After my overnight bus journey from New York City to Niagara Falls and the morning spent walking around there I got a bus on to Toronto, arriving late afternoon. Looking for something to do I quickly signed up for a baseball game as it was only $9 and a good way to meet some people.

Little did I know that the visiting Texas Rangers would hold the Toronto Blue Jays to a 5-5 tie at the end of the ninth inning, after the Blue Jays made a 3 point comeback in the 8th. We sat and waited through every extra inning as the Blue Jays held the Rangers to zero points and then failed to score themselves. At the end of the 13th, after we'd been in the park for four and a half hours we bailed and went back to the hostel. Unfortunately it finally ended in the 14th as the Rangers scored two points to clinch the game.

So I got back to the hostel very tired. I'd spent three days walking around Manhattan, then an overnight bus trip on which I'd barely slept, then half a day walking around Niagara and then stayed up until midnight watching a silly baseball game. When the morning came around I just gave myself a nice long lie-in until 11am. And then the rest of the day I sat around on my laptop planning the next part of my trip, checking my money and doing general trip admin things. The point of it was to do nothing at all for the whole day. I was shattered and needed a day to stop and do nothing! So I extended my stay at Toronto by an extra night so I wouldn't lose out on sightseeing time. I'm so glad I did that because I really needed the downtime.

Over the next two days I picked up the walking again and went all over Toronto. We had two days of 23 degree heat (73 degrees F) and it was blue skies and sunny the whole time. I sunburnt my arm the first day and started wearing sunscreen the second day.

Toronto downtown is very samey - there are a lot of concrete-and-glass buildings and all the streets are very similar. It's very nice to start with but I got a little bored after a while. I followed a signposted Discovery Walk that claims to take you on a 6km walk around the downtown area. What actually happens is the signs inexplicably stop and you assume you need to carry on and you end up a mile too far down the road and have to double-back to take a sketch of the map in case it happens again. But you can walk back along the harbour side which had a nice restauranty bit to it.

I discovered north Yonge Street by chance and it was like hitting the jackpot - I found Dundas Square which is like a larger, tamer version of Times Square with flashing advertisements and with a large area in the centre to sit in. And the shops lined Yonge Street heading north as far as I could see, and further than my legs would let me walk because they forced me to turn back and get an iced coffee after a while.

I visited Casa Loma, which is a 98 room mansion built in a semi-medieval style in the 1910s for a wealthy businessman who had brought electricity to Toronto by harnessing the power of Niagara Falls. The house itself was nice but nothing very amazing, except for the hidden staircases like in a Famous Five book. But I found the history of it very interesting and the story of the man who had it commissioned.

In the afternoon of the second day I did the obligatory trip up the CN Tower, the "world's largest building and free-standing structure" as it says, at 1800-and-something feet. Actually the main viewing platform is slightly below two thirds up it but I wasn't going to pay the extra to go to the little Skypod further up. I still got fantastic views, although it had got a little hazy so I couldn't see to the horizon. And one floor below the main indoor viewing area is where the glass floor is that you can see a photo of me on and also an outdoor viewing platform. This outdoor circuit was totally enclosed in wire mesh, which I thought was slight overkill until I came further around the tower and the wind hit me with near gale-force power, and that was on a still day at ground level. A child could easily be blown over the side on a bad day. But if you don't like yours you'll have to find another way of disposing of them because it's too secure up there!

In the evening I went over to Toronto Island and had planned to watch the sunset except it had got even cloudier and I could no longer see the sun. Plus where I was sat on the (clothing optional) beach I was surrounded by a swarm of flies so I didn't hang around. Incidentally, I had opted to keep my clothes on. I still had a spectacular view of the Toronto skyline from the island ferry port as I waited for the ferry in the cooling evening air. The photo doesn't do it justice.

I would like to see more of Canada because I wasn't there long enough to see what it was really like and I only saw a tiny subsection of it, which is like judging the US by just spending a few days in New York. I found it a very nice, clean city and would like to visit it again some time. To be honest and to upset both countries, I'd say the Canada I saw is very much like the US. But that's just a skin-deep assessment. There are also things I wasn't able to see like the free healthcare and lack of gun crime.

Leaving Canada I was able to successfully reenter the US after the typical badass routine from the immigration people. I'm now spending a couple of days in Buffalo, New York which is right on the border with Canada, and then I'm getting another night bus to New York and transfering out to Atlantic City, New Jersey (the Vegas of the east), where I have a hotel room one block from the main boardwalk and casinos. It is going to be so nice not to share a room with several other people - usually including one bad snorer - and to have an en suite to myself. I'll report from there in a few days.