My end of the year post and also the new year post
This year it is going to be a bit different. I am going to pin down the experiences of my toronto trip. This one was special as this was treat I gave to myself for my “persistence” of 2007. :-). Lets get on with it.
The mission was to visit the important places in toronto in 24 hours. We have to start from London, 2 hours of drive away from Toronto.
The challenges
1. Filtering out places out of the variety of ones
2. Our Energy Levels
3. Money
The Crew
1. Himanshu
2. Nithy and
3. My Camera kit
4. Me
London is 191 Kms away from Toronto. As we are not yet ready to afford a car, and none of us have ontario state driving licenses, Greyhound was a only means of communication. We scheduled our departure on 03:20 am, December 31st 2007 and our arrival on Jan 1st 2008 01:00 am from Toronto.
Traveling in Toronto, might be very tricky if you are not aware of the sub-way aka the metro trains. They beautifully connect most of the important parts of the city and with a supporting bus and tram network, you can comfortably travel in Toronto.
We got ourselves a Toronto day visit pass worth 59 CAD, which allows us to travel to 6 important places in Toronto. We used the map provided by www.ttc.ca at the counter.
HarbourFront
06:15: Greyhound Terminal to Harbor Front [Union Station]
After sipping coffee from Tim Hortons at HarbourFront, we headed towards HarbourFront. None of us knew about what it was. I just read from the web that is is at the shore of Ontario lake and it will make a nice place to be for sunrise. I can tell you it did’nt disappoint us at all.
The place was beautiful and it turned gorgeous during sunrise. The boats, toys and playground for kids, the snow and of course the lake shore were all adding to the beauty.
Ontario Science Center
08:45: Union Station to Eglington. Eglington to Ontario Science Center [Route:34]
The walk to the Ontario Science center from the bus station was pretty nice. And not to mention, we all tried our modeling and photographic skills there.
Ontario Science center is ideal for kids, to help them generate enthusiasm in science. It had lot of toys kinda things along with some pretty cool exhibits.
I also watched the movie “HURRICANE ON THE BAYOU” in the imax theatre. That was an awesome experience. Anyone who haven’t watched a movie in imax theature i will highly recommend it. It is a mind-boggling experience. The movie in itself was good, on how life is changed by the Katrina disaster.
Royal Ontario Museum
12:45: Eglington Station to Museum Station
This must be one of the best modern architectures I have ever seen. Simply fantastic. I guess the big queue over here was really justified given the artifacts in this place. The queue kinda threw us out of our plan. But hey we had contingency plans to fit any unanticipated delays like this one :-).

Museum was huge. It had lot of interesting stuff. Dinosaur skeletons, World Culture and History galleries and so much more. We had too little time to do a detailed visit. We just skimmed through the things.
CASOLOMA
03:30: Museum Station to Dupont Station
We were running 30 minutes late by this time. The long walk from Dupont to Casoloma didnt help at all. But hey, the castle was really big. It was under reconstruction, so we were not able to visit all the rooms. After taking few pics there, we headed right to the most anticipated place, Gerrald Street aka Little India :).
Little India
05:30: DUPont to St. George -> transfer to green line east -> Donlands -> 83 to Gerrald Street
We got the wrong bus to this place. We had to walk for around 20 minutes to reach the actual place. Have to say, we were disappointed when we got down here. I was expecting something like, Little India in Singapore. However, it had the Indian restaurants we were looking for. So no complaints, none at all :). I had some tasty dinner in an Udupi restaurant. Wow the south indian coffee….!!!!
CN Tower ~ At the top of the world
07:00: Route 506[West] to College Station -> Union Station
The walk from Union station to the CN tower was amazing. We were virtually walking for 2 or 3 kilometers in a heated tunnel kinda infrastructure. It was so cool.
CN tower should be the place of our trip. It is the current highest building in the world. Dubai is building a tower higher than this. It has a visibility range of 169 KMS and in a clear day, it seems that even niagara will be visible. This is pretty incredible.
The glass floor, sky pod everything over there was quite exceptional. After spending some time there we headed to the Nathan Philips Square
Nathan Philips Square
20 Minutes Walk from CN Tower
We were in for a surprise at Nathan Phillips square. We never knew that it is going to be that big. There were around 40,000 people according to the City news report. We went there just to witness the fireworks. After going there came to know that, there is this concert. Wow the atmosphere was really electrifying. I heard the song “Hey There Delilah” for the first time. Beautiful song. Took a lot of snaps both using SLR and my mobile camera.

Overall a pretty happening trip. An amazing finish to an amazing year.
Btw, happy new year to you all.