Joni decided that we needed to go somewhere. I'm not sure how she selected Toronto, but on Friday we found ourselves at the AAA office waiting for the helpful AAA representative to make our hotel reservations. Unfortunately, it turned out to be Caribana weekend in Toronto, but we managed to get reservations at an expensive (by our reckoning) hotel in the heart of downtown Toronto.

We left Ithaca around one, much later than we should have. Because of bad traffic around Toronto, we got to the hotel around eight. We paid almost US$19 to park in the cramped lot under the hotel and went to Eaton Centre which is supposed to be a great shopping mall. We didn't see anything noteworthy during our 40 minute stroll through the place.

After breakfast the next morning in the mediocre hotel restaurant, we walked through a street market where lots of fresh fruits, vegetables, and other items were available. Our first big stop for the day was the Bata Shoe Museum. We wouldn't have gone there except that someone at a tourist center recommended it. We saw every imaginable type of shoe. In China, people got the idea that being tall was important and platform shoe escalation occurred. At its zenith, women would go out wearing one meter high shoes. They needed to be assisted by servants to keep their balance. Jainists wore shoes raised by thin supports so that they wouldn't crush insects as they walked. In 19th century, French workers crushed chestnuts with special chestnut crushing shoes that had an array of huge spikes protruding from the sole. Before contact with Europeans, Native Americans used dyed porcupine quills instead of glass beads to decorate their shoes. They also decorated their shoes with little fuzzy balls made from moose hair and dyed different colors.

A short subway ride took us to Casa Loma (House on the Hill), a "medieval" castle built by Sir Henry Mill Pellatt. The house was built by 300 men in three years at a cost of $3.5 million in 1911. Sir Henry built his fortune through a power company monopoly, but he lost his monopoly and moved on to land speculation where he lost his fortune entirely. He was forced to leave his castle only ten years after he built it.

Sir Henry liked technology. Unlike the old castles of Europe, Casa Loma had all the amenities. When he lived there, he had 57 phones---a large fraction of the phones in Toronto at the time. The conservatory is a beautiful marble room lined with exotic plants. Steam pipes kept the plants warm in the winter. A large stained glass window decorates the ceiling, and for night enjoyment, it could be back lit by an enormous bank of light bulbs. The bathroom shower has an array of nozzles that could spray water from all directions.

The library was built with a herringbone pattern on the floor which creates stripes when viewed obliquely but is solid in color when viewed directly. This floor was built strong enough to support a locomotive. We chose to climb the tower that was marked as bad for photographs. This was a mistake: our tower may have been taller, but the view was very restricted by the tiny windows.

Naturally no castle would be complete without hidden passages; Casa Loma has two. They are both concealed behind mahogany panels on either side of the fireplace in Sir Henry's study. One leads to the wine cellar and the other one leads to Sir Henry's bedroom suite.

Our last planned stop for the day was the Royal Ontario Museum. We looked at their collection of beautiful minerals and gems. We walked through the bat cave, a reproduction of a real cave complete with three thousand model bats flying, or clinging to the ceiling.

After the museum closed, we were ready for dinner, so we read our guidebooks and decided to visit Il Fornello, an Italian restaurant with a wood burning oven. We got a table right next to the cooks and could see them making pizzas and sticking them into the wood burning oven.

We left Il Fornello and headed toward the waterfront. Eventually we found our way to the CN Tower, the tallest tower in the world at 1815 feet 5 inches high. We paid the exorbitant US$9.7 per person entrance fee and eventually rode the elevator to the observation deck at the 114 floor level (1136 ft). An additional fee was required to go to the upper observation deck 33 stories higher at 1465 ft, so we decided not to bother. I have to agree with a friend who said that Toronto didn't have the skyline to warrant going up the CN tower. The view was fairly boring. The CN tower itself is probably the only noteworthy feature of Toronto's skyline.

But one floor down, they have a "glass" floor which looks straight down 113 stories to the ground. There is something very disturbing about walking on a transparent surface and being able to see the ground over a thousand feet below. It doesn't help that the floor flexes slightly under your weight. I tried to stand on the clear floor for a while but it was very difficult psychologically to stay there. Walking on the frame between the panes of "glass" was a little better, but not a lot.

The glass elevators in the CN tower are very fast. During the 50 second ride to the top, the elevator operator told us that they travel 15 miles per hour. But probably people were more impressed by the sight of the ground dropping away. The guide also said that the tower top sways 2-3 feet under normal winds and up to 7 feet with hurricane force winds. As we plummeted toward the ground, a man's cellular phone rang. "I'll call you back," he said tensely.

We started Sunday morning by visiting a restaurant called La Marche which was highly recommended by one guide book and not mentioned by the other. We walked through Marche looking at different food choices. Marche employees were making French toast, sausages, rosti (which are similar to hash browns), waffles, pizza, fresh squeezed juice and numerous other things. Finally, with food laden trays, we returned to the table we had reserved under a skylight. It was a nice morning for sitting under a skylight, but had we preferred, we could have chosen from several different settings inside. They had rooms designed to resemble different kinds of cafes or restaurants. There was even a room that resembled an American diner.

Our last stop in Toronto was the Toronto Science Centre. We managed to spend about six hours there, but on the whole it was disappointing. Too many of the exhibits seemed to be broken and not much there was memorable. One exhibit I do remember had three identically shaped blocks of metal to lift: aluminum, lead and uranium. Uranium is about 66% denser than lead; the difference was quite obvious when I tried to lift the blocks.

I didn't realize that $1 bills have been completely eliminated in Canada, so I asked for some when I got Canadian money at the bank. When I used them in a museum gift shop, the man who took my money said "Holy Liftin!" and claimed that he hadn't seen a one dollar bill for over ten years.

The subway system in Toronto was very good. Even on Sunday, we didn't have to wait long for the next train. The subway walls were lined with advertising, as usual, but the ads for space on the subway walls were fairly entertaining. For example, one of them read: "Want to know what it feels like to be a subway poster? Ok. Cover your left eye and raise your right foot. Now raise your right arm over your head and hum Blue Moon. (There. Now you're being stared at!)" We never did figure out the one that said:

teernaitn a

ticpave danceieu.

We had a good time in Toronto. We used our time fairly well. I felt sort of like we should have seen some of the Caribana parade, but doing so would have occupied a whole day. We drove back in the evening and spent the night at Joni's aunt's house in Rochester so we didn't have to pay the exorbitant hotel rates for another night.