Toronto Hippo Tours is a tour in an amphibious vessel/bus. It will take you through the streets of Toronto and on the water of Lake Ontario. The tour takes about 90 minutes, 30 of which are on Lake Ontario and the rest in the streets of Toronto.
Although the vehicle is called a bus, it's really a vessel with an added capability to drive on dry land. They tour operates three vessels and their names are Happy, Harry, and Henrietta. We rode Harry, which you can check on the last picture - it's a reflection of Harry in one of the buildings. Oh, and who might be the guy in the red T-shirt and the two people sitting behind him?
Since the vehicle was a vessel, having a driver's license is not enough to drive it on the water. It takes a captain! We also had a guide that was telling us everything about the places that we were driving and sailing through.
One of the famous places in Toronto is the Hockey Hall of Fame, which we passed shortly after the tour started.
The land part of the tour then takes you close to the Eaton Centre shopping mall, to the City Hall, Queens Part, University of Toronto (often called just U of T), to Fort York, and finally to Lake Ontario. Since the whole tour takes place downtown, you can always see the CN Tower (which is not surprising in Toronto!)
The Exhibition Place is very close to the harbor, so we had a chance to see it from the opposite end that we were to on Monday.
Though the land part of the tour wasn't bad, the water part is much better. In the CN Tower, Nicole took a very nice picture of the place where the water tour takes place - and she did it before we even knew where the Hippo Tour would take us! The Hippo entered the water in the middle of the left edge of the picture and sailed along the shore to and beyond the upper right corner, between the shore and the jetty, turned around, and headed back.
Shortly after entering the water, we saw Henrietta the Hippo heading back to dry land.
Then we sailed along the Ontario Place, an entertainment and amusement park. It consists of three artificially created islands. The park is targeted at children and families and offers an IMAX theatre, an outdoor concert venue, a water park, a marina, and much more.
Having passed the Ontario Place, the view of Lake Ontario opened in front of us.
We were sitting on the left side of the vessel, so we had the shore and Toronto in sight after the vessel turned around.
We even have a video taken on the water.
Just like it was very difficult to capture Torsten and Nicole on a picture when they were not kissing, it was not easy to take a photo of Toronto without the CN Tower, because you can see it from anywhere.
After leaving the water, we saw a bonus - a tourist ship. The captain of our Hippo was so nice that he moved the bus to a better position from where we could see the ship well and gave us a few extra minutes to take pictures. Then we drove back to the tour headquarters. We took a few more pictures of the waterfront and the tour was over.
We totally loved the tour. As you can see, all of us were smiling, even Michal! We can certainly recommend it for everyone. Though it's called a tour, the fact that you're driving in an amphibious vehicle makes it so much different and so much better than an average tour!
Even Nicole liked it! Check for yourself how happy she looked!
In the evening, Torsten and Nicole went to see Dirty Dancing. Michal went to check the swimming pool on the 27th floor of the Delta Chelsea hotel, so he got wet for the fifth time in Canada! Splish splash! Unfortunately, it was a small swimming pool (10 meters long, 5 meters wide and not deep enough to be able to swim without hitting the floor). The Canadians should totally invest into an American-sized pool!
Copyright notice: Text, images, and videos copyright by Michal Řeháček, Nicole, Torsten, John Philip, Darlene Sine.