Getting the flavor of...A high-wire act in Canada

A high-wire act in Canada

The EdgeWalk in Toronto is “definitely not for the faint of stomach,” said Katie Johnston in The Boston Globe. The experience, which began scaring the bejesus out of visitors to the city’s landmark CN Tower in August, costs about $170 and begins on the ground with a Breathalyzer test. No sooner had I been deemed sober and issued a red jumpsuit than “we were in the elevator, zipping 116 stories up” inside the communications tower—North America’s tallest structure—while music played to pump us up. (Van Halen’s “Jump” was played by mistake, we were assured.) I groaned when I stepped out onto the 5-foot-wide ledge, becoming dizzy at the thought that the only thing protecting me from a 1,200-foot fall was a thin harness. It took me half an hour to complete the full circle around the tower, “my knees trembling violently” much of the way. I would never, ever do it again, but it was “the most exhilarating 500-foot walk of my life.”

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Surprise was my initial reaction when the National Trust for Historic Preservation put San Angelo, Texas, on its distinctive destinations list, said Joe Yonan in The Washington Post. Until a recent return visit, I thought the most distinctive feature of my West Texas hometown was that it seems four-plus hours from anything. I’ll admit that Miss Hattie’s Bordello Museum has always been fun, and it’s nice to have Fort Concho, “one of the best-preserved frontier citadels in the nation.” But I had to look with fresh eyes to discover why the International Waterlily Collection at Civic League Park has “become a bona fide sensation”: The flowers on the six ponds come in a riot of colors, and the place “casts a spell.” Later, I visited Paintbrush Alley, a collaborative mural so realistic that I didn’t know which buildings were real and which fake. What I did know, finally, was that “my hometown might actually be a little hip.”