So……. an Australian lady on the tour bus asks the tour guide just as the bus is leaving if it can wait while she goes back to the gift shop to return some goods. He asks her if he can organise it so that the bus isn’t delayed – no, not possible. She tells him she bought a bunch of calendars to give her friends but she forgot that Australia is one day ahead of Canada!! Can you belieeeeeeve it?
Now as we were about to leave Ottawa to drive to Toronto and President Obama is in town, our Jamaican bus driver announced he can drive ze bus OBAMA self!
Toronto is a bustling city with many many very high rise towers on its skyline and is the financial hub of of Canada with many of the banks and financial institutions having their head office here. In the centre of the city there are also many very high rise buildings of condominiums which are privately owned. This is aside from apartment buildings which are developed and owned by one company and rented out to tenants. If you read the papers here you would think you are reading the NZ Herald – overseas buyers are driving up the prices of residential and commercial buildings in Canada and the Government is looking into ways of slowing this down. Today’s paper says 64% of these buyers are Asian. Part of the concern here is that the houses are purchased but not occupied and in some residential areas, people now have empty houses all around them and so grounds become neglected etc.  

The day started with a visit to the CN Tower – 533.33 metres and was the world’s tallest tower for 34 years. It was built primarily to communications because with so many high rise buildings here there was an effect on communications and, with so many large companies, banks, etc here it was vital that this problem was remedied. So I went up the tower in fear and trepidation staring at the wall of the partially glass elevator instead of the windows in case I collapse onto the floor (which would not be good because part of that is also glass just to raise the blood pressure even more). The one in charge of the B’s did not go anywhere near that tower – he does not like heights and so he went to the beautiful aquarium which he said was magnificent and he thoroughly enjoyed it and only had to cope with fish swimming and not his head swimming around. I can’t say I loved the visit up the tower but I did love the views on a glorious morning. This little challenge was followed by a city tour and then a free afternoon. I must tell you something about the city tour – we saw a marijuana shop; next door was a condom shop and over the road was a shop called Kanga – Aussie Pies. Do you think their clientele go from one to ze other and then onto ze next finishing off with ze pie?? Not sure but it is a possibility I think.

We decided to escape the city for the afternoon and got a ferry to the Toronto Islands just a 10-minute boat ride away and we did a 7 km walk around the islands which was a lovely way to spend the afternoon. We came across a group of trainee Surf Life Savers – interesting because the beach is actually on LAKE Ontario – no surf here but they are here to do their lifeguard duties just the same.

So Toronto is in my good books – no problems viz ze Showa last night. Can you belieeeeeve it? All the levers worked; I didn’t drop ze soap and no dinner plate with water pouring out of it up above to squirt me in the face and send me into a spin. They felt sorry for me – I just know it!