Toronto is one of our "backyard" trips. We have been there various times over the years and usually find it busy and expensive. While both of these things are true, we did take a couple of opportunities to explore this Ontario Capital as tourists. What we found was a city that was worthy of the hype. While I would not come to Canada, or Ontario for that matter, just to see Toronto, it is worthy of a visit nonetheless.
*The reason I mention it is not worth coming to Ontario just for Toronto is because we have met several people, all over the world, who think they can make a whole trip out of visiting just Toronto or just Ottawa, this is not the case. That would be a rather boring trip...in my opinion. However, we have also met people, all over the world, who think they can see all that Canada, or Ontario, has to offer in a 1 week vacay. This is also not the case. That would be a disservice to our beautiful country. *
For me Toronto is a good weekend trip, (or if your visiting from exotic lands you could spend 2-3 days). The first occasion we had for sightseeing Toronto as tourists was due to a flight cancellation (we were supposed to have a layover in Edmonton, Alberta to visit the West Edmonton Mall), instead we had several hours to hang out in a city we had been to handfuls of times. So after the several hours of back and forth with the airline, regarding our car rentals and rebooking flights, we were off to see the city we thought we knew so well.
First things first, the Toronto Airport is not downtown, but they do have a convenient train that will take you there. If it is 4am and your flight has just been cancelled I recommend getting assistance, we bought a roundtrip ticket that expired wayyyyyy before we would be taking our roundtrip, which ended up with us having to pay again on our way back to the airport. Another FYI...Toronto is not a 24 hour city. We scoured the city, via Google, to find a breakfast place to kill some time and no luck was had until 7am!! On a Saturday! I was shocked, and hangry to say the least.
You do not have to look very hard to find traces of culture and ethnicities from all over the world. On our train ride into the city at 5am, we met a delightful Argentinian couple who were spending their layover in T.O. Talking with them is actually what turned our grumpy spirits around. They asked us what they should do to see the city. We gave them all the touristy norms, and then decided we would do the same. We told them they could catch a train to Yorkdale mall but the husband (who spoke english, the wife not so much) quickly kyboshed that recommendation, telling us his wife would spend all of his money there. He then proceeded to pull out all of his American cash to show us (he seemed very proud). We then had to tell him that;
a) He should quickly put that money away in a safe place
b) That his currency was rather useless in T.O. (he was not fazed by this in the slightest)
Once we got downtown they both gave us a hug and thanked us for the help. They headed towards the CN Tower (which we told them would not be open at 5am) and we headed out to find coffee and breaky...(no one told us that would also not be open at 5am)
We literally walked around the city for 1.5 hours. Watching a city wake up is one of my favourite things to do. I have had this pleasure several times in my adventures and I never regret it. We had breakfast then headed out to see what we could see. We toured through Kensington Market (a story about this area coming soon); ventured past the Rogers Center and Air Canada Center, walked past the CN Tower, The ROM and wandered through the Eatons Center. Did I mention this was Saturday morning at like 8am? Nothing was open! We ended up needing to rest...hello 2am wake up time. So we sat at the fountain at the Eatons Center for a few hours.
This trip sounds like it was uneventful. However, it is one of the best trips to Toronto we have ever had. We saw all of the sites that we recommended to the Argentinian couple, who were like actual tourists, not wannabees like us....or maybe we were actual tourists...I mean we aren't from T.O, and even if we were we definitely saw the city in a completely different way. This outing allowed us to actually plan a day trip to T.O, that would happen a few months later. Until then we had a flight to catch.
Ps. There are lots of other super fun things to do in T.O that were not included in this post (or future posts).
I have been in the audience of daytime TV in Toronto
The Toronto Zoo is worth a visit
Casa Loma
Medieval Times
The CNE
The waterfront is beautiful
and not to mention the various sports and concert events that are always a hit
+ many many more sights that I know I have yet to discover.
If you liked this post about our trip to this wonderful Canadian City, and Capital of Ontario, then you will like this post about Frankenmuth Michigan.
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