twoplustwoequalsblog

Today Ellen and I went into downtown Toronto by taking the bus to a streetcar to downtownish. We proceeded to walk around and look at malls and fancy buildings. Then we went to the CN Tower, which we learned cost $22 to go up. It’s the tallest tower in the world (or so they claim), and we decided to not only pay them $22, but raise the ante $38 and also purchase Hockey Hall of Fame, Casa Loma, Toronto Zoo, Ontario Science Museum, and some art museum tickets, all at once.

The CN Tower is tall, walking over a glass floor makes you extra careful not to fall, and being able to see far is neat. It was originally going to be built solely to broadcast radio and TV, and then they were like “gee, why don’t we add an observation deck?” This brilliant decision makes them tens of millions of dollars a year, which helps offset the $300m price tag (today’s dollars (Canadian)) on the original tower.
I am fascinated that in Toronto, it is possible to successfully run a business (dozens of them, in fact) doing nothing but exchanging currencies. The USD to CAD exchange rate is pretty poor right now (1:1 at the hotel; 1:1.1 at the TTC; 1:1.2 at an exchange store), so Ellen and I stocked up on cash at an ATM. I have no idea how much this costs, and no idea how much charging stuff in Canada costs. I hope there is no surcharge. But seriously, it seems completely counterintuitive that enough money gets exchanged to make a bit by cutting your exchange rate. Weird.

Also, Toronto’s public transportation is weird. This morning, we took a bus ($2.75 each) to a streetcar ($2.75 each) to downtownish. A bus is a bus. The streetcar closely resembles the Green Line as it goes through streets. Then to get home we took a GO Train ($3.75 each) to the bus ($2.75 each), realized we had gone too far on the GO Train /and/ our bus was going the wrong way. We: got on the bus the other way to the bus/subway/GO Train terminal, waited for a bus that didn’t come till 10:30pm, waited for the right bus, got on that bus, and got back to the hotel. The GO Train is the Commuter Rail.

The public transportation authority in Toronto is the TTC, or Toronto Transportation Consortium Commission. They have the worst logo ever, and use it to mark subway stops. This makes subway stops very difficult to find at a glance, and usually the word “subway” is more recognizable than the TTC’s awful logo. The T logo is simple and looks like a map legend. The TTC logo looks like it should be above a old fashioned pub. Weird.

Also, I didn’t know that Canada had a state sanctioned alcohol monopoly. The only two stores that can sell alcohol are (aptly) “The Beer Store,” and the “LCBO” (Liquor Control Board of Ontario). Restaurants proudly and boldly display “LLBO” to indicated that they are licensed to sell alcohol. Weird.