Toronto & Niagara Falls 2024

[Adapted from email travelogue, sent Monday, June 17 at 7:49 pm.] What a fantastic, incredibly fun trip this was. Shobhit and I only yelled at each other a couple of times! I am truly, genuinely so glad I was finally able to go back to Toronto, and that Shobhit was finally able to see it. This should come as a surprise to no one, but I'll include a warning anyway: I wrote a lot here. Like, 5,180 words (compare to my 2019 Toronto / Niagara Falls / Syracuse email: 3,496 words).  If you skim, or just look at the pictures—I know it's what some of you usually do!—I totally get it. I know some of you actually stick it out and read everything, though, and you are appreciated! Okay. Deep breath! Let's get started.

Wednesday, June 12 There’s something fascinating about Toronto and its skyline, how both are similar in population and size to Chicago—people don’t realize Toronto is now the fourth-largest city in North America (after Mexico City, New York City, and Los Angeles), and it has the third-largest skyline (after New York and Chicago). It’s quite comparable to Chicago in multiple respects, actually, and has barely surpassed it in population of the city proper (2.79 vs 2.67 million). By global standards, however, metropolitan population is the figure that standard makers use for comparison purposes (because how a “city proper” is defined can vary wildly around the world—we went over this when I went to Australia!). That said, how “metropolitan Toronto” is defined is frustratingly inconsistent depending on the source—many say the metropolitan population is 6.7 million, which would include everything from Burlington to the southwest to Clarington to the east. But then there’s this stretch of population they call the “Golden Horseshoe,” sometimes used interchangeably with “Greater Toronto,” which stretches from all the way around the southwestern tip of Lake Ontario, from Niagara Falls on the south side of Lake Ontario; through the city of Hamilton (itself a pretty major city, the fifth largest in Ontario) all the way through Toronto and on to Clarington in the northeast, the population of which is 9.7 million. The 6 million figure is comparable to metropolitan Philadelphia or Atlanta; the 9.7 million is slightly more than that of metropolitan Chicago, and would make Toronto the fourth-largest metropolitan population in North America. It is thus, obviously, the largest city in Canada by a pretty wide margin, the country’s cultural and financial center. We just have way more major cities overall in the U.S. so you don’t hear about Toronto that often, although I hear a fair amount because of the actually pretty famous Toronto International Film Festival, which tends to reveal the earliest major Oscar contenders every year. I’ve now visited the city twice, and I like it a lot. It’s still no Vancouver—my second-favorite city in the world—but I love its dense, urban vibe that very much reminds me of New York City, if New Yorkers were polite.

Protip for anyone looking to save money on vacations, assuming you don’t mind cooking: always book a hotel room with a kitchen, do a bit of local grocery shopping, and just make most of your meals in your room. Shobhit and I do this all the time. This trip we brought about five Indian meal packets and some rice, then went to a local grocery store to get a couple of vegetables, bread, tortillas, and eggs. We only ate a full meal at a restaurant in Toronto once, and got something small at two other fast-casual places. We were there for four full days, not counting travel days. Now, I know many travelers are all about the local cuisine, but Shobhit and I are much more interested in focusing most of our spending on the local activities. As for Town Inn Suites, we found the place by narrowing in on two criteria: 1) the room needed a kitchen; and 2) we wanted to stay in Church-Wellesley Village, or “The Village” as they call it, Toronto’s historically queer neighborhood. For me, it was just lucky that the hotel happens to be relatively tall, with floors that count up to 27 but of course it skips floor 13 so the building actually has 26 floors. We requested a high floor and got placed on floor 24, which would actually be the 23rd floor. In the photo above, our room would be on the side of the building to the right, which faced to the northeast.

Works for me! Even at half the height of many of the nearby buildings around us, it made for a view that, while I know many people couldn’t care less about city views, I found perfectly delightful. Our only complaint was that the room’s quite spacious balcony was inaccessible—they’ve locked all the room doors to balconies. Maybe because the railings are too low and it’s to easy for people to fall or jump off? Not any lower than, say, a balcony railing on a cruise ship, mind you. I found myself wondering how often people pitch themselves over the edge from their cruise ship state rooms. Or how many people have fallen off the side of the Town Inn Suites. I would guess not many in the latter case, so this was one thing that disappointed us a bit.

The Village is surprisingly small in terms of land area: one of some 60 designated neighborhood boundaries of Toronto, it covers about twenty blocks: 10 blocks of Yonge (pronounced “Young”) St as its western border; 10 blocks of Jarvis St on the east side; two blocks each on Bloor St and Carlton St on the north and south respectively. Its official population as of the 2021 census was about 18,000, in an area of 0.2 square miles. Cutting through the center, running north and south, is Church St, the neighborhood’s main drag—if you’re familiar with Seattle, this would be Toronto’s version of Broadway on Capitiol Hill. Town Inn Suites stands on Church Street, one of the taller buildings on this stretch actually, toward the north side of the neighborhood, two blocks south of Bloor St. The multiple times Shobhit and I went out to walk several blocks of the neighborhood, we would typically head south on Church Street, where there are many gay clubs, shops and restaurants (notably more than Broadway, incidentally, although it should be noted Seattle has several others in the Pike-Pine Corridor, also on Capitol Hill). Toronto has something in common with our experience in Sydney during Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras: the local acknowledgment of Pride city-wide, not just in the “gay village.” Because June is Pride Month, Toronto businesses had variations on Pride flag decorations all over the place. Some call this pandering; I absolutely love it, largely because, as I already noted after our visits to Sydney, we don’t get the same level of civic acknowledgment of Pride in U.S. cities. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very appreciative of Seattle’s civic acknowledgment of Pride—they raised a Pride Flag at City Hall last week—but we don’t also have storefronts and building entrances adorned on countless blocks all over the city or Pride like Sydney and Toronto do. Thus, as you can imagine, The Village itself in Toronto is super packed with Pride iconography, from store windows practically wallpapered with Progress Pride flags, to sets of park benches painted either in rainbow colors for original Pride, or (and I really loved this) the light blue, pink and white colors of the Trans Pride flag. One block had a wall illuminated in rainbow colors nearly the entire length of the block. And for a stretch of maybe three blocks, where the highest concentration of queer business are, after dark there are rainbow colored lights in the shape of Pride ribbons, hanging from every street lamp.

Sheesh! I’m already on the fifth photo, and if you’ve made it this far you deserve a medal. (I know, in that case I should have given out a few dozen medals by now.) I just can’t stop myself from going on and on . . . and here, we have finally reached the first thing we actually did in Toronto! When I visited Toronto with Danielle five years ago, in 2019, I don’t think it even registered to me that it was the provincial capital of Ontario. But! In the meantime, my increasingly old-fart interests have me going out of my way to take tours of any State Capitol building I visit for the first time—including any provincial equivalent in Canada. It’s always both free and interesting, so why not! I’ll even want to visit those of conservative states (I’ll soon be coming for you, Kentucky!). Anyway, Shobhit and I toured the Parliament Building in Victoria, B.C. when we went there for our anniversary in 2022, and once I figured out there was a Legislative Assembly building in Toronto, I had to put it on my list. Free is always a good price for Shobhit, so he was all for it. We had taken the red eye leaving Seattle Tuesday night at 11:10, delayed to 11:40. It landed in Toronto, local time, around 7 a.m. It was roughly another ninety minutes before we reached our hotel, where we could not check in until 2:00. So, we dropped off our bags and immediately set off to kill some time: first to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, which was about a mile walk southwest of the hotel, and has guided tours every half hour weekdays starting at 9:00. We got there in time for a 9:30 tour, when a young Filipino woman took Shobhit and me, the only tour goers at that time, around the building as she zipped through a script she had clearly recited ten thousand times. Between her Filipino accent and her rapid delivery I was able to understand about 80% of it, and I found it all very interesting, as I always do. Because I am old!

Next stop: the CN Tower! Shobhit could give a shit about tall buildings in general, but he does tend to want to go up any observation towers—he went up the Tokyo Skytree Tower during a long layover coming back from Delhi in April, and we was all about going up the CN Tower as well. This was a two-mile walk from the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, but we had time to kill. (Quick report: I took 23,533 steps on Wednesday; 19,931 on Thursday; 26,572 on Friday; and 18,663 on Saturday. My average is around 8,000 a day.) Note that we found a Pride rainbow even on the CN Tower main-level observatory, 1,136 feet above the ground.

You can pay an extra $10 (CAD, the equivalent of $7.30 USD) to go to “The Top,” the new, strangely generic branded name they have for what they used to call the “SkyPod,” another 329 feet above the main level observatory, which of course we did. Incidentally, although Tokyo Skytree Tower is currently the third-tallest self-supporting structure in the world, at 2,080 ft, its highest observatory is at 1,480 ft, as compared to CN Tower’s “The Top” at 1,467 t, so only a 13 ft. difference in terms of how high you can actually go. The CN Tower, incidentally, was the world's tallest self-supporting structure from its construction in 1975 until the Burj Khalifa was finished in Dubai in 2007 (32 years), but it remains the tallest in the Western Hemisphere. “The Top” is a far smaller space, kind of like climbing to the narrow space at the top of a lighthouse, so we were only up there long enough for me to get the requisite photos. The above shot was taken after we returned to the main level observatory, and discovered something new, actually undergoing a trial run: “The Overlook,” which is honestly not that thrilling as it just involves leaning right over the tilted windows so it’s easier to look straight down. We still had to do it, of course! I tilted my camera in the above shot to make it look like Shobhit was standing up straight. The strip of land through the water just below the Lake Ontario horizon is Toronto Islands. This will come up later!

Thursday, June 13: Day Trip to Niagara Falls On Thursday, we wanted a car for one day to take a day trip to Niagara Falls. This had already been a planned suggestion of mine, as in my opinion you can’t travel that far to Toronto, be all of a two-hour drive to Niagara Falls, and not go there. This is a natural wonder that just can’t be missed. But, also: I learned on this trip that Shobhit had really wanted to see Niagara Falls ever since he saw photos of a cousin visiting there, a couple of decades ago. And, to say this day was the most fun Shobhit had on this trip would be an understatement. I was thrilled with every day of this trip, honestly, but even I would say Niagara Falls was the most fun. Once we arrived in the city of Niagara Falls, Ontario, we just found an all-day parking lot for the rental car, and again: we just walked everywhere. The first thing we went to was Niagara City Cruises, a half-hour boat tour that leaves every 15 minutes all day. This had been called “Hornblower Cruises” when Danielle and I did it in 2019 and has evidently been rebranded, but it was exactly the same thing: they give you a plastic poncho; you ride a boat past the American Falls (those are behind us in the spectacular photo of us above) and then so close to Horseshoe Falls (which are on the Canadian side) that you become really grateful for those ponchos. Shobhit was giddy with excitement the whole time, which actually only added to the fun. The splashing spray and mist sometimes made getting photos a challenge, but I still got a lot of good ones. (Just for context, the above shot was taken on the way back from Horseshoe Falls, which was the area that got us so soaking wet.)

There are plenty of other falls-related experiences on the Canadian side, but Shobhit wanted to walk the Rainbow Bridge over to Niagara Falls, New York; and I wanted to walk around Goat Island, which is on the American side of the border and Danielle and I had not had time for in 2019. I had not realized there are several other, smaller islands around Goat Island, which also have foot bridges connecting many of them. Goat Island is by far the largest, though, and that’s where the above shot was taken from—you can see Rainbow Bridge in the distance at upper right, just beyond the observatory and elevator that Americans take for the identical boat tours that launch from the U.S. side. Note the actual rainbow along the bottom of the shot, offering a clue behind the naming of the bridge. Rainbows are not hard to come by at Niagara Falls.

I have to admit, after stopping only briefly in 2019 with Danielle in Niagara Falls State Park—the first-ever state park created in the U.S.!—I had this idea that the Canadian side was a lot more exciting and interesting. This was mostly because any full view of the falls is far better on the Canadian side than on the U.S. side, particularly from any hotel rooms. But, not having explored the islands along the falls in 2019, I had no idea what spectacular experiences there are also to be had there. Truly, you could go to Niagara Falls, New York, and have so much of a blast that you don’t even necessarily need to cross over to the Canadian side. Shobhit and I ultimately walked a path that winds about a mile and a half around Goat Island, which included two smaller islands off the north side of Goat Island (one of which is in the middle of the footbridge from the mainland) and what are called “Three Sisters Islands” off the south side. There are enough small islands close enough together that there are areas of river water that look deceptively calm, and we saw multiple signs urging people not to get in the water. Much like the balcony issue at our hotel, this prompted me to look it up: apparently 20-30 people die going over the falls every year. In my view, this can generally only happen because people are being utter morons who are better off cut out of the gene pool anyway. What kind of idiot gets in the water only a few dozen yards from Niagara Falls?

This hadn’t even been on my list of things to do on this trip, but when we saw that the “Cave of the Winds” attraction on Goat Island cost $21 per person, we made the spontaneous decision to do it, thereby extending our time on Goat Island at least an hour. And I have to say, the experience was spectacular—even though anyone going there should be warned that you spend more time in line getting corralled from place to place, a whole lot like going through lines at Disneyland, than you do in the actual attraction. The ticketed entry occurs every fifteen minutes, and first there’s a line where optional souvenir photos are taken (we skipped that); then 15 minutes in a room that is a museum of the history of Niagara Falls; then into an adjacent theater room where you watch a “short video”; then back to an outdoor switchback line that we were in for 13 minutes; then into a covered waiting area at the elevators that we only waited at for a couple of minutes. And you know what? it was still worth it. If you ever go to Niagara Falls, put Cave of the Winds on your list!

Once you’re finally down the elevator, you walk a path of wooden staircases and boardwalks that weave their way partially up the cliffs of Goat Island that stand between American Falls and Horseshoe Falls—and are so close, right next to the American Falls that, once again, they had out plastic ponchos before you walk out there. In contrast to the boat ride, in this case you can more easily decide exactly how severely you want to get pelted with spraying water—there’s one landing where you can really get hammered with it, and Shobhit was all over it. Between this and the Niagara City Cruise, Shobhit had the time of his life that day.

Friday, June 14: 20th Anniversary of First Date Shobhit and I had decided we would walk the two miles from our hotel to Casa Loma, Toronto's "Gothic Revival castle-style mansion," and we happened to discover the Yorkville Branch of the Toronto Public Library—the building for which, built in 1907, is the system's oldest. This branch is all of two and a half blocks from the northwest corner of Church-Wellesley Village, and to my delight, the two columns flanking the entrance were covered in Progress Pride flag stripes (which, just to review, include colors representing historically excluded communities: black and brown for people of color; light blue, pink and white for Trans Pride). To clarify, however, the above shot was not taken inside that building—as it happens, the Toronto Reference Library, their equivalent of a Central Library, stands down the street all of half a block away—the librarian inside the Yorkville Branch gave us the super complicated (they weren't complicated) directions to it. Side note: both libraries had highly visible Pride displays just inside the entrance. And I have to say, I was so impressed with the Toronto Reference Library, I quickly decided that not only did Toronto Public Library deserve ts own dedicated photo album (because I took like 19 shots at the Reference Library alone), I have even started a collection of albums dedicated to local libraries. Between this and my collection of state and provincial capitol building photo albums, I am one step closer to full geezer! I mean, I might as well lean into it. I have a new agenda! Any new place I visit, if it's applicable, seek out the State Capitol and the Central Library. As for the design of the Toronto Reference Library, I found its exterior to be nothing to shout about, but loved the design of its interior, especially with how much natural light was let in from upper windows when it appeared from the outside to have few windows at all. The current building opened in 1977 but apparently was renovated and expanded between 2009 and 2014.

I had gone a bit back and forth as to whether to put Casa Loma, Toronto's beautiful 1914 castle-mansion, on our list for this trip. Honestly, I just didn't want to overwhelm Shobhit with too large a list of things to do, so we could be relatively flexible with how we spent our days. But Shobhit spoke to a coworker who was familiar with Toronto and highly recommended it, so Shobhit decided he'd like to see it. I'm really glad we went—it's such an incredible and impressive place, there was something different yet photogenic literally around every one of its many corners. Indeed, with eight separate photo albums for this visit to Toronto alone (not including four more for Niagara Falls alone!), the Casa Loma photo album has by far the most shots in it, at 124. Under other circumstances I may have had more restraint, but with two visits to Toronto under my belt and no urgent need to return in sight, this could very well be the only time I see it.

As Shobhit does anywhere we visit that has a map, Shobhit picked up a paper map marking the 39 points of interest for the audio tour, and marked off every single point of interest until we saw them all. We didn't listen to the audio tour but just read the posted signs with the same information instead. Easily our favorite spots in the castle were the two towers, one called Norman Tower (from which the above shot was taken, with an open-air platform) and one called Scottish Tower (entirely enclosed at the top, but with views from even higher up through windows).

I did have Afternoon Tea on my list—we had done that at The Empress Hotel in Victoria for our anniversary in 2022, actually one of the most famous tourist attractions in that city, and I figured Toronto would have places that also did it. Not only was I right about that, but Toronto has countless Afternoon Tea options. How to choose? At first we thought maybe Groupon, but I must say, on this trip, Groupon had absolutely nothing for any of the things we were actually interested in doing. But! Shobhit's coworker had a suggestion: Afternoon Tea at the Shangri-La Toronto Hotel. (Side note: the Shangri-La Toronto is 705 ft an 66 stories tall, and I got this shot of it from the CN Tower observatory. We had stopped in on our walk to the CN Tower on Wednesday, when we made a 4 p.m. reservation for Friday, our actual anniversary. Alas, the Afternoon Tea is in the lounge on the first floor—still quite nice—as opposed to any higher floor as the "Sky-High Afternoon Tea" title might suggest.) I'm really glad we did it, it was a lovely way to officially celebrate our anniversary, the service was excellent—and yet, I can't say I would go out of my way to recommend it, at least not for anyone in Western Washington where Victoria is so much closer. I couldn't help but compare it, and while my "Shangri-La Signature Blend Black Tea" was quite good—and Shobhit's "Assam, Cherideo Purbat Estate Luxury Signature Tea" was average at best—the "Cochin Masala Chai" I had at the Empress in 2022 was far better than either one. On the upside, I have to say that the food served was worth it alone, which they happily made entirely vegetarian for us—a plate of two different kinds of scones and spectacular savory bites on the bottom level of the food tower, with incredible dessert bites populating the middle and top levels. Still, overall I would say that Tea at the Empress is the better value—between these two choices, anyway; to be fair there could be better ones elsewhere in Toronto, and I've only experienced just this one. But, I would absolutely do Tea at the Empress again, even though it was nearly as expensive (coming close to $100 CAD per person in either case, but in Toronto with taxes and tip reaching $125 CAD per person, which works out to $91.25 per person USD).  Oh wait, full disclosure! Our Toronto cost was increased by $8 per person because we got champagne.

I can't even remember now how I learned about The Pasture, a public art installation of life-sized bronze cow sculptures at TD Centre, which was created in 1985 by artist Joseph Fafard. I know it was relatively recent and almost certainly something I saw on Facebook, after which I made a note of its location, and when I realized it was all of three blocks away from the Shangri-La Toronto, I dragged Shobhit over there after our dinner there so I could get some photos of it. The idea to pose in the middle of them and have Shobhit take a picture literally came to me the moment we got there. I'm kicking myself, though, that I did not curl my legs under myself like all the cows are doing with their back legs. Dammit! Well, I guess we do have to go back.

Saturday, June 15: Toronto Islands Saturday was our final full day in Toronto (out of four), and definitely the most relaxing—only one thing on the agenda that day: Toronto Islands. As soon as I discovered the islands feature a historically (and still largely) queer, clothing-optional beach—something I certainly did not know when Danielle and I went to Toronto Islands in 2019—I knew Shobhit would be all over it. So, basically: Saturday was our Day at the Beach. I have to get back to how much the city acknowledges both its queer community and its queer history, though. There was a lot of visible queer-community iconography on the walk to Hanlan's Point Beach, located on the western shore of Centre Island, and by all appearances, in this case it was permanent and not just for Pride. There are three ferry routes to different areas of the islands, and not far from the Hanlan's Point ferry dock, I was struck to find a sign noting that we were "entering a historically queer space," the site of Canada's first-ever Pride in 1971, and "believed to be Canada's oldest queer space and one of the oldest continuously queer spaces in the world." It even requests that visitors honor the inclusive values of "acceptance, respect, dignity and diversity." A bit further up the path, we encountered a Progress Pride Flag painted on the footpath, stretching 600 meters (about 2,000 feet) and apparently only just permanently installed by artist Travis Myers less than a month ago, in late May. The city only just officially recognized it as a "historically queer space" last summer, so it turns out we came at the perfect time to discover all this. It was at the same time that flag poles flying the Progress Pride flag were also stuck into the beach itself, one of which is seen in the shot above. We had met another gay couple in line for the ferry on the mainland, named Greg and Garth, who told us they had been together thirty years. They were on bikes, but said they'd say hi to us if they saw us on the beach. Indeed, eventually Greg found us on our beach blanket tote, totally in the buff (as were Shobhit and I), and he wound up sitting with us for a good half an hour or more, mostly talking about provincial politics across Canada. We also discussed how the vast majority of the young gay guys there wore swimming briefs rather than going nude—with a few exceptions—and Greg said this was more typical on the weekends, and the beach is "more nude" on weekdays. Incidentally, the beach was high-majority men, but there were also enough topless women around to be noticeable. Protip for nude sunbathing: there can never be too much sunscreen! I think I may have also gotten a false sense of security from the spray can of sunscreen we were using, and I got a couple genuinely painful blotches of sunburn in unexpected places. Get your mind out of the gutter, I'm not talking about that! I seem to have missed spots on my hip and particularly around the front of my right armpit—and I should have known to cover the latter even if I had been wearing a swimsuit. My only excuse, I guess, is that it's easy to miss random spots when you're preoccupied with areas you don't usually have to consider.

We lounged on the beach, and I even napped for a bit, over the course of a solid five hours—under sunny skies and temperatures quite comfortably in the high seventies. Then, for about 45 minutes, we walked around the islands a bit, which are quite pretty in their own right, with serene scenes like the one above, footbridges connecting Centre Island to several much smaller ones. Back when Danielle and I were there, higher than usual lake water levels had many areas flooded, but thankfully that wasn't the case this time. I could have spent more time just walking around, but Shobhit's interest had been only the beach, really, and he did some walking just to indulge me—including a brief stint walking through William Meany Maze, which I only learned about due to Barbara texting me a link about it.

And then? We got in line for the return ferry at the Centre Island dock at 5:45 . . . and the end of the line was at least a quarter mile away from the dock. We didn't actually board a ferry boat until 7:20. The above ferry was the 6:20 ferry back to the mainland, and if you look closely you can see it is packed. We got close but didn't quite make it onto that one. Had we known they would finally bring a second boat for the 7:20 sailing, we probably could have continued just walking around the islands for a while. Oh well; how were we to know? I suppose by reading local news to learn that two of their five boats were out of service to undergo repairs and thus long wait times over the weekend were expected, but we were too busy being tourists! I still had a great time, sunburn blotches notwithstanding. The same could be said of the entire trip, which, in full consideration of recency bias, I feel will be one of those vacations I look back on fondly for years to come.