Toronto

We only had a short drive to get from Niagara to Toronto. So we had a leisurely departure from the campsite. We had a couple of hours in the swimming pool then got on our way.

The traffic was terrible round Toronto again and we are starting to long for some more remote parts of Canada once more. The campsite we had booked claimed to be 22km from Toronto centre and easily accessible via a bus then subway ride. We parked up in the furthest pitch possible as there were a lot of ‘seasonal campers’ on the site who don’t tend to make the best neighbours we’ve discovered.

We were all shattered and planning on having an early night. But Charlie crawled into bed at about 5pm with a tummy ache and woke up again at 7.30am on Saturday morning. So Will, John and I had a quiet evening playing Sequence, our new favourite pastime, (thanks Dad and Carol!!).

Set the alarm for Saturday morning and we were on the bus by 8.30am. Total novelty for us to use public transport as we have spent years living in a place you can only get about by car!! Subway wasn’t quite as clean and friendly as the Metro in Montreal but easy to navigate and we got to the Harbourfront by 9.30am.

Sadly any ideas we had of a water side breakfast were dashed as absolutely nothing was open that early on a Saturday morning. An awful lot of construction work was going on and in a city of 2.6 million it felt very alien to the places we’ve been so far.

We easily found the Rogers Centre, home to the Blue Jays. With the CN Tower conveniently situated alongside it! We rode the elevator up the 553m to the observation deck. They’ve not got around to changing the signage at the top so they are still claiming to be the worlds highest building, even though they were overtaken in 2010 by over 300m by a bulding in Dubai!

Regardless it is a pretty awe inspiring view. The glass floor is completely stomach churning. Especailly as everyone insists on jumping on it to test the ‘this floor can hold 14 hippos’ claim. Great view down into Rogers Centre were we could see the players warming up.

Grabbed a hot dog (well you have to really I think don’t you?!) and headed into the Stadium. Tornoto Blue Jays v Chicago White Sox. Now I don’t know much about baseball but truly it just seemed like rounders to me!! Also apparently you can’t get thorugh 10 minutes without buying some other form of junk food to help pass the long pauses between any real action. Despite buying the kids each a cap and therefore declaring our support to Canada’s only baseball team in the Amerian Baseball League for the year, they lost!

We wandered back down onto the Harbour Front where it now appeared to have come to life. As well as all the Blue Jays supporters, there were huge crowds at the WestJet Theatre where they run outdoor perofrmances all summer, canoes and speedboats, people sunbathing on the man made beach on the quay. We headed to Queens Quay where we managed to find a table in a restaurant over looking the boats going up and down Lake Ontario as the sun set.

Retraced our steps via subway and bus and retuned to the campsite to find it was now rammed and we were surrounded on all sides by weekend campers (made worse by the long weekend ahead of Canada Day on Tuesday). We had considered staying an extra night to do a quiet day of repairs on the van and a bit of the kids project work etc. But we now rememberwed what city campsites are good for – 1 or 2 nights only to make full advantage of of the city for 1 full day then head out!! The kids were disaponted as they love meeting all the very interesting (drunk and over friendly) people who are so willing to chat to them and playing with their kids who don’t have a bedtime or curfew so much as waiting to pass out when their parents do!!