Home from Toronto

Our three days in Toronto were pretty enjoyable (if you forget about the damage to my Tundra).

The temperatures climbed from 1 or 2 degrees F when we left on Thursday to over 45 degrees F when we got back at 2 PM this afternoon.

We had some excellent food at three different restaurants and the St. Lawrence Market.

The hotel, the Novotel Toronto Centre was clean, quiet and centrally located on the border between the entertainment and Old Town sections of Toronto.

Thousands of RU fans owned Toronto. (The number 8,000 was thrown around but the real number may have been closer to 12,000. I spoke to several folks who made a weekend trip out of attending the game. They drove up early Saturday and stayed overnight, with plans to return home on Sunday.)

Rutgers beat the cr*p out of Ball State, 52-30.

Ray Rice ran and ran and ran for 280 yards and four touchdowns.

Mike Teel threw for three touchdowns.

Jeremy Ito kicked a field goal of 53 yards. (Ya gotta love kicking indoors!)

Perhaps because the city of Toronto seems to have some major construction projects going on and our trip corresponded to an early January thaw so the slush and ice still on the streets was ‘well used,” the outside areas we saw looked like hell. It wasn’t the clean city I’ve come to appreciate in Ottawa. Still there were some lovely scenes.

I mentioned the “new structure” that housed the Hockey Hall of Fame and the old bank that held the Stanley Cup. Well, from the outside, the “new” is difficult to see. Here is the outside of the bank building.(it’s not the entrance, however. That’s in the little alcove to the left of the bank building.)



Looking to the east from the intersection of Yonge and Front Streets is an older brick building on which a most realistic mural has been painted.



It’s difficult to tell which windows are real and which are painted on the brick wall.

Look west down Front Street and there’s the CN Tower, the world’s tallest free standing structure. It’s located on the northeast corner of Rogers Centre.



(Yes, there are elevators to the top, and a restaurant too. No we didn’t go up.)

Toronto has over 25 miles of underground or enclosed walkways called the PATH (although sections well above ground are called the Skywalk) with access to above ground buildings, the subway and, of course shops and food courts. We walked only the section from Union Station and the CN Tower and Rogers Centre.
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