Oh my, these pho­tos are from last month! Have been busy with many things late­ly and behind in my blog posts :S

It was Doors Open last month in Toron­to, and it was par­tic­u­lar­ly spe­cial because the Low­er Bay sub­way sta­tion is open for view­ing this year. It has­n’t been open for the past few years.

The Low­er Bay is an aban­doned sub­way plat­form under­neath the Bay sta­tion, but it’s actu­al­ly still used for train­ing, rerout­ing trains and film shoots. 

With haunt­ings and such sto­ries float­ing around, I pic­tured the Low­er Bay being much old­er-look­ing, Vic­to­ri­an, even. Although sub­ways did­n’t exist in the Vic­to­ri­an era, did it? My imag­i­na­tion often makes things more excit­ing than they actu­al­ly are.

So we fol­lowed every­one through the secret door­way that I nev­er noticed in Bay sta­tion, and down the stairs…

And here it is! The Low­er Bay sta­tion is actu­al­ly a lot like the oth­er stations. 

It has inter­est­ing floor tiles though.

Hap­py feet :D

This kind sub­way staff let us see the end of the plat­form and watched to make sure that peo­ple are safe.

View from the end of the plat­form. As I stood there Bar­bara Rei­d’s Sub­way Mouse comes to mind…

 Lin­ing up to see the con­duc­tor’s booth, and real­iz­ing that I usu­al­ly don’t get to stand on the gap.

Mean­while, film clips that were shot in the Low­er Bay were played.

That con­cludes was our jour­ney to the Low­er Bay.

 

After Low­er Bay we spon­ta­neous­ly decid­ed to take advan­tage of Doors Open and vis­it­ed Tod­mor­den Mills.

It has a his­toric paper mill that was turned into a the­ater. It still has some of the orig­i­nal brick walls and beams.

We even got to see the back­stage :D

Then we went on a tour of the wild flower pre­serve near­by, saw these amaz­ing mush­rooms! :D They were giant!

There were also a cou­ple of his­tor­i­cal hous­es on the prop­er­ty. Friend­ly staff were mak­ing gin­ger cook­ies on the hearth. They served rhubarb juice as well :D

We toured a house that had a base­ment. Very dun­geon-like. The friend­ly tour guide told us that the ground is made of riv­er rocks.

And before head­ing to our next stop (Dairy Queen :D), I found these pre­cious mul­ti­colour flowers. 

 

As I’m writ­ing this pho­to-heavy post I real­ize that sum­mer trav­el time is here! :D I love trav­el­ling around my own city like a tourist, find­ing inter­est­ing things that I had pre­vi­ous­ly over­looked. And I hope that these Toron­to trav­el posts would be help­ful for you if you ever decide to vis­it the city :D I’m hop­ing to do more trav­el­ing before Sep­tem­ber (and the new school year) rolls around, so stay tuned for more trav­el posts! 

Have a won­der­ful week, everyone!