I only spent three nights in Toronto; it is a very nice city, somehow very familiar feeling. It reminds me of Chicago. Lakefront, neighborhoods, varied architecture.

We had wonderful weather. Our hotel was in the heart of the theater district. That wasn't something we really knew before we got there, but it was nice. There was quite a lot of stuff happening all the time in the area. We were a half a block from the stretch of King Street where all the trendy restaurants were lined up, literally one after another. People watching was good in that area.

We mostly did tourist-y things. We took a double decker bus tour of the city, then went on a tour of Casa Loma, a "castle" built by a prominent wealthy businessman in the early 1900's. He got wealthy by investing in Canada's railroad, and then by basically acquiring a monopoly on Toronto's electricity generating operations. By all accounts he was a generous man, well liked and respected.

But at some point, the city decided that having an important utility owned by one man was not a good idea, and they TOOK it from him. No compensation. Just took it. It began a downward spiral where he ended up losing everything, including Casa Loma.

Anyway, we also went up to the top of the CN Tower (still, I believe, the tallest structure in the world - not technically a building however because it is mostly just a shaft for wires and cables and elevators) and took a cruise of the harbor. Apparently Toronto is a very clean city, but not when we were there. A city workers' strike has caused trash to pile up all over the town.

It was also interesting (to me) to read the Canadian national paper (called the Globe and Mail), sort of their "USA Today". They had lots of good articles spread throughout the paper. Their perspective is different - less political, or so it seems to me. Their look at US issues is very different from the look you get in American newspapers, or at least in the ones I'm used to reading. It seems that American papers almost have an editorial agenda that colors all of the stories in the paper. (It's not "hit you in the face" agenda-serving, like maybe Fox News is, but it's subtle.) I didn't get that from the Canadian papers. Their writing seemed unbiased and almost dispassionate, but very well presented. I wonder if a Canadian might think the same in reverse - that our American papers cover their issues with more objectivity. I don't know, though...I don't see that many articles about Canadian issues in our papers.

All in all, it's a different experience to go outside the country. It's sort of humbling, in a way - makes you realize that there is something outside the US after all. I don't think we intend to be so self centered as Americans - it just happens because our daily lives are so absorbed by what is going on with OUR country - everything else seems sort of trivial to us. But outside the country, reading their papers, watching their TV, even in as close a place as Canada, you see that the issues that dominate American consciousness are just one part of the bigger picture. I can't put my finger on specific items that gave me this sense, but it's there.

I won't be averse to going back to Toronto someday. The people there were really nice and friendly, much more so than I've experienced in most US destinations (except Disney). And I'd love to take more time to explore the restaurants, the neighborhoods, and the surrounding areas.