CN Tower

After arriving back on the dock, I made my way up through the maze of roadworks on Front St to the bottom of the CN Tower. As I had a reservation for the 360 Restaurant in the tower, I had a free ride up the tower.

Even better, I was taken right to the front of the queue past an awfully long line of people who had just bought tickets and invited to take the first available lift with another couple who were also heading to the restaurant. The journey is quick, taking you up in under a minute, and the ride is smooth - you even get a brief commentary from the person who pushes the buttons.

This is the view from the East elevator, looking out over Union Station and Lake Ontario, from about half way up.

As I was waiting, I overheard the couple being told to go down one level to the observation deck until 6.30pm when their table would be ready (it was 5.45pm), and I thought I was going to be told the same, but no - it's just that's when their reservation was for and mine was for 5.45pm so I was taken straight in to my table in section 5, with Paul as my server.

There are three rings of tables: one of tables for 2 or 4 next to the window; one of tables for 1 or 2 just next to the first; and then booths that were slightly raised, slightly further towards the middle, next to the join between the stationary part and the rotating part. The view is good from any seat. Although I was in the middle ring, Paul took my photo with me sitting on an outside table, with the city airport on the island in the background.

It takes about 70 minutes for one complete rotation, so I was able to see in all directions during the course of my dinner. Everything in the restaurant was fairly expensive, including the CA$47 steak that I had (and that was just the steak itself - each side dish $9 extra, of course), but it was beautifully cooked. However, the total was less than $100 in the end, which surprised me. Plus, it also paid for my trip up the tower (and bypassed those long queues!) and that costs $32 on its own.

After dinner, I explored the other two levels of the main pod on the power: the observation level and the glass floor and balcony level. As it was rapidly getting dark, I decided not to pay extra to go up to the Sky Pod on this visit, as I didn't think I'd see as much from up there. The glass floor level lets you look straight down to the ground. The aquarium is opening later this month, having missed the summer season due to delays, but they found a good place to put an advert for it!

There's only a small bit of glass floor - I has expected it to go all the way around, but no. Also on that level, you can go outside and have a look out through the metal grilles. This is also the level that has all the lights positioned around it that illuminate the tower. Each one of the tiny rectangles contains groups of very bright red, green and blue spots which can therefore make any colour they want. It usually cycles automatically through different colour schemes. You can see it doing purple, blue and green in these photos.

Although it's quite a narrow structure, whilst it did get quite windy out on the balcony on the side from which the wind is blowing, it was calm around the other side - and you could go back indoors to warm up again, as in the wind it could be quite chilly. As I was walking around, I bumped into the Nathan & Amy - the couple from Ipswich who were on the same Niagara Falls trip on Sunday!

There are two observation levels - the one with the balcony and one that's completely indoors. I spent quite a long time looking out from both floors over Toronto and over to the state of New York. I couldn't quite pick out Niagara, although I knew which general direction it was in.

When I looked at the weather forecast earlier in the week, I was worried that I wasn't going to be able to see anything at all, so I was lucky the that clouds had cleared throughout the afternoon and the next lot hadn't yet arrived, although you can see them in the distance in some of the photos.

After a couple of hours reading the story of the tower, and taking in the views in all directions, I decided to return to the hotel to pack for tomorrow. I've really enjoyed Toronto - there's lots to do here, and I would like to come here again to see the island properly and go up to the Sky Pod in the CN Tower, if I can pick a nice day for it.