In a way, it was a bit of a staycation.
Unlike our big vacation, this time last year, DW and I were in familiar territory. There was no town or city that we hadn't visited before, although some we hadn't been to in 29 years. But while we spent the first few days of our vacation where we've been to several times already, this year, we tried to do as many different things as we could.
It was a vacation to see family and friends, and not a single day went by when we didn't see either. And it was marvelous.
As with vacations of the past, I thought I would share the highlights with you over the next few days. Sound good?
We packed up our car on the Friday night, and early the next morning, we drove down to Toronto and went straight to Kid 2's apartment. She had moved a couple of months earlier, and while I had seen her new place when I had helped her move, DW hadn't seen the place nor the neighbourhood. We had a quick tour, reunited with Kid 2's cat, Lily, and then headed for lunch.
We drove down to Toronto's harbourfront and stopped at Amsterdam Brewhouse. While I've had many of their brews over the years, I've never actually visited the brewery. The restaurant part is huge and bustling, with good service and tasty food. I tried a refreshing NEIPA, Neon Haze, and it was perfect with my smoked brisket sandwich.
After lunch, DW, Kid 2, and I wandered the harbourfront and generally tried to spend as much time with Kid 2 as possible. We took her grocery shopping at a Loblaw's next to our hotel and told her to take advantage of having her parents in town, and to fill up the shopping cart as much as possible.
Because downtown parking in Toronto is expensive for two days and our hotel wanted to charge us an additional $70 to leave our car with them, we took advantage of the fact that Kid 2's house has a parking lot that no one uses. It cost DW and me a combined total of $13.20 to ride public transit to drop off and pick up the car, and it tended to take more than a half hour to get from the downtown core to the Corso Italia neighbourhood, it was worth it.
And we also learned that you can now tap your debit card, credit card, or smartphone to ride the TTC, which was a huge convenience, as neither DW nor I had a Presto card and we didn't have to deal with tokens (does the TTC even still use tokens?). I used the Google Pay feature on my smartphone for the very first time and felt like I was one of the cool kids.
(I know, as soon as you think you're cool, you're not.)
Kid 2 had to bid us an early evening because she had to be at work for 6 am the next day, so we joined one of our friends, Tamara, who lives off the Danforth, for a cultural evening of Nuit Blanche, which was being held throughout the city's downtown. We wandered for several kilometres, seeing light shows, sculptures, displays, and dances, and heard bird squawks through speakers. We even interacted with a silent disco, where we heard music through headsets and danced with people who were listening to the same channel as us (a red or green light on the headset indicated to others the channel to which you were listening).
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| Where our walking tour ended. |
On Sunday, DW and I spent the morning at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and took in a photo exhibit by German photographer, Wolfgang Tillmans. His work is interesting and he had a few images that inspired me, and others that had me scratching my head (what do I do to get famous??). But all of his photos had me thinking.
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| AGO stairway. |
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| Looking south from the AGO. |
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| Reflection of Dundas Street on the front of the AGO. |
For lunch, DW and I found a Korean restaurant that served our favourite meal, dolsot bibimbap, a rice and veggie dish that is served in a firey-hot stone bowl. It was authentic but did not quite take me back to the meal I had in Chŏnju, in 2019. But it was very good, the staff were outstanding, and they seemed amused by my attempts to speak Hangul.
Kamsa-habnida—thank you.
Majiseyo—delicious.
Pey bulayo—I'm full.
Annyeong—bye.
Kid 2 had a recording gig in the afternoon, so DW and I joined a walking tour of the old newspaper district in York, Toronto's first neighbourhood. We walked along King Street East, from where the Globe and Mail offices stand, all the way to Victoria Street. We learned a lot about the history of this area and our guide shared some interesting stories. The tour ran about two hours and was well worth it.
For the evening, DW and I once again joined Tamara, plus our friends, Mari and Pete, from Mississauga, for a dinner in the Kensington-Chinatown neighbourhood, where DW and I dined again on Asian food at the House of Gourmet, a large and lively Chinese restaurant.
Afterwards, the five of us walked along Dundas Street, across from the AGO, to the Village Genius Pub (formerly, the Village Idiot, until someone complained—idiot!) for some drinks and more catching up before we all went our separate ways for the night.
We checked out of our hotel on Monday morning but had them hold our luggage until noon so that we could explore the downtown core one more time. DW and I walked east, along Carlton Street (it's so hard for me to not add an E to that name), until we came to Allan Gardens, which has some Victorian-styled greenhouses and is a great stop for photos. But part of the park is filled with tents with homeless people, and so not to disturb them, we decided to continue along Carlton Street, into Cabbagetown.
We wandered the neighbourhood and further east on Carlton Street, which was now in a residence that reminded us of parts of the Glebe, in Ottawa, with the old and well-kept houses. I'll have more to say about them on Thursday.
Carlton Street ends just before the Don River, at a large park and a working farm, Riverdale. This is a part of Toronto that we've never explored and knew nothing about. Who thought we'd see sheep, goats, chickens, and horses in the east end of Cabbagetown? (We had never been to Cabbagetown before, either.)
We explored the barns, farmhouse, and other buildings, which are a great place to take kids (we saw a lot of them with their caregivers and parents). I also had a beautiful, friendly black cat visit me while I was sitting on a Muskoka chair, waiting for DW to come back from the washroom. He even hopped onto my lap, unsolicited.
We had to get back to our hotel and get back on the road, so we took a street car back to our hotel, retrieved our bags, and transferred onto the subway to make our way back to Kid 2's place, where we treated her to lunch before we said farewell.
(Luckily, we'll see her again this coming weekend, as we're bringing Kid 1 and my parents to visit Toronto for the Thanksgiving long weekend.)
We retrieved our car and made our way to Mississauga, where Mari and Pete offered to put us up for the night. We had another great visit before continuing on with the next leg of our road trip.
I'll share that part on Friday. Stay tuned...
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