the last of the tall ships

Sometimes you don't have to go all that far to go sight-seeing. Today, on a beautiful summer evening, my parents and I headed down to Toronto's Harbourfront area to have a bit of a wander.

The CN (which stands for Canadian National) Tower was, for many years, the world's largest free-standing tower. (I believe there is now one in Malaysia that has outstripped it.) The rest of Canada likes to accuse Torontonians of believing our city is the centre of the universe. So we built a large tower to mark the spot. Makes sense.

The CN Tower is visible from large chunks of the city, but is usually seen from the North. This shot was taken from the South, however, as the Harbourfront runs between it and the lake.

Toronto is situated on the shores of Lake Ontario, the smallest of the five great lakes. The lakes all eventually drain, via the St. Lawrence river, into the Atlantic Ocean. Clearly, that's how the pirates got in.

In honour of Canada Day weekend, we had a waterfront festival where the tall ships came in. This was part of our reason for heading down to Harbourfront, but, it being Sunday evening, all but one of them had gone. We did get the pleasure of seeing this last one sail off into the sunset, though.

All in all, it was a really beautiful walk. Next time we'll have to go earlier and see the market and maybe have dinner on one of the lake-front patios.

I got a couple of last shots in on the way home.

This is the downtown core in the twilight. A quick shot I caught from the window of the streetcar.

And this is a shot of the Royal Ontario Museum at night. It is absolutely nowhere near Harbourfront, but it was on my way home, and it's awfully pretty.