New York III

The next day we left Quebec pretty early in the morning because we wanted to get all the way down to Toronto, which covers a distance of approximately 800 km. As we just had short stops in between it didn’t take too long to get to the largest city in Canada whit a population of more than 2.5 million. After a seven hour ride we arrived at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto. Again the hotel was great, with a beautiful lobby and friendly and helpful staff. However, the rooms at Westin in Montreal were better. The weather was great and we had warm 25 degrees which were much more than the 8 degrees in the morning in Quebec. Besides, Toronto is one of the world's most diverse cities by percentage of non-native-born residents, as about 49% of the population were born outside of Canada. And indeed, the folks on the streets were really cosmopolitan and international. And that's cool.

We had a short rest at the hotel, then went out and were just amazed by all the skyscrapers. We walked all the way down the Yonge Street to the CN Tower. In between we stopped now and then for photos and went to see the Allen Lambert Galleria, a 6 storey pedestrian avenue designed by Santiago Calatrava. The CN Tower with a hight of 553m was the highest construction built by men for more than 30 years. Now only the Burj Dubai is taller (actually way higher with 819m. Crazy. The Empire State Building in New York which is 381m tall, was built in 1931 and held the title of the worlds highest building until 1974. And now we are at 819m. Crazy!) We took the elevater to the observation deck on 346 meters and enjoyed the sunset on Lake Ontario. Everything has other dimensions here. This lake has half the size of Switzerland. Even on 346m you can't see the end of the lake and you inevitably think it must be the sea. Besides, on the observation deck you can stand on a glass floor, where you can see down on the ground. Cars seem like ants and people are just tiny points moving so slowly.