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| The CN Tower |
*As this an affiliate post, if you choose to purchase anything through the links below, I will get paid a small comission, from that sale, with no extra cost to you. It's not mandatory, but highly appreciated. *
Warm weather, a glass of red wine and a quick early-morning flight led me to my first time in Toronto, Canada. It was an amazing whirlwind experience. I was initially interested in this as it was one of the featured trips in the network marketing company I was in. I had never been there before and was excited to go. So I grabbed my sister and we went exploring.
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| Rogers Centre |
We drove and parked my car at the airport and proceeded to check in early and wait in the airport for our 12 pm flight. Check-in at the hotel was at 3 p.m. so we would land right on time to go and check-in. While waiting at the boarding gate we were approached by the porter airlines crew, asking us if we wanted to catch an earlier flight into the city. Excitedly, we agreed. instead of flying out at 12 pm, we flew out at 10:30 am and landed at noon. Although the flight was under two hours, we were still offered snacks and a complementary glass of wine during it.
I was nervous about what we were going to do with our bags since we had more time to wait before checking in at the Westin, only to be pleasantly surprised by the hotel itself. When we got there, they promptly took our bags, gave us a tag and told us to return, when it was time to check in, give them the tag and they would bring our stuff up to our room.
With that we left to go sightseeing. The first place we went to was to a cafe for breakfast where we had Red-Velvet Belgian Waffles and Nutella Crepes for the first time. It was amazing. To this day I still haven't had waffles that topped that. My sister had a side order of Canadian bacon and when I had a piece of that, it was orgasmic. I've since stopped eating pork, but I'm glad I got to experience that before I did.
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| View from my room |
While walking around, I found my bank branch across the street from where we were. It was then I had us change some of our spending money into Canadian currency. I usually do that for every country I travel to, as it makes it easier for me to keep track of spending and such (easy math). Their money was a lot more colorful than my original currency; literally each of the bill denominations were a different color and the coins were valued based on the size of it. The fabric of it felt thin and plastic-like.
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| Town of Leslieville |
The next day we went on an excursion to Niagara Falls. The bus picked us up at the hotel and we drove two hours to the waterfalls. We spent the day there taking pictures, taking in the sights, getting in the boat, to go towards the falls (we were soaked from the mist and the spray). While on the boat, we saw all of the tourists on the New York side of Niagara Falls, walking along the falls and going into the caves, behind the falls. No lie, I was jealous of them, because I wanted to do that too. Especially when I noticed all who entered the cave, suddenly had a grey hue to them.
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| Niagara Falls |
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| The falls tour |
Afterwards, we went to eat at Niagara on-the-falls restaurant, on the top floor, it was an all glass enclosure where we were able to see the falls, all around us. It was a beautiful view. That area had a lot of restaurants, gift shops and niagara themed trinkets. We then went wine tasting in a vineyard and I had ice- wine for the first time. Ice wine is wine made from frozen grapes as they are harvested during the winter season.
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| Front Row Seat |
Since's it's frozen, the amount of liquid used to make the wine is smaller, thus the bottles are smaller. The benefit of having less water to squeeze is the liquid taste's sweeter, as the sugar content is more concentrated. We ended up buying a few bottles that day. While the white wine was sweeter than the red one, the red one had more flavor overall. Getting both the wine and syrup flavored ice wine, was my favorite part of that day.
The next day we took a trip downtown and went to both the Aquarium and the CN tower. We touched the stingrays, took pictures next to the jellyfish and saw an array of different types of fish, sharks and other aquatic animals. Ripley's Aquarium is huge. The CN Tower was a fun experience, as we got to see the whole city from above and with all of the buildings and urban landscape, it looked similar to New York City. We walked to the part of the tower that had a glass floor.
It was a total mind trick, watching people, cars and buses drive by underneath me, and having my realization of how high up I was, sink in. While we took pics on the glass floor, I remember how freaked out I got, when a toddler stood next to me (while with their parent) and started jumping on the floor. Although the floor wouldn't shatter due to that kids weight, I will say this, toddlers are very brave.
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| Ripley's Aquarium |
I enjoyed the last two days we spent there, the most as we got to explore the city as both a tourist and a local. We took the circle line tour bus downtown and while taking pics from the upper level, we witnessed the pride parade. We had an unexpected front-row seat to the festivities and enjoyed the music as we were surrounded by the parade goers and performers. We waved, smiled and rocked out. While driving past one of the main roads, we passed a slew of tattoo shops and being a tat enthusiast herself, my sister convinced us to enter one of the shop to get matching tattoo's. I go into more detail about that experience here.
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| Glass Floor at CN Tower |
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| View Of Toronto |
We went back to the hotel, grabbed food at the hotel's restaurant on the very top floor, and then retired to our room. Following day, we took the circle line tour again and this time, did the "river cruise" part of it and got on a boat that took us to both Wards and Centre island. We waved to the people on both islands and then circled back to the mainland. Afterwards we went souvenir shopping, by taking the train down to Dundas Square , which is their version of Times Square.
I want to confirm that the people in that city are so helpful and hospitable because on two occasions we asked for help and directions while there and the one's who helped us, not only gave us directions, but also walked with us in the opposite direction of where they were going, to make sure we got to where we needed to be. Extremely welcoming too.
While buying souvenirs, we noticed there was a festival going on in the square. We went to it, and enjoyed the music, food, drinks and party. Seeing the stage, the musicians and vendors in the middle of a backdrop filled with designer stores and billboards, in the background was amazing. Shortly afterwards, we headed back to the hotel and grabbed dinner by the bar downstairs before heading back up to pack and head home.
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| Yonge-Dundas Square |
Overall I would definitely go back as I had an incredible time. If you're ever curious to see what the 6 is like, feel free to click the links above to check out the places I've visited and all of it's offerings. Listed below are some links that will help you book your own adventure along with some additional attractions that are in the city, that I didn't get the opportunity to explore.
*As this an affiliate post, if you choose to purchase anything through the links below, I will get paid a small comission, from that sale, with no extra cost to you. It's not mandatory, but highly appreciated.*
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