My working holiday - T the place

For my regular readers, you know I went last week for 5 days to Toronto for a conference. For those who are willing to sacrifice sleep for the experience, there was ample time to explore the city outside of work time. I wasn't sure how to tackle the wealth of experiences I had for this blog so I am chunking it up, to the pleasure of some and the dismay of others I am sure :-)


I had never been to Toronto before so it was definitely a different experience for me. For a girl from the prairies, it was a head tilting, eye raising experience. Now bear in mind I am not in the extreme south prairies where it IS flat with zero trees. In the midland prairies there are rolling hills...there are trees, lovely ones in fact. One of my favourite views is the canola fields as they are so rich in colour. Sadly we were about 2 - 3 weeks too late for the maximum effect from the sky. We have few (no) tall building in the prairie towns save for the required grain elevators :-)

Now in the city, IT goes on for miles, and miles. I am sure that much of what I saw from the air was extending into the outlying suburbs as the city grows and expands. It still was pretty overwhelming. And beautiful in it's own way. There was a whole lot of gawking as we drove from the airport to downtown to our hotel. I can see how it takes preplanning and early departures in order to get from one place to another. I could just see the fuel/transportation costs going up in my 'if I lived in the city' imaginary budget. I am so used to it taking fewer than 15 minutes to get to the farthest place I'd want to be around here LOL

The buildings were pretty impressive. A myriad of old stone mixed with new sleeker stone or glass buildings. It was hard to imagine that many people inhabiting so many office buildings and condos. What got me was that those lights stay on alllll day and alll night, even weekends. What a horrid waste of power. I've seen several studies including Mythbusters, which show that for longer periods of time it is NOT cost efficient to leave them on. Still it gave me a voyeur peek into several different buildings from my hotel.

The pace of life and number of people was quite a shock too. It was hard to 'stroll' and see what you were walking by without being caught up in the flow of those who were walking with a mission and timeline.

I have to say that despite the fact that the garbage strike was over there, the amounts of trash bags outside of buildings was amazing. It certainly didn't enhance the smells, which were far from fresh. As you walked you caught whiffs of the trash bags, or the aroma coming up from the vents in the sidewalks, or from some of the people themselves.

I was overwhelmed by the humidity. Having it at 42C with the humidex and 100% humidity with no rain was staggering for this dry heat prairie girl. My clothes stuck to me in most unpleasant ways and I was sure everyone passing by could see it LOL. I was frequently wiping my forehead off or defogging the insides of my sunglasses.

It was definitely a fun place to visit and see and I am so glad I went.

~~ coming soon: T - the people~~