Day 29: Blue Jays, CN Tower, and Nuit Blanche ending with a Bonfire Party

So we started the day with a trip up the CN Tower which stands at 553.33 metres and is the tallest  free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere. CN stands for Canadian National the railway company that originally built the tower. 

The views from the tower were amazing, I hadn't witnessed a city with so many skyscrapers before. We could just about see the baseball teams warming up from the top of the tower. 

Any Canadian tourist attraction isn't complete without a moose somewhere. 

We then went to the baseball game - the Toronto Blue Jays vs New York Yankees. The game started slow but there was a home run for Toronto after half an hour which made things exciting for a few minutes. It ended up 3-2 to the Blue Jays so very little happened, baseball is definitely a pastime and not as intense as most sports. 

I spent most of the time admiring the view and talking. We then went to the Eaton Centre (a huge shopping mall) and took a look around before leaving for dinner at Milestones. 

We then stuck around for Nuit Blanche (White Night) - it's a night time arts festival, Toronto turned into a buzzing de facto gallery with the streets littered with over 150 installations. We saw all sorts of things from dancefloors in the streets with correlating lights above to tents filled of smoke full of photocopiers (you were supposed to photocopy your face). I got approached by a stranger while at Nuit Blanche, who turned out to be a model scout, I then proceeded to laugh however I did take his business card (more on that later). 

This was in a theatre called Massey Hall - the first movement of Beethoven's famous sonata titled 'Quasi una Fantasia' which was converted to morse code and transmitted to the moon, reflected back and then played through the grand piano magically by itself. 

So I left Nuit Blanche earlier than I'd have liked to because we were throwing a bonfire party at my house. I came back home to find a huge bonfire alight and lots of guests. We had a great night with the fire department and the police crashing it relatively early (we played the dumb international student card to avoid the fines). 

Day 22: Toronto Distillery District and Kensington

So we came Toronto again with the idea of exploring a little more. We even had a little napkin with a hand-drawn map of the area and where to go from a Torontonian at McMaster. We made for the hostel in Chinatown to firstly to drop our bags off and then freely explore the area but encountered a slight problem with the hostel as we hadn't received the booking number so we couldn't stay there (we didn't want to anyway, screw them). As you can see from the photo below it wasn't The Ritz. 

So we made our way back downtown (DT) through the funky fashion district of Toronto and dipped in and out of vintage and high street stores until we made it to Spring Rolls because we were starving by this point. All you can eat Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese sounded very good so we stopped off and stuffed ourselves with food. 

After eating we met up with the rest of the gang and moved onto the distillery district. It was quite a distance away so we jumped on a tram (streetcar) and made our way east.  

So Gooderham and Worts used to own the distillery which comprises of 10 streets and 40 buildings and it was once the largest distillery in the world! It's now a National Historic Site of Canada and has lots of cafes, boutiques, art galleries with a cool nostalgic vibe.

Of course we couldn't leave without trying some of the beer from the brewery itself, Mill St. now has a small brewery there and we each bought a taster set of 10 small glasses with everything from stouts to strawberry beer. 

After the distillery district we head over to Kensington Market on the other side of town to check that out and see the other hostel that the guys were staying in. 

So their hostel was amazing, it had a rooftop bar (though it was rather cold) with a little party going on and of course Giant Jenga. We head home after wandering back through Kensington past a few jazz bars, a good finish to a fun day. 

Day 16: Niagara Falls

The first big highlight in my year in Canada. Something I'll definitely always remember, the Niagara Falls. 

The falls are split into two sets, the American Falls above. 

And the horseshoe above are the Canadian falls. They are huge in comparison to the American Falls and the little speck in the middle is the Maid of the Mist boat that goes right into the falls, you become surrounded by the waterfalls completely and at one point you can't even see because of all the mist and water. 

Niagara itself has been transformed into a tourist honeypot site which is a little bit of shame. It is very much like Blackpool in its tackiness and we couldn't find a good restaurant in the whole town. Prices here are extraordinary too, even the simple things. 

We left just after seeing the impressive lights lit up the falls :)