Toronto - Day 8

We stayed at the Strathcona Hotel which is basically on York & Front Street - right by the Royal York hotel and Union station - perfect location! The room was very small, but we were only in there to sleep so it really didn't matter that much. I took a photo of the sink, as you'll see below...tiny! (http://thestrathconahotel-px.trvlclick.com/)

We walked toward old town to see the St. Lawrence Market. It was only a block or 2 from the Hockey Hall of Fame - so maybe 5 blocks from our hotel. It was closed on Monday (of course) so we couldn't get inside to take a look. I would like to go on a Saturday to see it in operation.
(http://www.stlawrencemarket.com/shopping/south.html)

We also took photos of the flatiron building. It was before the Market - but we walked right past it because it just looked like a regular old building from the direction we were walking. I took the 1st 2 photos thinking it was a nice building....then we went to the market and kept walking looking for the flatiron building. We walked another 5 or more blocks before we gave up and turned around...and as we walked west...THEN we could see it...DUH!

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gooderham_Building)

We walked around just a wee bit in the old town - I would have loved to wander around more, but it was the hottest day since we arrived, so we headed for a/c fairly quickly. If we had just noticed the flatiron building earlier, we might have used that time to wander more in the old area....darn! (http://www.oldtowntoronto1793.com/)

This is St. James Church

This is the King Edward Hotel - we cooled down in here - although the a/c wasn't very strong. the interior was beautiful! (http://www.starwoodhotels.com/lemeridien/property/overview/index.html?propertyID=1912)

This is Holy Trinity Church, which is almost attached to Eaton's Centre

We spent alot of time in this store...the world Biggest Bookstore. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Biggest_Bookstore)

On our last day, we walked approx 5700 steps for 7.5 miles.

Toronto - Day 7

This day we spend downtown. We walked a different way to see a few new buildings.



This is the Old City Hall - I thought it was beautiful. I wonder if it does tours - it looked pretty empty when we walked by...it was Sunday. (http://www.toronto.ca/old_cityhall/history.htm)







This is the corner of Yonge & Dundas - there's a square that was filled with little stands where you could purchase food or crafts. There was also a stage. It is right across the street from Eaton's Centre. We had lunch at this Hard Rock Cafe. (http://www.ydsquare.ca/)

Not too far away was Mackenzie House. (http://www.toronto.ca/culture/museums/mackenzie-history.htm) This was interesting to visit...and is usually $6 to enter, but because of the 175 anniversary of Toronto, it was free on weekends. It is a very small house, but we got a private tour. The Mackenzie's were a middle class family, so it wasn't as fancy as Spadina House. I remembered reading about Mackenzie in history class at University - all I remembered was that he published his own paper and was in trouble alot for speaking his mind. We got to see his printing press working and got to try it too. If you are in the area - go for a visit, its interesting and doesn't take very long to see.

We were wandering through all the floors of Sears and the Bay and stumbled onto this amazing room while we were in the Bay. It's called the Arcadian Court and is in the Simpson building. http://www.gta.ontarioweddingring.com/vendors/halls/arcadiancourt.html

We also walked upstairs in Union Station (rather than just down where the subway is). It is a beautiful old building. (http://www.toronto.ca/union_station/history.htm#keypoints)

This is the CTV building (wouldn't want CBC to get all the interest). I thought it was interesting because what was hanging out the side of the wall.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/299_Queen_Street_West)

This is St. Andrew Church - we walked by it several times on our trip - it was close to The Princes of Wales theatre and Roy Thomson Hall (http://www.standrewstoronto.org/)

We walked around 6,400 steps for 8.5 miles.

Toronto - Day 6

We went to 2 malls ... well...maybe 3 today - and I didn't take my camera. We were going to go to Vaughan Mills mall and took the subway as far north as we could. We asked for directions to get to the mall and the subway dude said you had to take a bus that was about 25 minute ride...and since we weren't sure whether it was worth the trip, we decided to go to Yorkdale mall...which was right at this stop. It was like Chinook Mall in Calgary. No shopping deals to be found though and with their provincial tax, items just need to be something that can't be found in Edm or really cheap to purchase.

Then we got back on the subway and off to almost the end of the rails to the east (Scarborough Town Centre). It was being remodeled and not alot of shops we were interested in, but the reason we went because there was a Bonnie Togs there (kids clothing). I got a ton of stuff for PJ and it was all on sale for $5 (except for jeans, but that's ok, it was still reasonably priced).


Then we went back to our hotel because of the big purchase for PJ. We left to walk down by the harbour since the main heat of the day was done.

This 1st photo is looking back toward downtown as we approached the harbour area.

We had dinner at Wayne Gretzky's and got a couple of t-shirts for PJ

Our step monitor said that we walked approx 11,000 steps for 15 miles - but we aren't sure its true because we spent alot of time on the subway...maybe it was bumpy and made the thing register steps that didn't happen...who knows?

Toronto - Day 5

We spent the day at the Royal Ontario Museum. It was opened in March 1914 and was 5 separate museums. (http://www.rom.on.ca/exhibitions/index.php)

We got there fairly early through the subway and there wasn't a line-up. This is the outside of the building when walking from the subway.





When you turn the corner to get to the entrance....then it looks really odd....I think its supposed to look like a crystal, but I'm not 100% sure.



They had the Dead Sea Scrolls there, so we went to that. They give you timed tickets to go into the exhibit, and thankfully, our time slot was only a 10 minute wait - but the line was huge. It took almost 2 hours to go through it...not sure why...it wasn't that big and not as exciting as you might think. Good to see though.

The museum has several themed areas - Asian, European, Canadian, dinosaurs, animals, rocks and a large area with Egyptian and Greek artifacts.

This is kind of the foyer between some of the exhibits....its a nice old building.

This is a statute of Timothy Eaton - the found of Eaton's (a department store that closed a few years ago).

My favorite part was a little area about Wedgwood china.

We were getting tired (we were there over 6 hours) of standing and walking. My shoulder was killing me from lugging my camera around. As we left, we were really glad that we had gone early because the line-up outside of the building stretched almost all the way to the subway station! YIKES!

I suggested that we catch the subway so that we could get off on Yonge & Dundas so he could poke around in some shops on Yonge street...so off we walked toward Yonge street. Instead of going into the subway...GJA starts hiking down Yonge street. Not amused!

Here are some photos of Yonge Street...

Then we went into HMV FOREVER and there was no where for me to sit...aarrggh! So...we ended up walking all the way from the museum to our hotel at Union station.

When we finally got back to the hotel, then we had to leave for dinner and to get to Roger's Centre to go to a Football Game (Toronto vs BC - BC won....well, it was more like Toronto choked in the last quarter).

Today we took approximately 9,700 steps for a total of 12.8 miles - no wonder my feet were killing me!