Toronto's PATH is a fascinating construct. "PATH" is the uninventive title given to the approximately 30km of corridors joining hundreds of buildings in downtown Toronto. An official map can be found here. My friend Sarah recorded our track on her phone, as shown below: most of it (especially north of Union Station) is below ground, so the image is more of a geographical work of art than an accurate recording of our walk.

photo: GPSes don't work well underground

PATH is presented as this continuous way to get from place to place indoors. But it's a disorienting experience - not just because you can't see any of the above-ground landmarks, but because every building, every tunnel is styled differently. The expected experience is walking through a brightly lit corridor with attractive retail stores on both sides. And that happens sometimes - especially around First Canadian Place or Union Station. The less glamourous picture is the plain cement corridor, and that certainly happens too. Trotting up and down stairs, or encountering 45° turns in corridors that are indicated as straight on the map. Then there's the areas that are under construction or renovation. You'll walk through dozens of food courts. Once you get south of Union Station, pretty much all of PATH is above ground - I had thought it was all subterranean. And, if you walk around enough, you'll find the low point of PATH, when you go through a set of doors into a parking garage, look both ways to make sure you don't get run over, then cross and go through another set of doors into another tunnel. The experience is mixed, to put it mildly. It was weird and fun to take escalators up in multiple places and find some random tower lobby. Some of the most entertaining stuff is listed below:

• walking through the ticket booth area of the Scotiabank Arena
• finding the beautiful half-spiral stone stairs made 100 years ago that ascend to one of the city's oldest hotels
• walking by Roy Thompson Hall and look through huge windows into their lovely sculpted below-ground space
• finding a story machine that will (for free) print you a "1 minute," "3 minute," or "5 minute" story. (Although I protest the use of the word "story:" we printed two 1 minutes and a 3 minute, and all were poems.)
• detouring to a Lindt store and sampling and buying chocolate balls
• popping up to the first floor of the very large CBC building, with its display of relics (reel-to-reel tape machines, a 16mm film editing console)
• visiting the TD Gallery of Inuit Art (small ... but also free)
• admiring Joe Fafard's bizarre sculptural tableaux "The Pasture" through a window, with seven metal cows lounging on the grass
• getting to see the CIBC banking hall at 25 King West (only open during business hours or "Doors Open")

And a couple photos from the walk:

photo: Banksy on the PATH, and the exploratory team.

Wikipedia says 'Banksy no longer sells photographs or reproductions of his street graffiti, but his public "installations" are regularly resold, often even by removing the wall they were painted on.' That's right: we take concrete slab that's been defaced with graffiti, we yank it out of the wall it was originally part of, and make it an art installation surrounded by thick glass. No irony there.

photo: My favourite portrait of me in the last several years - thanks Sarah. At Waterpark Place.