Toronto Day 1

This took me long enough. There were just too many pictures. I bought 2 2Gb memory sticks and an extra battery just for the trip. the result is about 1400 pics and vids. I'm not going to go too much into detail on what we did there. We already have the pics to do that and I'll never finish this if I try to type it. Besides, who reads this stuff anyway? :)

Anyway, we got up early Wednesday to catch our flight (5:55am boarding). This, by the way, is me and Mean's first plane flight together. We arrived at around 9:30 at Toronto Pearson Airport. We wanted to find to find a TTC day pass but there was no place to get it. Thankfully the bus driver didn't charge us since he knew we would get one. In Winnipeg, we have Navigo where we can find the exact way to get from point A to B. It's not perfect but it sure made things easier. Toronto has nothing similar so we had to rely on maps. At first it seemed daunting but we soon found the buses/trains we needed to take. It was surprisingly easy to get around especially with the subway.



Check-in time at the hotel was still a few hours away so our first stop from the airport was the Philippine consulate since Mean had to renew her passport. It was kinda annoying to pull my bag around since it got wobbly after going over just a few bumps. I think it had something to do with my height. From there we headed to Travelodge to check in.

To Toronto Full Photo Album

Our first "tourist" destination was Casa Loma. Here, we purchased the Toronto Citypass. With the citypass, we could visit 6 attractions for a discounted price. I think it's already worth it if we visited only 3. It was a bit of a walk from the subway station, and uphill at that. Casa Loma is a castle serving as a museum with rooms restored to what they looked like decades ago. It also has a nice garden which I'm sure Mean would enjoy. But what I was really after was the exterior of the castle itself which looked pretty impressive in the pictures I saw. Unfortunately, part of it was under renovation but it still looked impressive nonetheless. ET Canada was also holding shows there for the Toronto International Film Festival (which was ongoing that week) so some areas were closed or had the set impeding access to some areas.

Casa Loma Full Photo Album

After that, I was getting pretty tired. Plus we bought a jug of water which we had to bring back to the hotel. I was tempted to just rest but I had to keep going or I'd regret not going to some of the attractions. More so since what we had planned for the evening was CN Tower. At this point CN Tower was just dethroned as the tallest freestanding structure by the Burj Dubai (it's still growing by the way). I didn't care though since I was still sure to get some awesome views. There was the main viewing area and the skypod even higher above it. Again, the pics should be enough. I just have to say though that the glass floor exposed me as a sissy while Mean didn't seem bothered at all.

CN Tower Full Photo Album

After all that, I was exhausted. We had dinner at a nearby Shawarma/Gyro place. We had to get some stuff from a convenience store but after that I was pretty much dead. The next day is sure to be equally tiring with Toronto Zoo and The Chinese Lantern Festival.