My first impression of Canadian service staff is how enthusiastic and helpful they are, and this was further enhanced by how the ViaRail porter, assigned to help me off the Montreal train with my luggage saw how much of it there was – more on this in a future post – and coolly took it over the road to the Royal York Hotel for me. I mean, it is just over the road and it’s all on wheels but he just did it and vanished as I reached in my handbag for a substantial tip. I’m sure I must have looked like a poor little old lady, exhausted and a bit breathless. More on this is a different other post.

Arriving from Niagara a couple of days later, then, I paid my first visit to the gym in over a week – quel horreur – and then hurriedly got ready to meet Claire for a drink in the Royal York bar and the dinner. Now, I find these days that more that having more than two alcoholic  drinks gives me a hangover. Yet the headache the following morning was more than worth it for the convivial evening spent talking about everything and anything. Twitter friends you’ve known and liked for years before meeting them are unlikely to turn suddenly into awful people, in my view. It was a lot of fun.

I’d pre-booked my CN Tower ticket, though there wasn’t much of a queue on this rainy Saturday morning. Completed in 1976, it now belongs to the World Federation of Great Towers. It takes about (aboot?) a minute for the elevator to reach the main viewing platform level, 346m metres above the ground. Though cloudy and starting to rain, the visibility over the city and then out over Lake Ontario was good. You walk around the viewing platform and you can have a snack in the cafe if you like.

For a little more money, you can then go up another 100m to the smaller Skypod, which is almost half a kilometre up in the air. As we all know, the CN Tower was the tallest freestanding structure in the world for many years I until the Burj Khalifa in Dubai surpassed it in 2007, in a terrestrial space race which I find a little tedious. I don’t know, I go up these places and see these views but without a huge amount of context or emotional investment in the city it’s just another impressive view to me.

I’d had a couple of recommendations for museums but unfortunately there were no slots available on that afternoon. Toronto was recently deemed one of the Covid safest cities in the world and just like in Quebec, everyone takes their share of responsibility in trying to limit the spread of the virus. Masks are worn properly rather than cavalierly slung under the nose or mouth, or pulled down as soon as anyone in authority turns away. We are required to sanitise our hands, show our proof of vaccination and our ID on entering any attraction and restaurant. It all makes one feel relatively safe from the Wild West mentality that has overtaken the UK, certainly.

I had a snacky lunch at the Amsterdam Brewery by the Harbourfront and then spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the harbour front and a couple of blocks around the calm, safe, reasonable city, where my favourite film – all right, Moonstruck –  was shot before deciding that the rain was too wet and sheltering in the Royal York. It was Saturday night and the loud, banging old-school dance mashups in the hotel light bite restaurant made an interesting juxtaposition with the old hotel founded almost 100 years ago. The lively contrast with the sedate, slightly prim nature of our surroundings – the hotel and Toronto itself – was quite pleasing.

Here are a few photos. I’d really like to return and spend more time just soaking up the atmosphere. Let’s hope it’s not too long before I do.