Eastern Canada Part 1: Toronto

Ok, enough with the food. This is supposed to be a food and travel blog and I have written very little about traveling. Well, fortunately, that stops now.

I recently got back from a week long vacation touring eastern Canada with 3 aunts, an uncle and a grandparent. Our first stop was Toronto, which is what this blog post is going to be about. We spent one day in Toronto before heading to our next destination.

Because my aunts couldn't walk a lot, we drove a rental car around the city and I pointed the sites out to them. We drove along the Harborfront, saw the CN tower and the Rogers Center, circled Kensington market, ooohed and aaahed at the shops around the Bloor and Bay area and drove by the University of Toronto. And because we had a car, I took them uptown as well to show them the more Asian North York.

We didn't just drive around all day though. We made a couple of stops at my favorite places in Toronto. The first one was the Distillery District. When I visited my best friend Q in Toronto earlier this year, I took her there as well and we both really loved it. The Distillery District is an internationally acclaimed village of brick-lined streets and dozens of vibrantly restored Victorian Industrial buildings. It is home to art galleries, fashion, design and jewelry boutiques, unique cafes and award-winning restaurants.

Whenever I visit this place, I always make it a point to step inside the best chocolate shop I know - Soma. Soma makes its chocolates directly from cacao beans imported from around the world, including the Dominican Republic, Madagascar, Costa Rica and Panama. Their chocolates always have this rich and unique bitter flavor that I love. They aren't as sweet as other chocolates I've had and each chocolate bar is created from a unique blend of fruits and spices. As soon as you step into the store, the strong smell of chocolate is unavoidable. They give you a basket to place your purchases in so that they are always at room temperature while you complete your selection and wait to pay for them. The shop also has a hot chocolate bar, offering different flavors of hot chocolate. When I brought my dad here back in 2008, he absolutely enjoyed the Mayan hot chocolate and raved about it all the time and purchased a few bags of the same hot chocolate mix to bring home.

The Distillery District is very close to St. Lawrence Market, so that is where I took my relatives next. St. Lawrence Market boasts two floors of fresh produce, pasta, meat, delicacies, food stands and other products. It is a great place for locals to hang out and shop for fresh ingredients for their home-cooked meals.

As we didn't have a kitchen to go home to, we had to satisfy ourselves with a take out from the busy fish and chips stand. The grilled salmon couldn't compare with the salmon I had at the Crab Pot in Seattle, but I was very happy with the Boston bluefish and chips. The fish could be more buttery, but the skinny curly fries that accompanied it were just exactly the kind of fries I wanted to have as a side dish to anything - burgers, fish, sandwiches, anything.

We spent around 2 hours roaming around the market before heading back to the hotel, tired and spent. I had plans to meet some friends for dinner and we ended up at a Greek restaurant in Mississauga called Colossus where I had my usual order of Moussaka and the best Greek dessert I've tastes, thanks to the ingenuity of R who ordered it. He of course didn't remember what it's called, but it was some sort of custard dessert with a flaky crust, adorned with a cinnamon stick, strawberries and a dollop of whipped cream. It is cold, refreshing, sweet, but not too sweet, moist and tasted strongly of cinnamon which was why it ranked high in my list.

Traffic was bad in downtown Toronto that evening because the Nuit Blanche (an art event around downtown) was happening at the time. So, by the time I got back to the hotel, I have been awake for more than 36 hours, tired, but incredibly happy because I had just spent one of the best days of my life in one of my favorite cities in the world.

That's Toronto for you!