The Grand Toronto Tour
A Visit to Museums and other Attractions
I decided this summer that I was going to see the city. I’ve lived in Toronto for two years now and I haven’t seen much of the city so I set about making a plan to visit a museum or other attraction each day for two weeks. A lot of people might shy away from going to attractions alone but I don’t have a partner anymore and I’m not willing to wait around for schedules to align because that day might never come. For the most part the tour worked out well though it was at times awkward going to a lot of fun places alone.
My first stop was that Bata shoe museum which was interesting to see all the different shoes. The displays were pretty cool but it was also really annoying to have to continuously look down to read plaques in poor lighting conditions. Although it is a four storey building, the archives are supposedly a massive vault below and it would have been cool if there was a way to see some of that too. After a while, I found that I was more interested in the architecture of the building than the displays and that’s when I knew I’d seen enough. The building references a shoe box through a modernist approach by being relatively box but with a floating roof.
The Gardiner museum is just down the street and I went the day after. It is a ceramics museum but the most interesting display was a temporary exhibit by an artist. At the time the Gardiner museum was free admission but it’s also always free for students so I might go back in a few months once there’s a new exhibition.
Next I went to the Ripley aquarium downtown at the base of the CN tower. I was surprised by how busy it was with families and children. I almost felt like I didn’t belong because everyone was a family with kids or a young couple on a date. I can’t remember the Vancouver aquarium very well but I thought Toronto’s was smaller because it’s in the city centre. Apparently it’s actually bigger and better organized. It was interesting because there was a large section on local fish, a tunnel under the main tank, and cool jellyfish. Unsurprisingly, the sharks and sting rays were also cool. There was a sawfish too. All of them looked well fed and fat.
After the aquarium I went out to the Toronto Zoo. I went on a Saturday so I could take a half-hour a free shuttle bus from Younge and Bloor. The bus was convenient to get there but the return times were not at all useful so I had to take transit back (1.5hrs). Like the aquarium, I think the zoo here is smaller than Vancouver but I could be wrong. It had some cool things I hadn’t seen in a while and some new stuff too. I enjoyed seeing the tigers and most of all, the polar bears where there was also windows in the pool to see them from below. It didn’t compare to the wild sanctuaries I’d visited in Australia though. I think the difference is that in Australia since they were wildlife sanctuaries of rescued animals they were all native whereas Toronto was trying to be a collection from around the world and so they only had a few animals from each region.
Casa Loma was an interesting mansion to see because it was much bigger than I originally thought and it had a lookout from the high tower of the Toronto skyline. I was also able to test out the new Sony E10–18mm F4 lens which worked beautifully.
There are some small art galleries scattered around the city and one of them is the TD Gallery of Indigenous art. It’s a small exhibit but gave me something to do one day. That night I also met up with Zak to check out some patio bars around the city.
The next day we hit the CN tower together. I had been hoping to get a clear day for sunset but I messed up and it was overcast. That kind of sucked but the view was still impressive and we spent an hour walking around the observation deck pointing out interesting architectural and urban conditions in the city. Once again the new lens turned out nice and I’m happy that I got it. Going at sunset we also got to see two different views: one during the day and one at night with the lights slowly turning on.
The Royal Ontario Museum is probably the most well-known. I’d been to it before but this time I went to see a special exhibit on whales. That was pretty cool and then I went to wander around the museum and found a whole new section that I didn’t know existed.
The finale to the Toronto tour was a party at Zak’s place where I met some of his friends from home and we had a lot of drinks. We checked out the Entertainment district at night and then went on a crazy bar hoping journey to College, Spedina, and sugar beach.
The next morning I went back over to Zak’s to watch the air show. His balcony has a great view south towards Ontario Place and was a prime place to watch the planes. It was a good relaxing time because we were both pretty tired from staying out drinking till 3am. The snowbirds were the best part of the air show but the other planes weren’t bad either.
