Following our long day to Niagara Falls, we decided on an easier sightseeing day in Toronto. We elected to do the Hop-on Hop-off (HOHO) bus to get an overview of Toronto’s various districts and use it as our transportation to Casa Loma (Toronto’s castle-like mansion) and back. So, I went online and pre-purchased our tickets for both activities. The full HOHO tour is supposed to take around 135 minutes and we calculated about 2 hours at Casa Loma, so that would be plenty to fill our day. I will describe our Casa Loma visit in Note 50.
From CN Tower South to Casa Loma
The HOHO bus has 16 stops around town. We caught one near our hotel at stop 12 for the CN Tower South and Ripley’s Aquarium. Our plan was to ride to stop 5 for Casa Loma and get off. After visiting Casa Loma, we’d catch it going back to stop 10 for the CN Tower North and then walk to our hotel from there.
We went to the top of the bus to get unobstructed views of the city. I mentioned previously that I’d been here 44 years ago, well Toronto has grown “up” considerably since then and is still growing by the looks of all the construction sites and cranes around the city! In 1980, Toronto already had a population of around 3 million, now it is almost 6.5 million.
If I remember correctly, the beautiful 28-story Fairmont Royal York built in 1929 was still one of the tallest buildings in 1980. It was the tallest building in the entire British Commonwealth from 1929-1931. It definitely still dominated the waterfront skyline in 1980 along with the “new” CN Tower. Now, it is hard to see until you are almost upon it and we couldn’t see it at all from Lake Ontario!
As we drove along Front Street in Old Toronto towards the St. Lawrence Market, we spotted LCBO workers picketing a local store on the first day of their strike.
LCBO is the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and over 9,000 workers across nearly 700 LCBO stores in the province went on strike July 5 shutting them down.
The strike was triggered by changes to allow the sale of ready-to-drink cocktails and other previously unavailable alcoholic products in convenience stores, grocery stores, and big-box stores. Previously, most alcoholic products were only available in the LCBO stores. Bars and restaurants are unaffected. The workers are striking for better wages and more full-time employment as best I can tell. As of July 19, no agreement has been reached, but the new policy went into limited effect July 18 (originally planned for August 1) and will continue to expand through the fall. While the stores are still closed, the LCBO is filling online orders for delivery! So, Ontario households aren’t totally “dry” in the meantime. Probably more than you want to know, but it was dominating the local news while we were there! LOL!
St. Lawrence Market contains three halls providing space for the local farmer’s market started on this site in 1803 and various retail shops. If we’d had more time, it would have been fun to wander through.
We drove through the Distillery district and old Parliament area (building no longer there) and began dodging construction zones for new buildings and subway updates. Still we spotted some interesting sights.
We finally made the turn onto Yonge Street one of the main shopping streets and the location of stop 1 at Yonge-Dundas Square. I remember the square and Eaton Centre from 1980, but it didn’t look so much like Times Square back then!
With a mostly full bus now, we proceeded up Yonge Street to the Yorkville section of Toronto.
McDonald’s is now located in this beautiful old post office building.
There are huge residential buildings going up in the Yorkville district. The one on the right will be one the tallest residential buildings in Toronto when completed in 2025 or 2026. It seems all the builders are competing for this title with many buildings over 80 stories and one planned for 105 near the harbor front. If we ever come back, the skyline will have changed once again, even if it’s only a year or two from now!
We also passed this old fire station which I believe they said is the oldest station still in its original building. So pretty!
Stop 4 is the Royal Ontario Museum and if it weren’t such a pretty day, it would be tempting to check it out! But, we already had our tickets for Casa Loma and we finally arrived at stop 5 about 90 minutes after we started.
As previously mentioned, I’ll do a separate post for Casa Loma.
From Casa Loma to CN Tower North
The HOHO stop is about a 5-minute walk uphill to the entrance of Casa Loma (Spanish for Hill House). When we’d exhausted seeing everything at Casa Loma, we walked back down the hill to the HOHO stop to wait for the next bus. The guide had told us when we got off that the buses should come by every 15-20 minutes. Unfortunately, we ended up waiting over twice that long, but given what we’d already seen of the traffic and construction on the route to get there we weren’t too surprised. Consequently, we had quite the gathering waiting rather impatiently by the time the bus showed up!
The bus made its way back towards the University of Toronto and Old Toronto again, passing more museums, art galleries, Chinatown and the old City Hall with its imposing clock tower.
The new city hall complex is quite a contrast, but trees blocked getting a good picture of it as we passed by on Queen Street. Turning south along St. John Street we entered the Entertainment District with the historic Princess of Wales Theatre and many other venues. The bus then turned east on Front Street, and we got off at stop 10 for the CN Tower South. From there it’s a short walk across a pedestrian bridge over all the railroad tracks to the plaza for CN Tower, Rogers Centre, and our hotel.
Dinner at The Shore Club
Dave was ready for a steak, and I was hungry for seafood, we found that The Shore Club fit the bill nicely. It was an easy 10-minute walk, and they had plenty of availability for a last-minute reservation. Although it was trying to rain on our walk over, it wasn’t too bad, giving us a chance to use the umbrellas we’d packed.
Ryan was our server, and he was great! We found a reasonably priced Mendoza Malbec on the wine list. Then for our starters I had the crab cake and Dave had the lobster bisque. For mains, Dave got the bone-in ribeye steak with mashed potatoes, and I ordered the sauteed prawns and scallops with the Brussels bowl. The heading above the sides on the menu is “For the Table” and they could have served a table of four! Too bad we didn’t have anyone to share with! For dessert, we shared the Chocolate Truffle Cake. It was more like a combination between a mousse and fudge – yum!
It was an excellent meal in a nice, quiet atmosphere.
Post-Dinner Walk to Hotel
The rain had ended by the time we finished dinner, so we had a leisurely walk back to the hotel.
We found yet another view of the ever-present CN Tower looming over the area.
Then we discovered an interesting memorial, the WISB Simcoe Park Workers Monument, dedicated to workers killed in workplace accidents. It was a series of plaques along a low granite wall with the worker’s name, year of death, and type of accident. There are 100 plaques – one for each year from 1901-1999, and one blank plaque for the accident that hasn’t yet happened.
It was a sobering moment studying the names and various manners of workplace accidents leading to death.
All-in-all, the HOHO bus provided a good overview of a large city on a beautiful day with stops near its most visited sites. The commentary along the way by a live guide helps with the history and current status of the city. If we ever come back, I’d most like to visit the St. Lawrence Market and Royal Ontario Museum.
Notes By Nancy 
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