First day in Toronto - 02/05/2016
After a good night sleep, even though some still had to combat their jetlag, our first day in Toronto turned out to be a rather nice one!
Although the day started out being slightly gloomy, during the morning the weather improved a lot, so much so that during the afternoon we could enjoy the warm Canadian sun.
In the morning we enjoyed a good breakfast, afterwards a few of us went out to pickup our rental cars. These will be used to visit companies in Toronto and to do some sightseeing.
In the afternoon we visited renowned networking company Cisco. There we got a presentation about the Toronto Waterfront city-revitalization project. We discussed the recent and planned developments in the Toronto Waterfront neighbourhood, and how this intertwined with modern technology. This was followed by a presentation by dr. Rick Huijbregts from Cisco. He discussed with us the challenges Cisco faces in trailblazing the implementation of networking technologies for novel applications. Moreover he showed us their "Innovation Lab" displaying some of their recent projects. He also shared with us a bit of his experiences. Among others how he, as a construction engineering student at the TU Delft, ended up working for Cisco at the other side of the big pond.
The end of the afternoon was left open so we went to some sights in smaller groups. Among others the CN-tower, Distillery district and the Toronto islands were visited.
The active part of the day was concluded by cooking in the kitchen under the HI-Toronto hostel, where we will stay for the week. During diner we discussed the experiences of the day, and looked forward to what Toronto still has in store for us.
By: Berjan Westerdijk