CN Tower (Toronto)

July 21, 2004

So, we made it to Toronto. So far, this place is a whole lot like the US. Yeah, I know that the Canadians will all hate me for saying that. Don't get me wrong, it's a great place and it's a lot more eclectic culturally than the places I normally hang out in the US. Still, it's comfortable. It doesn't feel terribly foreign.

Everything's 25% more expensive and the boxes all have the exact same thing on the back except that it's written in French. Oh yeah, the boxes of pasta are 500ml instead of 1lb. Other than that, you could mistake it for a big American city. Missi says it reminds her of Chicago.

It's like a vegetarian paradise here. The restaurants all have their vegetarian stuff clearly labeled. There are a few restaurants around our hotel where there's nothing but vegetarian food. The hot dog stands even have veggie dogs!

Our first day and we've already had a trip to the Emergency Room. Missi took Chloe this morning. She had some hives that started popping up on the plane and hadn't cleared up. Luckily, our condo (Conservatory Tower, map) happened to be a block from a hospital. Maybe we somehow knew this was going to happen. Chloe needed some Benadryl and it cost us $400 to figure that out. :)

That's just the way that our vacations go. I remember when we drove to Pennsylvania and we had to spend a day at a clinic in Memphis because Emelia and Missi were both sick as dogs.

We still haven't hit any major tourist attractions except the CN Tower (link, map), which is the tallest structure in the world. We only got to go up about 3/4 of the way up though -- something like 147 stories up. It's was bitchin'. On a clear day, you can see Niagara Falls. Unfortunately, it wasn't a clear day.

We also got to walk across (and lie on) a glass floor. I wouldn't have been so brave, but there were about forty kids (that's what I call twenty-year-olds now) jumping up and down on it. I figured that if it could hold all of them, it wouldn't break if I walked on it. It didn't.