Visiting Northamerica Part 1 - Toronto

Hey guys,

I'm back from my conference and my holidays in the US and I can't wait to tell you what I've experienced abroad.

After landing on North American ground I still couldn't believe that everything was real. I was totally excited to get to know the people and the lifestyle of another continent, to experience how it feels having jetlag, how it feels to pay with another currency... all these things that many of you might have experienced before. But for me everything was totally new.

Not to forget, to all this excitement, there was the thing that I had to give a talk about my work at a huge conference. Luckily, my boyfriend could take holidays too and he went with me  - so, here we go!

At the second evening we had dinner at the famous CN tower. 

The famous CN tower at day and at night.

Honestly, it was a quite expensive dinner but it's definitely worth the money. When will you have dinner a second time in a 553m high tower? It was very interesting there because every minute you had another view out of the window. Dinner started around 7.30 pm so we had the chance to see Toronto in the twilight and at night from top of the tower.

The view out of the windows of the CN tower while having dinner.

Here, I show you the menu, one of the starters, my main menu (fillet of pork with vegetables) and one of the desserts (rharbarber crumble with strawberry icecream).

The menu and the dinner at the CN tower.

After dinner we got outside on a platform to have another perspective of Toronto. The tower glows at night and changes the colour of the light - like the pictures below show you. :-)

 One highlight for me was visiting the Islands.

A guide of the Islands.

The Islands are a huge park where you can have a promenade, make a bike tour, having fun rides, making a picknick - just chilling and having fun. Additionally, you can walk at the coast where you have a really amazing view at the pacific ocean. You can see endless.

Snippets of the Islands Park.

We visited the Islands in the late afternoon and stayed until the darkness to see the skyline of Toronto at day and at night. Unfortunaltely, it rained very heavy in the afternoon that the Islands were nearly empty when we arrived even if the weather became really nice and sunny again in the evening. The disadvantage was that we hardly found a restaurant for dinner (finally, we've found one), but the advantage was that we were quite alone on the Islands, having a really calm and chilled time.

View at Downtown Toronto on a cloudy day.

The view at the skyline was so amazing - I hardly find words to express my emotions.

View at Downtown Toronto by night.

Even if I've visited Toronto for business reasons, I tried to find a good balance between work and making touristic stuff - in the end I won't know when I have another chance to visit Toronto again.

Here I'd like to show you my favourite pictures of the city:

The Metro Convention Center where the conference took place.

The mother of elephants in the Commerce Court courtyard of the financial district.

The CN tower could be seen from everywhere.

View from the platform in front of the CN tower to Downtown Toronto.

Some snippets of the city hall, a church and parts of the financial district. I liked the contrast of old buildings and modern skyscrapers.

At the end of the conference and before heading off to NYC, we made a stopover at the Niagara Falls. I was happy to visit them from the Canadian side so we had a view directly at both falls.

The Niagara Falls.

Here is a short video that I've made for those who stayed at home that they have an idea of the falls:

At the end, my talk was good and I'm content and happy. :-)

Have you ever been to Toronto and / or the Niagara Falls ? How was your trip?

Kisses,

Van