Monday, 12th March 2001.
Toronto

Today I took the bus from Guelph to Toronto. It's public transport, so there's bound to be a loon on the bus somewhere. This time the loon was sitting directly in front of me, and didn't shut up for the entire journey.

As we left Guelph, the creature in front was staring out the window and commenting on the buildings we passed...
(the loon sounded like the Solinoid Robots from Roger Ramjet)
"grunt That could be a church." It was a bar.
"That could...grunt...that could be a church." It was a petrol station.
"That's...that's a synagogue or something!" It was a Baptist Church.

Alas, that's all of the ramblings of the loon that I can publish on this genteel website, becuase the language became a little bit more blue after that.

Once in Toronto I wandered around, just checking things out. CN Tower: tall. Queen Street: long. I bought my lunch at "The Falafel Queen". And it was soooooo goooooood. As the afternoon wore on it became colder and colder. Honestly, I've never been so cold in my entire life. I thought my hands were going to drop off. (They didn't.)

Late in the afternoon I visited the Ice Hockey Hall of Fame. There were some interactive exhibits where you could test the power and accuracy of your shot, or try and save shots, stuff like that. I was too chicken to have a crack with all those Canadians looking on.

I met up with Barb outside Union Station, and we walked to the base of the CN Tower. We had a dinner reservation for 7:30pm! At the top is a revolving restaurant. It was a clear night, and we could see the city lights stretching out beneath us. One meal and one-and-a-bit revolutions of the restaurant later and we were ready to head back to Guelph.

We took the lift down to the observation deck, where they had installed thick glass panels in the floor. There were little kids jumping up and down on the panels, which kinda freaked me out. That didn't worry Barb, who happily stomped around on the glass.

We shared the lift for the rest of the way down with a Japanese tour group. The lift was glass on one side, so you could look out as the lift hurtled towards the ground. The lift operator asked if we had any questions. The tour guide translated for his tour group. There was momentary silence, and I (inevitably) piped up:"Are we going to die?"
"No," replied the attendant, with a nervous laugh.
"You don't have to translate all that!" I suggested to the Japanese tour guide.
"Oh I won't!" he said.