3 days in Toronto

Two weeks ago I went with my colleague Kristin up to Toronto for 3 days for a conference. Neither of us had been there before, and we needed to get there the day before the conference to setup our booth, which allowed us some free time to wander the city and take in some sites. We had a few hours to kill upon arrival before we could start setting up; we headed towards Chinatown as we were told by another colleague that we really needed to try the food there. On the walk we had our first site of the CN Tower, one of Toronto's most famous attractions. It used to be the tallest building in the world (until 2010) - more on our visit there is below!

The perspective on this photo is definitely off - as you'll see from the photo I found below (I unfortunately could not get a good shot of the Toronto skyline), it's FAR taller than anything around it!

This was a cool statue we saw in Chinatown. And yes, the food there is absolutely worth eating!

Our booth on the first morning of the conference. 

 Way cooler than our booth was one just down the aisle from us. They're a division of Aldebaran Robotics, and had two of these little guys out for people to see. The plan is to use them to help with autistic individuals (the conference was for autism researchers), who may find interacting with these humanoid robots easier than other people. I'm not sure how many sales they actually made, but the robots were definitely a crowd pleaser!

 On our second night in Toronto (after our first day at the conference), Kristin and I had dinner in the 360 Restaurant at the CN Tower. The restaurant is 110 stories high; as I said, the tower is the second tallest building in the world. And wow, do you ever know how high up you are!

Note that I did NOT take the above photo; I found it online courtesy of mojotravel.wordpress.com.

The dinner was a 3 course prix-fice; it wasn't necessarily worth what we paid, but the food wasn't bad (to the right is my dessert!), and you're definitely paying for the view, which cannot be beaten. The restaurant rotates - makes a full revolution every 72 minutes. So you get a full view of Toronto and Lake Ontario while eating!

After our meal we went down one story to the observation deck to take some photos and really enjoy the view. The tower is situated right next to the Toronto Blue Jays stadium, and there was a game going on that night (against the Mets). So we got to watch some baseball from over 100 stories up! It was pretty amazing.

This shot is primarily of "downtown" (although we noticed that Toronto is a fairly sprawling city). The building in the middle with the orange lettering on top was our hotel - the Sheraton Centre.

A view of Lake Ontario

One last thing of beauty that we saw was actually part of our hotel - they created this man-made waterfall in the center for people to wander through. It was very peaceful and lovely!

We had a really great time on our trip. I have some beautiful shots of the city at night that I took as well (man do I love having a camera that can take quality night shots!), but I'm going to put those up in a post on my photography blog. Check there soon for those!