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June 01, 2008
Toronto: What I Liked
CN Tower, Toronto
Two and a half days in Toronto is not much time. It is not enough time to experience a decent sample of what the city has to offer, let alone to get a good feeling of what the city is really like.
Given that our stay at the Sheraton Centre Toronto was the worst part of our trip (I won't go into that here; let's just say that the $18 veggie burger was not the only rip off there), I wanted to talk about some of the great things I liked about Toronto.
View from the CN Tower, Toronto
Toronto is a huge city. It is big not only in population and area, but in vertical space as well. Unlike Shawn, I am not a huge fan of high views, so I let him go on his own to the CN Tower to get his fix. The pictures he took there show how massive the city is, in terms of big, tall buildings. I have yet to reach New York City, but Toronto is in many ways how I picture it: skyscrapers cluttered together perilously close and teeming with surging masses of people betweent them.
View from the CN Tower, Toronto
I also liked that the people here are of all different types. Half of the population here is foreign-born. We had a cab driver from Kenya that told us about being thrown into jail in the United States at a border crossing and being held for six hours in a crowded cell just because the country where he was born (but hasn't lived for more than 20 years) is on "the list." We heard all kinds of different languages on the radio here, many that I couldn't identify, and of course, the ubiquitous French.
Multilingual Signage, Royal Ontario Museum
I love Mexican food. I have found a number of places in Guadalajara that have tasty delights that I miss already, having been on the road for a couple of weeks. Yet the ethnic diversity results in a great diversity of ethnic restaurants, the likes of which I'm not even sure they have in Mexico City. We didn't eat there, but yesterday we passed an Eritrian restaurant. We were so taken with Full Moon Vegetarian Restaurant (638 Dundas Street West, 416/203-1210), a place that serves a huge selection of all-vegetarian Chinese dishes, that we ate there twice. We also had great Indian and Thai food too.
Full Moon Vegetarian Restaurant
This was a sauteed eggplant with vegetarian ham, which had a beautiful palette of rich colors.
Eggplant with Vegetarian Ham, Full Moon restuarnat
Big cities always have the best graffiti, and Toronto has some of the best I've seen in a while. Moreover, one doesn't tend to see all that many boring, crappy tags, but when there is graffiti, it's almost always the elaborate kind that demands real artistic talent.
Graffiti, Toronto
I don't like to see Shawn in pain, but this was one of the funniest unexpected things I saw on the trip. I looked up from taking that last shot and saw him bent over and rubbing his back next to this sign. I quickly snapped another shot just because the symmetry was so funny.
Shawn In jured, Toronto
Posted by crispy at June 1, 2008 11:45 PM
Comments
NICE!
Posted by: Akira at June 2, 2008 01:51 PM
New York: "Toronto is in many ways how I picture it "
my understanding is that Toronto is actually clean.
i can't WAIT to see your reaction to NYC. :)
Posted by: brett at June 3, 2008 03:44 AM
"Toronto: What I Liked"
When are we going to get, "Toronto: What Made Me Get Pissed, Destroy"?
Posted by: Mark Allen at June 3, 2008 11:38 AM