Day 143 - CN Tower

I don't know what is going on with blogger but I'm really struggling with the formatting.  Inserting pictures has become a pain as they are the wrong size, in the wrong place, I have double spacing and various other things making it harder work at the moment.

I'm writing this on Sunday afternoon but posting it with Saturday date so that I can just keep the travel diary on the right days.

Yesterday was a nice day, the weather was extremely hot and sunny and I really wanted to get the boys out and off screens but it was just too hot and sunny really.  They were pretty much on screens for the entire day.  Leo and Oscar did go in the pool for a bit though.

I went out for a walk with the lovely Sooz and it was great to catch up.  We usually stand rugby pitch side having a good laugh but come September, Oscar will be moving clubs so we won't get to spend so much time together which is a bit sad.  We plan on doing more walks/pub visits in the future.

Ellis cooked yet another lovely meal for him and his Dad and he's already starting to do it completely on his own.  He is doing another one as I type this and needs very little intervention now which is great!

My flowers from Leanne are looking lovely, I've never had Gladioli before but I think I might get some again.

In the evening my lovely Saskia came over for some drinkies in the garden on my new furniture which I love!   I'm always so busy chatting about stuff that I forget to take a picture of us.  We were outside chatting until gone 10:30pm as it was still quite pleasant.  I had to wrap up in a blanket but it was still lush.

I went to bed with my laptop to try and watch some more of The Fall but my eyes kept closing so will have to have another go at that.

Where they to? 8th August Toronto

Waking up in an air-conditioned room in a comfy, clean bed wrapped in sumptuous sheets followed by a mug of tea and 2 slices of toast. Is there a better way to start the day? I think not.

I walked outside to find Mush lost in her Harry Potter book, lazing on a lounger, in a shady spot under some trees at the end of the garden. The views from here don't get any less wondrous. The branches of the trees on either side of the garden reach above your heads as you look towards the cliff edge forming an organic frame which creates the impression that you are watching an animated oil-painting. The occasional sailboat or flock of Canadian Geese flying in V formation occasionally washes through the painting before a peaceful calm returns. We could get used to this.

We spent most of the afternoon lounging about, Mush reading, snoozing and petting the dogs, me catching up on the news back in England and working on our diary. Not wanting to get too comfortable and give our hosts the impression that they had just found themselves 2 new permanent residents, we decided to head for Toronto's signature landmark, the CN Tower.

We still relied on our new surrogate parents to drive us to Downtown which was handy as, although you can see the CN Tower from just down the main road from here, you are still actually about eleventy six miles away from it. A brief stop at the Greyhound station to buy our tickets for Montreal which are cheaper if you buy them in advance, and we were on our way.

The tower holds a number of records including, most importantly, that of the world's highest public observation deck. Put another way, there is no other fixed, man-made place on the planet where you can stand and take in the views that is as high as this. Well, I say fixed, it actually has an arse-clenching sway of over 3 ft at the top.

There are, essentially, 2 observation decks. The first is at a mere 1,122ft up. The big attraction here is the glass floor. Fortunately, I wasn't wearing my kilt today otherwise they'd have been charging entry fees to the pavement below, too. However confident you may be, the first step onto the glass is still a little unnerving. However, within seconds we were confident enough to be jumping up and down and stamping to test the strength of the glass. With hindsight, I'm not sure what course of action we were intent on taking had the glass not passed the test. "Excuse me, Sir, your glass isn't SPLAT!", perhaps. Or maybe "My husband was trying his hardest to break your tower and, funnily enough, he was successful. Any chance of a refund?"

Here's a picture of us standing on the glass floor. And, don't even think about mocking my sandals. They have magnetic clasps, I'll have you know.

We'd been advised by our guide book that it wasn't worth paying the extra to go to the higher observation deck as you just saw pretty much the same stuff from higher up. It sounded sensible when I read it but when we arrived, it kind of seemed to defeat the object. "I know. I'll travel 3,000 miles to the highest observation deck in the world and save £2.60 by only going part of the way up. That'll teach them." Surely the purpose of going up a stupefyingly high tower is to go as high as you can, not to save a fiver between you because you are only a bit higher up.

So, we got into our second lift. This one didn't have a glass front and nor did it jiggle like the first lift, which climbs at a rate of 15MPH. Seeing the ground vanish from beneath you at 15MPH turns your stomach somewhat, the first time you do it. Our ears needed popping almost immediately and I reckon we were halfway into our 58 second ascent before I realised that my body had temporarily lost the voluntary reflex that tells it to breathe. I sent a quick signal to my lungs to tell them to bloody well hurry up and start working as I didn't intend holding my breath until I was back on Terra Firma again.  Fortunately they did as they were told.

The second lift was much smaller and opened up into a small, cylindrical room. Stepping outside onto the observation deck, we immediately agreed that whoever wrote the book was clearly just a chicken as the extra 343ft makes a world of difference. The queues to get in the lifts, both up and down, are quite long so, by the time we reached the top, the sun had set. Just what we wanted to try to get some decent photos.

The Toronto Blue Jays Rounders team plays in the stadium right next to the tower and the view into the bowl, the first in the world to have a retractable roof, made us realise how high up we were. The players just looked like little aunts. Actually, I've always wondered what that phrase means. My aunts were all about 5"9'.

I took my GPS device with me to prove that we'd been up to the top but I was having trouble getting a signal. After 5 minutes of placing my gadget, which I've now realised must resemble some kind of detonator, in different windows, I asked the man in the radio control room in the core of the tower which side of the deck he thought I'd get the best signal from. He replied by explaining to me that above our heads were some heavy-duty radio transmitters and that I had no chance of getting a signal through the interference. Well, that isn't exactly what he said. His actual words were that "trying to get a GPS signal through the RF transmissions above us is like trying to piss through a waterfall." I'll be sure to try that at Niagara in a fortnight's time to try to figure out exactly what he means.

----------