Phileas Fogg and Family: Onto Toronto

Despite our next stop being an urban one, and intending no slight upon the city’s own sights, our abiding memory of our stop in Toronto will definitely be Niagara Falls, nestled between two of the Great Lakes and forming part of the Canadian-American border. We decided to be a bit flash and take a helicopter flight over the falls and although we had heard that this was the best way to see them, we had no idea just how exhilarating the experience, or how utterly unparalleled the views, would actually be.

We shot up into the air from the helipad, soared over the Niagara river and whirlpool and swept around over the iconic Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side and the lesser American Falls before heading back to the pad. Returning to stable ground for a while, we next took a stroll through the tunnels that have been dug so you can see the water crashing down in the falls from behind, and then donned some blue, translucent, plastic hooded

(I don’t think I need to go on – safe to say they weren’t the most stylish things in the world) ponchos to take the Maid of the Mist boat ride right into the spray at the foot of the falls.

The next day, not to neglect the city itself, we travelled up the landmark

(though no longer tallest in the world) CN Tower in its high-speed lifts right up to its tallest accessible point – the aptly named Skypod. On the main level, about 40 floors down from the pod but still vertigo-inducingly high, we took a few deep breaths and walked gingerly across the glass floor with its unbroken vertical view – over 1,000 feet straight down!

From high-rise to low-tech, we also visited Toronto’s first post office (amazingly still functioning and fully restored to its early-1800s form) to write a letter with a real feather quill pen and dipping ink and seal it with wax.

During our busy day of sightseeing we also took in the lovely university campus, a few of the old stone churches, a gallery of Inuit art tucked away in the foyer of the office-filled Dominion Centre, as well as the sights of central Downtown along Yonge St.