July 25, 2017 -- along the Toronto waterfront

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Our hotel room was really small.  No table.  The nightstand between the beds had a pull-out shelf, which was a poor substitute for a breakfast table.

Food packaging in Canada is English on one side and French on the other.  This is the French side of the Cheerios box.

July 25, 2017, was a "playing bridge" kind of day.  I wandered off to be a tourist.  Heading east from the hotel, thinking about a place that's a bit like the old train station in Philadelphia -- part farmers' market, part prepared food, part souvenirs.....

There is A LOT of construction in Toronto.  They are building very tall buildings everywhere.  Totally spoils the ambience, in my view.  I'd rather have little quirky buildings like the red one with the turquoise hat than all of those super tall ones...........

I found the market sort of place.  One vendor promised "spinach pie bagels."  This was not like bagel dough (nor like phyllo).  It wasn't inedible.....  Taralli in the background!  They are sort of crackery in texture, made with olive oil.  Loved them in Italy.....

The walk toward the lake is not all that pleasant.  One must get past many lanes of expressway, and many train tracks.  (You can imagine how much trash there is under these bridges, and you'd be right if you said it was a mess.  I picked up a lot of trash in Toronto................)

The waterfront is weird.  It is partly working waterfront, with rusty old ships being unloaded.  And it is partly vacation-y little umbrellas to sit under (as you can see in the lower left corner of the next image).

Turning around 180 from the prev -- too many too-tall buildings.  And a bike path that is removed from the cars.  Many of the bikes are going really fast.  Pedestrians must beware when crossing the bike path.....

Cargo ship.

Something being unloaded from the cargo ship.  I think maybe it was grain.  It was picked up by this double scooper thing, shifted, and dumped.  It flowed from the scoop as grain might....

Closer.

Looking south toward the islands that are between Toronto and a view of Lake Ontario.  Ferries go over there.  There are parks and other touristy things on the islands.  Beaches.  I took our daughter out there the first time we visited Toronto when she was four.

I planned to go out, but was told the ferries were not running, "because of the flooding."  Flooding?  Hmm.  Who knew.  Ok, well, nevermind.

Then I was told that the tourist things on the islands were closed, but the ferry that ran to the island where people actually live was still running.  I could go there, and walk through to a beach.  All right.  But I decided not to do that on the 25th.

Palm trees?

Walking along the waterfront.  You can't walk in a straight line.  There are some walkways right next to the water, but then you have to walk inland hundreds of feet to accommodate a big ship that has come in to unload.  Then you walk out toward the lake, hundreds of feet, and walk along the lake again.

In the next image we are looking across one of the deep cut-outs which allow big ships to come in and dock.

Closer crop of the bottom left of the above.  This looks like something out of my old computer game -- Riven.  Big concrete? sphere.....

At one point along the waterfront there was a long boardwalk.  It was very wet.  That flooding I heard about, I guess....  I wondered whether I wanted to walk on it.  (There was another path, up a few steps, that paralleled the boardwalk, out of the image to the left, so one could walk along there instead.)

The water wasn't very deep.  But the boardwalk was long, and you could only get on/off it at the ends and in the middle.  I decided to take the higher path.

The water, rolling over the boardwalk.

The standing water over the boardwalk really wasn't very deep.  But.  Here's a closer crop of the above.  Note water spurting up *between* the boards!  That water goes up well over a foot.  I saw some people who had decided to brave the boardwalk, and they were soaked.  I was glad I'd decided to skip the boardwalk...........

Another shot that shows the water spurting up between the boards.......

Wasn't it nice of that photogenic bird to keep wading along?



And someone else, too.............

Looking out toward the islands again.

The mysterious concrete sphere.

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