.

I don’t know this guy’s name, but apparently he’s famous for his mutton chops facial hair styling.

Rogers Centre from our seats.

The CN Tower from about 50 feet away.

The Rogers Centre from above, shortly after the game had ended. The dome is in the process of closing up.

Union Station.