CANADA - Toronto - Catching up with an old friend

I've made it over to Canada and am in Toronto. Now I know that quite a few of the people reading this have a "never go back" policy, once you visit a place, that's it, done, ticked, there is a whole world out there to explore so you never return.  I'm not one of those, yes there is a whole world out there, yes somewhere is never the same second time round but I have a few places that I like going back to and Toronto is one of them. Once you have been somewhere more than twice you get to know it better and I think explore it in a completely different way. On this trip it has been a bit of a culture shock moving from Reykjavik to the bright lights and tall buildings of the big city so I am actually glad that a few days in Toronto is letting me acclimatise before New York which is going to be all new.

First some important info - if you are travelling to Toronto by air, Pearson airport now has a dedicated rail link to Union station which opened a couple of years ago. It's very comfortable and accepts Presto cards (the Toronto equivalent of London's Oyster).

So what have I been up to over the last few days? Yesterday I just wandered around the centre of the city and along the waterfront. I did a bit of shopping, taking advantage of being somewhere with reasonable pricing. They also have streetcars here so I went for a ride on one of those as well.

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Today I took a trip on the GO. GO (Government of Ontario) Transit operate the suburban trains in the Greater Toronto region using a fleet of VERY large double deck trains that are also very comfortable inside. 

This view looks as if I am at the coast but it is actually the view from Rouge Hill station looking out across Lake Ontario.

I got the train to Rouge Hill so that I could do some walking along the Great Lakes Waterfront Trail. There was a bit of wind today, but I was surprised as to just how much surf there was with the waves from the lake crashing against the shore.

These cliffs are the Scarborough Bluffs (There is a Scarborough and a Pickering near Toronto and the original settlement where the city now stands was called York - So I guess the first settlers must have been - Northern!). The bluffs are highly unstable and eroding rapidly so access is heavily restricted.

This evening I walked along the Eastern Beaches - yes Lake Ontario has sandy beaches as well as waves - and a local, seeing me taking pictures, told me that last spring the lake reached it's highest level for 20 years and there was some flooding.