Day 3
Old Toronto
It’s worth mentioning that not only was it a Sunday but it was Easter Sunday, so there was an understandable lack of activity and a number of places were not open. Again a lot of hiking this time covering around 10Km.
Starting at Union station we headed south to the harbour, in the hope we could follow the lake shore, but found the only way eastwards was along Queens Quay East, while industrial and marine buildings occupied the space by the lake shore. Not particularly interesting, so we headed north to St Lawrence Market. That was closed, but nearby there’s the Goodridge Building, also known as the flatiron building, so called because its narrow angular shape looks is very much like an old fire heated flatirons. It’s also probably a classic photographers shot as by itself its photogenic, but its backdropped by the CN Tower and the towers of the IBO building. In the halls opposite to the St Lawrence Market a regular Sunday antiques market was in full swing. Not quite to Tini’s taste, but provided me with the opportunity to look around and get a flavour of what was available.
Further east we looked around the Distillery Historic District. These are the preserved remains of the Goodridge & distillery building complex, and now home to a number of designer shops. The prices we found however were rather off putting even for mass produced designer items and some ‘really’ interesting potential chocolates, remained unpurchased.
A little dissappointed we continued our walk, this time back towards the city centre via Adelaide Street passing by the 19 Century buildings of the old post office and Upper Bank of Canada. If you are photographer, the buildings of the financial district will as they did me offer lots of photographic opportunities. An enterprising child on a skateboard doing stunts offered to let me take a photo when asked for dollar, hence the couple of shots called “For a Loonie”, which is a Canadian dollar.
At the Dominion Centre we stopped to look at some modern Inuit art, before taking advantage of the underground walkways to weave our way north towards the Eton Centre coming out near the controversial City Hall that’s the Osgoode Centre and sampling Canadian versions of hotdog and chips, while watching the ice skating. What’s the difference with Canadian versions of hotdogs? Canadian chips tend to be homestyle with the potatoe skins while most stalls offered chunky German, Polish Mild or Spicy Italian sausages, not the rather pathetic frankfurter style usually offered in the UK. If you want you can have your chips with poutie, gravy and chunks of curd cheese. Be aware these tend to make a meal in themselves and not necessarily a snack and the reason why we did not go out to eat that night.
Which reminds me although there are MacDonalds and Subway sandwich places around, the major chain here is Tim Horton’s and as well a variety of good alternative fast food places.
