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| - City Sightseeing is a great way to see Downtown Toronto. It's a hop on, hop off tour, so you can see as much as you want. The tour stops at the ROM, CN Tower, the Hockey Hall of Fame, Chinatown, etc. Because we had little time--we were going to the Coldplay concert that night--we used it as sort of an overview of the city. We did however stop and see Casa Loma.
The true measure though of any great tours are how knowledgeable the guides are and how much you learn. And learn something I did! See, back in the 1960s, there was this club in the Yorkville District called The Paradise. Joni Mitchell used to play there a lot. Well it seems like the Paradise was bought out and demolished to make way for a new hotel and its requisite parking facilities.
And that's supposedly where she came up with the stanza for "Big Yellow Taxi"..
"They paved Paradise to put up a parking lot/
With a pink hotel, a boutique and a swinging hotspot".
(And yes my introduction to that song was via Counting Crows--try to find the version without Vanessa Carlton).
But anyway, take the tour if you can. Rick and I used it as an introduction to Toronto and when we come back next year, we'll know what to see.
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