November 2024
The first destination on my winter trip 2024/25 is Toronto, the capital of the Canadian province of Ontario and the most populous city in Canada, located on Lake Ontario.
I spent five days in this city, which gave me enough time to visit the most important sights.
Table of Contents
CN Tower
The 553-metre-high CN Tower is the city’s landmark and can be seen from far and wide due to its height. It was the tallest building in the world from its construction in 1975 until 2007.
View from the main viewing platform
‘The Top’ viewing platform
33 floors higher, there is another viewing platform, but the individual windows are much smaller and the view is more restricted. In my opinion, this additional ticket is therefore not worthwhile.
Fall in Toronto
Boat trip along the skyline
Ward’s Island
There are a few islands off the coast of Toronto that can be visited by regular ferry.
View from the ferry
View of Toronto from Ward’s Island
The CN Tower is also impressive at night!
Restaurant Yukashi Japanese Cuisine
I wanted to visit a gourmet restaurant in Toronto, too. My choice fell on this Japanese restaurant. Chef Daisuke Izutsu cooks for a maximum of 10 people at a bar and prepares the dishes in front of the guests. He has also cooked for the Japanese imperial family several times.
The visit to his restaurant was impressive. I experienced a new dimension of Japanese cuisine, which was celebrated here at the very highest level. Another experience was the sake pairing with the 9-course menu. I had the opportunity to taste various excellent sakes and a Japanese whisly. I told the chef at the end that I now had a problem, because from now on every visit to a Japanese restaurant would be disappointing.
Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls is just 136 km (2 hours by car) from Toronto. I booked a day tour.
First, we visited a maple syrup store where we could try different intensities of maple syrup.
After a few kilometers we reached the Niagara Falls. There are two falls. On the left of the picture you can see the American waterfall. It is located entirely on US territory. You can find the much more impressive Horseshoe Falls, which are mostly in Canada, in the back of the picture.
I booked a boat tour. All passengers were given a rain tippet. Soon the reason was clear. The boat came so close to the waterfalls that the passengers got dripping wet from the spray. This allowed us to experience the falls with all our senses.
The American falls
Horseshoe falls
Here we got really wet!
Journey behind the falls
I booked another attraction that allowed visitors to get behind the falls via a tunnel.
In a shaft, visitors could watch the falling water from the rock …
… and reach a platform from which the falling masses of water could be observed from close up. The above shaft was on the right-hand side of the rock face in the picture.
Finally, I saw the Horseshoe Falls right at the edge of the precipice.
Casa Loma
Another attraction is a neo-Gothic castle that the Canadian financier Sir Henry Pellatt had built for his family from 1911 to 1914. It was the largest private house in Canada and the first with electric light in Toronto. Due to financial difficulties following the First World War, the owner had to leave and sell the castle in 1923. It then became a luxury hotel for a short time before becoming state property. During the Second World War, it served as a secret military research laboratory. Now it is a museum.
The bedroom of Sir Henry Pellatt
One of the many luxuriously furnished rooms
Royal Ontario Museum (ROM)
This museum is the largest and most visited museum in Canada. The collection includes art, world culture and natural history. I spent several hours exploring the exhibition. Attached are photos of some of the exhibits.
Several totem poles are on display on the ground floor. At 24.5 meters long, they extend over several floors of the museum. They were used by certain indigenous tribes to worship their ancestors.
A Chinese military official from the tombs of the Zu family in Beijing, before 1656
Big Maple Leaf: In 2007, the Royal Canadian Mint minted five 1 million dollar gold coins, each weighing 100 kg. This made them the world’s largest gold coins and, with a purity of 99.999%, also the purest. It lost its title as the world’s largest gold coin in 2011 when the Australian Perth Mint minted a 1-ton gold coin.
In 2017, one of the five 100-kg gold coins was stolen from the Bode Museum in Berlin and has not been recovered since, although the thieves have been caught and are serving their sentences. Based on circumstantial evidence, the police assume that the coin was melted down.
The museum has an excellent collection of minerals. This rhodochrosite, reminiscent of a ham, caught my eye.
This impressive stone is a 573.03 carat topaz.
The ‘Natural history’ section
These trilobites lived on the seabed around 500 million years ago.
Art Gallery of Ontario
This art museum is the 2nd largest museum in Toronto after the Royal Ontario Museum. Its collection comprises 120,000 works.
One exhibition room
A mermaid caught in a fishing net
The artist Lawren Harris (1885-1970) is famous for capturing the atmosphere of the Canadian North.
After a warmer than expected stay in Toronto, I traveled on to Santiago de Chile.
This text is an automatic English translation from the German original by deepl.com