on the east side of canada, we began our journey in toronto. from there, we directly continued to the town of niagara falls, ontario.

niagara falls.

in niagara falls, we saw the niagara falls. they are quite impressive. less impressive, though, is what was build around the falls. the town is essentially a big amusement park with two casinos (a third on the american side). no place i’d like to stay long at.

kingsville, windsor and detroit.

from niagara falls, we continued to kingsville. from there, we saw lake erie, and went on a trip to windsor, from where we could glance over to detroit.

toronto.

finally, we ended up in toronto. my third visit. we spent one day exploring toronto by bus (hop-on hop-off) and boat (around toronto islands). it was somewhat cloudy, with a lot of wind, so the view of cn tower changed between a large stick ending up in the clouds and seeing the full tower up to its tip. eventually, we went up the tower (we had a great dinner there). it was still cloudy, and most of the time we couldn’t see anything of the city. but the view was great, nonetheless: we experienced a wonderful sea of fog! (almost like in the swiss alps. yay!)

toronto zoo.

on one day in toronto, we chose to visit its zoo. the zoo itself is quite nice, and they currently have panda bears as visitors!

what’s not so great is actually getting to the zoo. from downtown toronto, you have to take the subway (if you’re not at the main west-east line, you have to change subway lines) and then continue by bus. we went to union station and tried to use a ticket vending machine, but it didn’t offer the zoo as a destination. so we lined up, and were finally told that we need two tickets: one for the train and another for the bus. turns out, union station is used both by subway and train, and obviously, we tried to use the wrong vending machine and lined up at the wrong counter. and obviously, why should two different transportation companies cooperate and make travelling accross the borders of the two systems easy to use (especially for tourists)? this isn’t switzerland (or germany), after all. yay. eventually, we arrived at the zoo (with still two changes, but fifteen minutes earler than we should have been there with subway and bus).

well, that was everything. in three weeks, we saw quite a lot of canada, and there’s still that extremely much more to see! for the next time we will be in canada (eventually; will still take some time :) ) we plan to explore the east somewhat more, in particular the parts not so densely populated as the area around toronto, like newfoundland and labrador and nova scotia. and of course also quebec, and also canada’s capital, ottawa.

here’s my project 52 shot for the twentysecond week. the topic was

kopfkino.

when visiting the morteratsch glacier, i saw a polar bear. well. i guess i was the only one, but in my mind, i had the clear image of a polar bear tromping through the the glacier’s fractures, ignoring its human viewers. not as cute and fluffy as knut, but in my eyes, just as elegant, polar bearish. (and much less dangerous.) for me, this really fits well to the topic mental cinema, since unfortunately, this polar bear only existed in mine… please click the photo to get a larger version:

technical details: 1/800s, f/5.6, 400mm, iso 200.

today, i finally did a hike i already wanted to do for a long time: i visited the morteratsch glacier in the engadine. there is a train station nearby, called morteratsch. from there, a trail leads to the ice front. it used to be that the train station was at the ice front, but that was more than 100 years ago, and since then the glacier retreated quite a distance – almost two kilometers. here are a few impressions from the hike to the ice front:

shortly before i reached the ice front, and just a few moments before i could see anything, i heard a loud noice. some ice collapsing, something breaking off, i don’t know. happens all the time, and it is always a good idea to know what you are doing when going on a glacier. for example, never go too near to places where ice seems to break off :-) anyway, even though i only was at the very bottom of the glacier – i’ve seen much more of some glaciers in canada –, there were many interesting views of ice formations, of mixtures of ice, dirt, rocks and water. glaciers are so beautiful!

while looking through the photos, i found a polar bear hiding in one of the photos. can you find it?