The CN Tower / La Tour CN, Toronto, Canada

When you’re a chicken, it helps to have brave friends. During my recent trip to Toronto for the TBEX conference, I wanted to visit the CN Tower, the tallest structure in the Western Hemisphere. I knew that a highlight of visiting the attraction is the ability to walk over a glass floor, with a view straight down 1,122 feet. I also knew that chances were good I would not be able to maneuver my jelly knees over the glass.

I enlisted my friend Karon, who blogs at All Things Lifestyle, to come with me. She’s jumped out of an airplane, so I was pretty confident she could handle standing on a 2 ½ ” thick tempered glass plate.

When you visit the CN Tower, you have options. You can take the 58-second elevator ride to the glass floor level, which is connected to the Outdoor SkyTerrace. You can also take a photo one story up on the LookOut Level. For an additional fee, you can take the special SkyPod elevator up an additional 33 stories, to 1,465 feet.

Within the building there’s also a 3D movie theater, the “Himalamazon” motion theater ride, the 360Restaurant, and a gift shop. For the exceptional daredevil, there is one more can’t-miss experience: Edge Walk, the world’s highest full circle, hands-free walk, on a 5-foot wide ledge encircling the top of the Tower’s main pod, 1,168 feet — or 116 stories — above the ground. I’m not prone to text-speak, but O.M.G.!

An EdgeWalk group at CN Tower, minus me. Photo credit: EdgeWalk

Regardless of which level you end up on, you’ll get a fantastic view of Toronto, Lake Ontario, and the surrounding region, up to 100 miles away. Apparently, you can even see Niagara Falls under ideal conditions.

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Two debatable world records didn’t keep me from checking out a “world’s largest” and a “world’s longest” while I was in Toronto last month for the TBEX (Travel Bloggers Exchange) conference!

Yonge Street, Toronto, ON

Yonge Street

Until 1999, the Guinness Book of World Records recognized Yonge (pronounced “Young”) Street as the world’s longest street, because at the time, Yonge Street proper was considered part of Highway 11. The entire length of that configuration is nearly 1,200 miles end-to-end, beginning at Queen’s Quay in downtown Toronto to Rainy River, near the Minnesota and Ontario border. The world record for longest motorable road is now held by the Pan-American Highway.

I still took a stroll up Yonge Street, about a mile from the intersections of Wellington Street and Edward Street. It was such a lively thoroughfare in this section of the city, with great shopping and dining. Along the way, I resisted the pull of the tractor beams drawing me toward the Eaton Centre, Toronto’s largest mall. I had a bookstore to see.

On a mission to find the “WBB.”

World’s Biggest Bookstore

It’s becoming a habit for us to visit world’s largests which are in peril of losing their title, or being lost forever. Last year, we visited the World’s Largest McDonald’s in Orlando, knowing that it would soon be oversized by a new London restaurant. In this case, the lease on the building housing the World’s Biggest Bookstore is set to expire at the end of 2013. Indigo Books and Music, the Canadian national chain which owns the “WBB,” has said it doesn’t plan to renew the lease.

Found it!

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