Toronto – Ploughing a lonely furrow

Finally I reached Toronto this morning at 6:00. My tryst with Air Canada is over. I’ll try my best never to fly Air Canada again. I immediately checked with Air India on my flight this evening and got to know that the flight is delayed to 2:25 AM on Monday morning. Phew ! At least I got some time to go around Toronto. Took a cab from the airport and checked in at Deluxe Inn. I was taken care of by a desi cab driver and then a desi hotel receptionist. I see too many desis in Canada (some in really deplorable conditions) and I could clearly sense that each one is longing to be in India. I can see their eyes sparkle when I ask them the very obvious question “Are you from India?” Checked for a tours to Niagara, but the bitter cold plus the Sunday meant that there were no trips. So took a longish nap till 2:00 and took the Toronto subway to get to the “Union” station at downtown. The subway system is very similar to the one in Singapore. Here there is an east-west line and a U-line from mid-north west to down south and all the way up to mid-north east.

A forty-five minute journey split across two trains made me realize the size of Toronto and I reached downtown. This is a typical downtown, the familiar glass-plated concrete jungle, if you will. It was not very difficult to spot CN tower, the very purpose of my visit. With a $26 entrance fee I could go up to the second level observatory. The only other buildings of this scale I have visited were the Sears Tower and the John. F. Hancock towers in Chicago. A 44 sec trip on the elevator took me to the first level observatory which is around 346 metres. The view of the Ontario Lake was simply superb. I just got reminded of Chicago because the Michigan Lake view from Sears tower is almost very similar to this one. Looking at the ground from the glass floor section was quite a scary thing. After getting an extreme picture here, I went up the second level observatory (447 m) which is rightly called the top of the world. I have decided to add a few other high rises to my to-see list are

i) The Ostankino Tower, Moscow
ii) Petronas Towers, Malaysia
iii) Empire State Building, New York
iv) Taipei 101 Tower, Taipei

Back in the airport the 2:25 AM flight is now pushed to 6:30 AM. What a journey this is turning out to be. God please save me !!!