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Briefly Toronto
Oct. 7th, 2010 07:15 pmI haven't been lax in keeping up the "Keep Livejournal Alive" campaign, i've been away in Toronto! I met ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gramie_dee who flew in on Saturday evening. We met up with lots of long time Corrie friends on Sunday and had a wander around Yonge Street, (pronounced like Young) which is the longest street in the world, it goes up north right through the province of Ontario for hundreds of miles. The main bits, though, through the city of Toronto go past tall buildings, posh shops, theatres and some seedy bits too, all beside each other sometimes. We had a meal at Jack Astor's later which was just around the corner so it was convenient.
Monday, in the damp overcast weather, we took a bus tour around the city and then checked out Chinatown. We bought some chrysanthemum tea that we'd tried in a shop and then went for dim sum for lunch. That was our first time and it was quite an experience. It was a large restaurant nearly 99% filled with Chinese people. There were people wheeling carts with bamboo basket stacked on them, each having a few pieces of food in them. Most of them didn't seem to speak English and even if they could, with the din in the restaurant and the accent, I don't think i could have made out what they said anyway. We just had a look at what was offered and gestured to accept some of it. We got chopsticks. No other options. We missed the carts with the soup and the noodles. That never reached us until later and we had had our fill by then. The various foods were not bad, some quite tasty. No idea what any of it was aside from rice that was steamed inside a big leaf with garlic in it and some other bits. Quite nice, actually. Some of the dumplings did have prawns inside but when we had them put on the table, we didn't know as they are wrapped in a semi-transparent white cover. Most of what we had was. They just kept circling things on a card on the table. I had no idea how much each basket would cost so braced myself but when Graham came back from the cashier, he said it was only $20 total! Wow!
From there we walked through the area, looking in a couple of the shops and then came up to Kensington Avenue which is the main drag for the Kensington Market, a very different neighbourhood than the one we just left. It's several blocks of older houses that have all been painted bright colours. Many of them have shops that sell vintage clothes and jewelry, or crafts, maybe music though we didn't see that. There are also fruit and veg stands and also stores for meats, fish and cheese. There are bakeries and little cafes and restaurants too. Graham found a second hand leather biker jacket in excellent condition for 80 dollars taxes in. Excellent! We had cake and coffee in one tiny place that was really mainly take out and did catering but had a counter with two stools where we sat.
We walked back around to the Art Gallery where we'd got off the tour bus, and en route passed some nice streets with some schools and the Italian Embassy. We also stopped into an old branch of the Toronto city library to use the toilets. Nice building! Old doors, brass railings on the stairs. We finished the tour and then went to the CN Tower. Up the outside elevator in 58 seconds and checked out the views... I have a couple of photos i took from there in 1999 and one in particular was interesting to see how the shoreline has changed. (All the photos from toronto are here) There are way more condo buildings along the shoreline now in just 11 years!
It was raining when we came out of there after having a cup of coffee/tea in one of the restaurants (not the really expensive revolving one!) so we didn't go on the free boat tour that came with the bus tour. One really good thing, the bus tour ticket is good for 7 days so you could use that for transportation to the various tourist sites if you were staying for awhile as long as you were willing to sit through the tour each time to get to the attraction. We just went back to the hotel and ate at the pub in the hotel for our supper. Later we met up with a long time internet friend of Graham's and her husband. We walked a few blocks past the train station to a nice pub, called, i think C'est Moi or something like that. They only carry micro brewed beers, no commercial ones like Labatt's or Molsons. Nice place and i think the food might be good too though we didn't eat. Beer was very good, though! Good beer, good company!
Tuesday was the day we were going to Niagara Falls. It rained. It rained fairly hard. *sigh* We picked up the rental car anyway, hoping we could drive out of the worst of it which we did. We finally got there with one or two wrong turns. When we arrived, we paid to park and went to the main visitor centre at the falls and decided to have lunch there. Got a seat right by the window overlooking the falls and watched the tourists with their umbrellas walking around. By the time we went out the rain had kindly stopped for a bit so we did get to walk around taking photos and staying more or less dry aside from the spray from the falls. It wasn't too bad, though, as it wasn't very windy. We decided against the maid of the Mist boat tour to the base of the falls as it looked pretty cold and rough on the river. There wasn't anything else we really planned on doing there in Niagara though there are quite a few other attractions, some tacky, some probably interesting. I wanted to go to the quaint Niagara-on-the-Lake to look at the pretty shops so we got back in the car and drove along the road that follows the end of the lake/river. And here came the rain again.
We walked around a little and then went in to an Irish tea room in the back of a shop that sold Irish woolens and goods and had lovely coffee and tea and really really rich chocolate cake! It was really dense and moist, Graham's flavoured with Bailey's and mine with Bushmill's whiskey. Whooo! And the rain had nearly stopped when we came back out so we window shopped and looked in some of the stores. It really is a very pretty town even if busloads of tourists get dropped there daily. As the weather really was depressing, we decided to go back to the city early and managed to get there and find our way off the expressway without getting lost or getting off on the wrong ramp. The rental people were surprised we were back that early but it wasn't great weather to be out and about. We did what we went to do and that was the main thing.
We relaxed in the hotel room for awhile, having some Tim's sandwiches and drinks. Later, we went to the hotel pub again and had a lovely visit withlola_is_naughty after he got off work.
Back to the airport on Wednesday early to come back home here. The rest of the vacation will be easier on the feet and we can mainly sleep in every day. Got some groceries and did laundry today and that reminds me, i gotta get the stuff from the dryer so i better go do that now.
gramie_dee who flew in on Saturday evening. We met up with lots of long time Corrie friends on Sunday and had a wander around Yonge Street, (pronounced like Young) which is the longest street in the world, it goes up north right through the province of Ontario for hundreds of miles. The main bits, though, through the city of Toronto go past tall buildings, posh shops, theatres and some seedy bits too, all beside each other sometimes. We had a meal at Jack Astor's later which was just around the corner so it was convenient. Monday, in the damp overcast weather, we took a bus tour around the city and then checked out Chinatown. We bought some chrysanthemum tea that we'd tried in a shop and then went for dim sum for lunch. That was our first time and it was quite an experience. It was a large restaurant nearly 99% filled with Chinese people. There were people wheeling carts with bamboo basket stacked on them, each having a few pieces of food in them. Most of them didn't seem to speak English and even if they could, with the din in the restaurant and the accent, I don't think i could have made out what they said anyway. We just had a look at what was offered and gestured to accept some of it. We got chopsticks. No other options. We missed the carts with the soup and the noodles. That never reached us until later and we had had our fill by then. The various foods were not bad, some quite tasty. No idea what any of it was aside from rice that was steamed inside a big leaf with garlic in it and some other bits. Quite nice, actually. Some of the dumplings did have prawns inside but when we had them put on the table, we didn't know as they are wrapped in a semi-transparent white cover. Most of what we had was. They just kept circling things on a card on the table. I had no idea how much each basket would cost so braced myself but when Graham came back from the cashier, he said it was only $20 total! Wow!
From there we walked through the area, looking in a couple of the shops and then came up to Kensington Avenue which is the main drag for the Kensington Market, a very different neighbourhood than the one we just left. It's several blocks of older houses that have all been painted bright colours. Many of them have shops that sell vintage clothes and jewelry, or crafts, maybe music though we didn't see that. There are also fruit and veg stands and also stores for meats, fish and cheese. There are bakeries and little cafes and restaurants too. Graham found a second hand leather biker jacket in excellent condition for 80 dollars taxes in. Excellent! We had cake and coffee in one tiny place that was really mainly take out and did catering but had a counter with two stools where we sat.
We walked back around to the Art Gallery where we'd got off the tour bus, and en route passed some nice streets with some schools and the Italian Embassy. We also stopped into an old branch of the Toronto city library to use the toilets. Nice building! Old doors, brass railings on the stairs. We finished the tour and then went to the CN Tower. Up the outside elevator in 58 seconds and checked out the views... I have a couple of photos i took from there in 1999 and one in particular was interesting to see how the shoreline has changed. (All the photos from toronto are here) There are way more condo buildings along the shoreline now in just 11 years!
It was raining when we came out of there after having a cup of coffee/tea in one of the restaurants (not the really expensive revolving one!) so we didn't go on the free boat tour that came with the bus tour. One really good thing, the bus tour ticket is good for 7 days so you could use that for transportation to the various tourist sites if you were staying for awhile as long as you were willing to sit through the tour each time to get to the attraction. We just went back to the hotel and ate at the pub in the hotel for our supper. Later we met up with a long time internet friend of Graham's and her husband. We walked a few blocks past the train station to a nice pub, called, i think C'est Moi or something like that. They only carry micro brewed beers, no commercial ones like Labatt's or Molsons. Nice place and i think the food might be good too though we didn't eat. Beer was very good, though! Good beer, good company!
Tuesday was the day we were going to Niagara Falls. It rained. It rained fairly hard. *sigh* We picked up the rental car anyway, hoping we could drive out of the worst of it which we did. We finally got there with one or two wrong turns. When we arrived, we paid to park and went to the main visitor centre at the falls and decided to have lunch there. Got a seat right by the window overlooking the falls and watched the tourists with their umbrellas walking around. By the time we went out the rain had kindly stopped for a bit so we did get to walk around taking photos and staying more or less dry aside from the spray from the falls. It wasn't too bad, though, as it wasn't very windy. We decided against the maid of the Mist boat tour to the base of the falls as it looked pretty cold and rough on the river. There wasn't anything else we really planned on doing there in Niagara though there are quite a few other attractions, some tacky, some probably interesting. I wanted to go to the quaint Niagara-on-the-Lake to look at the pretty shops so we got back in the car and drove along the road that follows the end of the lake/river. And here came the rain again.
We walked around a little and then went in to an Irish tea room in the back of a shop that sold Irish woolens and goods and had lovely coffee and tea and really really rich chocolate cake! It was really dense and moist, Graham's flavoured with Bailey's and mine with Bushmill's whiskey. Whooo! And the rain had nearly stopped when we came back out so we window shopped and looked in some of the stores. It really is a very pretty town even if busloads of tourists get dropped there daily. As the weather really was depressing, we decided to go back to the city early and managed to get there and find our way off the expressway without getting lost or getting off on the wrong ramp. The rental people were surprised we were back that early but it wasn't great weather to be out and about. We did what we went to do and that was the main thing.
We relaxed in the hotel room for awhile, having some Tim's sandwiches and drinks. Later, we went to the hotel pub again and had a lovely visit with
lola_is_naughty after he got off work. Back to the airport on Wednesday early to come back home here. The rest of the vacation will be easier on the feet and we can mainly sleep in every day. Got some groceries and did laundry today and that reminds me, i gotta get the stuff from the dryer so i better go do that now.
