This past weekend I got to go to Toronto to see Erin and see some friends eat lots of food, walk through a lot of Toronto and had a great time.
I arrived late Wednesday night and Erin was there to greet me and we took a cab back because it was late. I slept in a bit as Erin went to her first class. I walked down Bloor St. to the university and met her for lunch. The weather was nice and sunny and in the low teens for most of my trip. It seems like Toronto is a month behind Edmonton in terms of getting to winter. After lunch Erin had another class and I read a magazine for a bit before heading out for a walk around the U of T campus. I took some pictures and quite a few of squirrels. They are out everywhere before I slowed my self down on squirrel pictures. After I got back Erin was done her class and we headed back to her place. Erin made some couscous with some grilled eggplant and zucchini and some tempeh bacon. It was quite good, my first veggie bacon. After supper we went on the hunt for some olives so Erin could make martinis. We went to quite a few stores before we found the right ones. After martinis we made some scrumptious chocolate cupcakes for my birthday.
On Friday we went to Union station to meet Erin’s friend and then chatted with her and had a lunch/snack at Starbucks before walking up University Ave. for a bit before dropping her friend off. We then walked to Kensington Market to a neat vegetarian restaurant called King’s Cafe. It was Asian type food some pretending to be meat or just vegetarian versions of food with meat. We had some dim sum items that were quite tasty though sometimes tricky to eat with chopsticks! It was kind of foggy during the day and really foggy as it got darker and darker. It was quite a neat fog as it did not go that high and was pretty low.
Saturday we met my friend Jamey and his wife and twin girls at the Royal Ontario Museum. We walked around the museum, had lunch and saw more of the museum. We had to check in our backpacks and because they had a jacket in the back pack we got charged for it. We got angry about it but there wasn’t much we could do. I had been there before but nothing really seemed all that familiar to me. I think they have also added on to the building since I was there last. There was a special exhibition on The Warrior Emperor and China’s Terracotta Army it was pretty good but a little busy. It would be nice to go through it when it is less busy and you have a lot of time to read and see everything. No pictures were allowed in the special exhibit. We got some picture’s with Jamey and the babies before they left to go back home.
After the museum we went back to Erin’s place to find a place to eat supper. We found two Italian places that sounded good on Elm street. We took the subway downtown and saw a busy street when we got there. The road was closed and they had a tasting of some sort going. There was also some entertainment like a guy on stilts or a guy twirling fire on a stick. We found the first place but it was full and we needed a reservation. We walked down the street some more and found Frascitati’s. They asked if we had a reservation and we said no and then he said he would go check and fairly quickly came back and got us a nice table. We had bruschetta for an appetizer and some house red wine. We both decided on a creamy tomato angel hair pasta with lobster. It all tasted very good. There were large chunks of lobster in the pasta and even the lobster shells were cut in half and placed on the plate to make it fancy looking. It was a very good meal.
Sunday was my last day before heading back to Edmonton. It was a little rainier today. The other days were all sunny but it wasn’t pouring and much warmer than Edmonton would have been. We took the subway to High Park and walked through part of the park to a big natural pond, Grenadier Pond, that had some ducks and nice houses overlooking it. After our walk Erin made some good Tofu Toes, which are like chicken nuggets but made from Tofu. It doesn’t taste like chicken but they are not greasy at all and go well with different dipping sauces. We then took the subway and bus for a smooth ride to get to the airport.
My plane left a little a late but arrived in Edmonton on time. I had intended on taking the shuttle bus back but for some reason the next one was leaving in 1.5 hours. There were some other people there that were not happy with that so four of us shared a cab and the price ended up being basically the same.
My photos are after the link:
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