Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Toronto Tourist

In Toronto I walked around fairly aimlessly.  I picked a restaurant or a neighborhood and just set out.  I didn’t do any of the touristy stuff like go up in the CN Tower or take the ferry to the islands.  I just walked and ate basically.

On the way to the Distillery historic district I popped into the St. Lawrence Market – it was Sunday and it was the  “Sunday antique market.”  In perusing the items (see the three photos below), I didn’t find much that appealed to me but it was fun to look at everything. 

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This is the first time I saw a carving made out of deer antlers – I didn’t buy it.

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One of my favorite parts of Toronto was the transit!  They have streetcar and subway!

The streetcar was fun, extensive, and fascinating.  As you can see from the photo below, there are shelters/stops but because the streetcar runs in the center of the street customers have to mosey out into the travel lane to get on it.  I don’t know that such a “hazardous” boarding method would be allowed in the US. 

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Here’s what it looked like inside the streetcar:

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Extensive! Below is a mix of subway and streetcar but, of the 15 lines shown below 11 are streetcar! It went almost everywhere I wanted to go. 

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Here’s a photo of the streetcar in traffic.  You can also see that they have lots of the Vancouver-like glass house development in the background along the lake.

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I did take the subway too and enjoyed their version of the “mind the gap” sign:

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Toronto also has bike share!  They have the Bixi system but it’s very similar to the Bcycle in Denver.  I didn’t get a chance to ride it but was happy to see it there and saw quite a few people riding it.

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Speaking of bikes, there were these bikes all over town that were locked to signs and completely painted (various colors).  It turns out there is a story. Two artists did this to some abandoned bikes but were initially ticketed! The Mayor pardoned them and commissioned art in this form around the city.

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Another thing I saw were these plants with imploring messages stationed on top of bike racks near Union Station.

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To continue the non-motorized transit nerdiness, the pedestrian signal was a more laid back figure than we have in the states:

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Oh, the Canadians…stay tuned for more on Toronto!

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