Saturday/Sunday May 10th/11th 2025 - Work trip to DC and fun trip to Toronto - Days 5&6, Toronto and train home - urban walks

Brian and I had both been to Toronto years before but we'd never been together.  My memories of it from back in the day were that it felt like an extra clean Chicago.  My trip to the DC airport, flight to Toronto and getting downtown to meet up with Brian all went well.  Brian's train was a little late but I hung out at the train station Italian restaurant and had what turned out to be some astonishingly expensive wine while I waited.  Brian joined when he got in and we had dinner there before walking to our hotel.  The hotel, Hotel Victoria, was kind of quirky but ultimately was a fine place to spend a quick 2 nights.

Saturday started off with us talking to a bagel shop quite a ways from our hotel.  We got to see a big stretch of downtown Toronto on the way.  Unfortunately, Toronto seems to look about like most of the other Canadian cities (Vancouver excepted) that I've spent time in.  There are a fair amount of unoccupied buildings and a lot of ragged looking urban decay.  We saw a fair number of people sleeping on sewer grates, a block long line of people waiting for a food bank and plenty of other signs of economic distress. In these ways, it did NOT remind of Chicago any longer nor was it particularly clean. I'm always struck by the same thought when I go to Canada... If it looks this rough NOW, in the middle of an unusually long period of relative prosperity with a stable economy and lack of disasters, what are Canadian cities going to look like at year 3 or 4 of an economic downturn? 

We also walked a park that somebody had recommended to us.  The park was busy even at 9:30 am. It was fine but pretty unremarkable. One relative bright spot for Toronto was the TTC (transit operator).  The subway ran frequently and I was impressed by how quickly the doors opened, people got on and off and then the doors closed and we were off again.  A lot of other systems (DC being one) seems to have a 5 second pause after the train comes to a complete stop before the doors open.  The subway was quite crowded also.  Whenever they get the new Ontario line built I'm sure it will be busy too. 

Our early dinner Saturday night was at a pub in the Leslieville neighborhood which was quieter and more prosperous feeling than the more central downtown area we stayed in.  My spicy taco bowl was very satisfying.  We took the streetcar back to near our hotel.  A homeless person and some loud aggressive people got on at the same time and they loudly yelled at each other.  The homeless guy kind of spit when he was yelling so I got some spit on me. It wasn't the nicest few minutes to be sure.

Despite my disappointed observations, I did enjoy our short visit to Toronto if just to say we did it.  Sunday morning we headed out early and walked to the train station which was only a 7 minute walk.  The train is physically an Amtrak train that arrives the day before from NYC but in Canada it's operated by a Via rail crew.  They setup their own stuff in the cafe car and have their own safety procedures including giving every exit row passenger a briefing on how to use the emergency exits etc.  The train made good progress near Toronto but for some reason we sat for more than 20 minutes at West Harbor station and then never really got up to speed again until after crossing into the US. The border control process was interesting since we were all told to line up very sternly in a line against the building while a drug sniffing dog sniffed everybody's luggage twice.  Then we went into a processing room to show passports etc which was a very fast process before hanging out for about 30 minutes in a waiting room before finally getting back on the train.  The rest of the trip home went quickly and well although there were some slightly noisy rowdy people on the train.  Brian pretty much wants to always take business class now.

Overall I was glad our time in Toronto wasn't very long but as a quick taste it was fine.