Tue 10/10 - Toronto

A beautiful day with warm sunshine and as we didn't have any tour booked that we had to rush off for, we slept in until around 8:30am then had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel. Before heading out we checked with the concierge that we would be able to pre-book a taxi for the following day's transfer to the airport.

We had decided to use the hop-on, hop-off sightseeing bus tour to see the city and headed off to the pickup stop following the directions given to us by the concierge. I confidently lead the way except I had made a 'schoolboy' error and lead us to the wrong side of the road (had to remind myself they drive on the right in Canada - doh!). Having caught the bus we soon decided it was never going to be more than 'okay'. We were treated to an uninspired commentary which was difficult to hear most of the time. I 'switched off' very quickly and amused myself taking photos of interesting juxtapositions of buildings. As we made our way around the city it became a game of spot the CN Tower.

We hopped off the bus at the harbour front centre and made our way to where we could catch the boat trip that was included along with the bus tour. The boat trip was really good - we had great views of the Toronto skyline from the harbour and were constantly being 'buzzed' by planes landing at the nearby 'Billy Bishop' airport. After the boat trip we made our way to the 'Amsterdam Brewhouse' for lunch. I can't remember quite what I ordered but Margaret decided to try a local delicacy called Poutine - this consists of fries with cheese grated over them floating in a bowl of gravy. It wasn't as good as Margaret was expecting - possibly would have been better without the gravy!

After lunch we caught the bus again and hopped off at the Distillery area. It's an area of the city that is unspoilt and doesn't allow any 'chain' stores - only small shops - so it was an interesting area to wander around and I took yet more photos.

We caught the bus afterwards but as it was towards the end of the day it was stopping at Dundas Square so we had to walk back along Yonge Street to the hotel. We both thought the area was a bit seedy with tattoo parlours and nude revues along the way. Having got back to the hotel we ate dinner there and used the in-house terminals to check-in for the following day's flight and print our boarding cards.