the magic roundabout

Paula and I have just returned from a memorable trip to Toronto. The reason for the trip had been to attend the wedding celebrations of Paula’s brother’s daughter, but we decided to extend our stay so that we could also fit in some sightseeing. Paula had mentioned visiting a tower in the city centre on our first day, but I didn’t really think about it, even when I heard Paula’s nephew Eugene booking a table for lunch in the tower’s restaurant.

However, as we approached the city centre, the penny finally dropped. The CN Tower is unmistakeable:

And it is obvious where the tower’s restaurant is located.

We were early, so we took a short walk around the immediate area. Directly across the street from the tower is what would once have been a railway locomotive depot in the form of a roundhouse, where spur lines radiate out in all directions from a central turntable. It now appears to be a kind of railway museum, and I took the next two photos here:

And then it was time for lunch. Although our table was next to the window, and I was sitting nearest to the window, it took me several minutes to notice that we were actually moving relative to the outside world. From that point, I stood up every five–ten minutes to take a photo of the ground below:

The water in the distance in the first two photos is Lake Ontario, one of North America’s five Great Lakes. Incidentally, one rotation of the restaurant took about 75 minutes.

After lunch, we took a ferry to Centre Island, the largest of a group of islands off the city’s waterfront that are known collectively as the Toronto Islands. Although ferries are frequent, they do appear to be always crowded. I took this photo from the ferry as we crossed to the island:

The terrain of Centre Island can best be described as parkland:

We saw quite a lot of wild geese on the island, including this small gaggle:

Smaller islands are connected to the main island by bridges:

I took the previous photo, and also the next photo, while waiting in the long queue for the ferry back to the city:

And that was our first day in Toronto. We went to Niagara Falls the following day.