Toronto

We arrived in Toronto at about 4:30pm. Our hotel is connected to the terminal, so we quickly dropped our bags off and took a cab to city center. There my mom met up with one of her friends who was also visiting Canada. I hung out with them for a while and then walked about fifteen blocks to see one of my friends who was in Toronto, too. She took me to a great Greek place she had discovered. She gave me a quick rundown about public transport in the city so that the next day I wouldn't have to pay cab fare to see her.

The next day I took the airport bus, which picks up right in front of the hotel, to Kipling subway station. She met me here, having taken the bus from her house. By this point it was pouring rain, so we ducked into the underground and emerged at Queen's Park, right in the heart of the beautiful University of Toronto campus. I brought my camera, but torrents of rain were falling from the sky, so I didn't even attempt to get good photos. Good thing she brought an umbrella—I had only my hoodie. We then walked up Spadina street through Chinatown. She wanted to take me to Kensington Market, where we would grab lunch, but in the rain she missed the turnoff. I had to get back to the hotel in about an hour to meet some cousins, so we darted into a Tim Horton's for donuts and then hopped on a streetcar (instead of walking) back to the subway station.

The system is very efficient. The modes-of-transport interfaces (bus to subway, streetcar to subway etc) are “sterile.” For example, there is no way for pedestrians to access the bus drop-off area at Kipling Station. Bus passengers must exit straight into the station. Thus, you don't have to pay for the subway again if you are continuing on the train. The bus ticket buys access to the subway. The trams run underground into the subway stations, so that is slightly easier to organize. The result is that despite transferring up to two or three times, the cost to go downtown from the outskirts of Toronto is the flat-rate fair of $2.75 one way, as compared to upwards of $50 in a taxi. The system is not the same in other cities, where you have to pay for a bus ticket as well as subway tickets if you want to transfer. No wonder so many people take public transport here; it's fast, cheap, and easy enough for a tourist to figure out.