Sunday 27 April 2014

Trip to Toronto

I’ve been wanting to do something with my time off and finally got to go on a day trip to Toronto.
  
 
I found this tour called Tasty Tours Toronto in the Toronto travel guide and decided it sounded kind of interesting. It said it was a sweets tour which, if anyone knows me, is right up my alley. And since it’s free if it’s your birthday month, I decided I wanted to go. Unfortunately it wasn’t what I expected. It was more of a multicultural tour, which is cool in theory, but I’m not big on trying new things. And I don’t recall them saying anything about that on the website (though I suppose if I knew anything about Kensington Market I could have figured that out). Regardless, I did try things.
 
The first stop was a Chinese bakery, and we tried egg tarts. Which are basically a custard tart with more egg than normal. It was too eggy for me, but surprisingly I didn’t mind the pasty (normally I hate pie crusts). Josh didn’t find it too bad.
 
On our way to our second stop we paused out front of a synagogue and then randomly got a tour from one of the employees who passed by us and invited us in. Which was interesting.

3rd oldest synagogue in Canada...I think.

 
The second stop was a Middle Eastern shop. I tried (and did not like) baklava and Josh had Turkish delight. Which I think he was super excited about.
 
The third stop we made was at a Mexican place. So we had churros. I got mine filled with chocolate. Josh said they were “nothing special” but I actually thought it was pretty good. Chocolate kept dripping out the bottom though.
 
On our way to our next stop we passed a comic book store and Josh got very excited about it, but we didn’t think we’d be able to find it after our last stop of the tour so then he was kind of disappointed.
 
The next stop was Wanda’s Pie in the Sky. We (thankfully) didn’t have pie, we got cupcakes (yay!). I’m actually very critical of cupcakes I apparently think I’m some sort of cupcake connoisseur (hah!). The cupcake, well half a cupcake, I had was chocolate and had some sort of cream in the middle. It wasn’t overly fantastic. The cupcake wasn’t anything special, not very moist, and the cream filling wasn’t very creamy or fluffy, it was almost kind of hard.
 
The last stop on our tour was the Blue Banana Market. I actually thought the market itself was fairly interesting. It had things from a bunch of different vendors but none of them were actually there. If that makes any sense. We didn’t buy from individual people, there was one central cash for everything. So there we got to try a very expensive, apparently fancy chocolate. It was dark chocolate, which I’m not overly fond of, and it kind of had a fruity flavour to it that was kind of weird. And since it’s been two weeks I can’t actually remember the name of the company. It’s Canadian. I think. Haha. We also got to try marshmallows. Real marshmallows! They had a maple flavour to them. They were kind of fun.
 
After the tour was finished we went to look around the market. There were so many things. Jewellery and clothes, British and Canadian things, souvenirs and stationary, bath and home accessories, and to Josh’s delight, Jelly Belly’s that you could mix and match your own flavours. So he got some of those and I found myself a Harry Potter magnet. I was torn between getting the Hogwarts or Gryffindor crests but I went with Hogwarts.
 
The market ended up being right next to the comic book store we had passed so I let Josh go in. Since I dragged him on the tour with me I figured it w3as the least I could do. He had a lovely geeked out conversation with the store worker while I looked around. I saw a really cool Doctor Who mug and am now kicking myself for not buying it. (Side note: the guy in the shop was playing music on records!)
 
Overall the tour was alright. I’m glad I didn’t pay for mine but it was interesting. Though I don’t think I’d recommend it to anyone else.
 
After the tour we walked all the way back down Spadina again to get to Front Street where we parked. Because before the tour we went to…
 
Ripley’s Aquarium!
 
Josh has been wanting to go for a while now and I was interested to see what it was like as well. We got through the whole place in about an hour and a half. I would definitely not recommend going on a weekend. It was packed. And strollers everywhere! Drove me crazy. I think if it hadn’t been so busy we could have spent longer but since it was so crowded there were some things we couldn’t see that well so we just sort of moved on. Though I did stop and wait to stand on this platform that tells you how much money you would make if you were your weight in tuna. I was $3096!

 
 
There was a really cool little moving walkway that took you all around one section and at some parts there were actually things swimming above you. Josh could actually reach up and touch the glass so he pretended he was rubbing a shark’s belly. I didn’t see the turtles though L and it made me sad. I did get to see some Nemo’s though. And Dory’s and the “bubbles!” fish. And yes, they had information about each of the fish and they mentioned the movie. We also pet little sting ray thingys. They had a hard shell so they weren’t the fun floaty ones. Josh also pet a shark. Which he said was lame because it was just chilling in the corner of the little pen thing and didn’t move at all. There was also one big tank at the end that had a bunch of sting rays that you could touch, as well as some bonnet head sharks that you couldn’t and some staff scuba diving. I left Josh to try and pet a sting ray (he didn’t, they wouldn’t go near him, but the sharks would) to go lok in the gift shop. Where I bought a postcard (obviously…as I have my collection) and a really cute mug with turtles on it, and I bought Josh a shot glass (to add to his collection). It had a little shark in the middle. I thought it was fun.

 
The aquarium was fun. I would love to go again, hopefully when it’s slightly less busy (Ie not on a weekend and not in the first year it’s been open and super popular lol) and spend a little more time there. But unfortunately it is rather expensive so it probably won’t be for a while.
 
So that was my outing. God I sound like I’m being held captive and am barely ever allowed out into the world lol. I probably won’t be going anywhere else anytime soon but here’s hoping.
 

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