Weekend in TO (Toronto, Ontario)

We did a long weekend in Toronto last weekend. It was about a 5 hour drive - although we made it longer by missing a highway junction and taking the streets from outer Toronto into downtown. Our introduction to the city was via Yonge Street, which turned out to be the longest street in the world (per the guidebook) - definitely felt like it - stores and restaurants and people for miles. After settling in to the hotel, it was pretty much a whirlwind of activity. We walked over to the historic St. Lawrence market (top 25 food halls in the world, per food & wine) to check out the wares/food and then took a self-guided (Dave guides, I follow) walking tour of the historic downtown area. Thai food (delicious) for dinner. Saturday we headed out via subway & bus to the Ontario Science Center and spent the morning there. It's kind of like a big exploratorium - but a little less fun. I made a shoe out of cardboard, glue & fabric (not sure how science-y that was, but I had a good time!) while Dave made stop-motion videos. From there, we subway'd back to the main part of town and walked around Korea-town, Little Italy and Chinatown. We found the hodo-kwaja (Korean walnut cake store) and bought a bunch of those to munch on (pretty much tai-yaki for the uninitiated) and had a nice lunch al fresco at bar italia in Little Italy. After a short rest back at the hotel, we headed out to see the CN Tower (tallest tower in the world) and took the glass elevator ride up. It was a clear day turning into dusk, so really pretty views of the city & the lake (Lake Ontario, my 3rd great lake). There was a freaky glass floor and so we could see the Argonauts (Toronto's CFL team) waaaay below. From there, we went to the Chinese Lantern Festival on the waterfront. It's hard to explain, but it's an exhibit of these huge lit lanterns depicting Chinese history. (Picture of Sean from Xi'an for Ernest). Sunday morning, we had a leisurely breakfast, did some shopping on outer Queen street (gentrifying neighborhood with some hipster stores like this and this and then headed home. We stopped on the way back in Stratford (yes, on the river Avon) and checked out the town that is host to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival every summer. It's a tiny little town with nothing much going on except the festival - but since it was a nice day, we walked along the river for a bit, checked out the historical architecture and had a nice lunch.

All in all, a thumbs up for Toronto - and if anyone visits, we'll meet you there! Maybe Montreal next year. . .more photos of the Chinese lanterns here.