After Nia­gara Falls, we drove to Toronto to attend the R.E.M con­cert in the evening. We arrived early on a Sun­day and it was hot and quiet.

We stayed at the same place as last time, the Neil Wycik Col­lege down­town which rent rooms dur­ing the sum­mer. It’s cheap, the room are tiny (barely have room for two small beds and Feng actu­ally slept on the floor) and the bath­room is shared with two entire floors (think drunk uni­ver­sity stu­dents par­ty­ing) but we don’t care since we spend most of the time outside.

One good thing in the place we stayed at is the rooftop, it has a really nice view of Toronto’s skyline.

We started walk­ing around the city at noon. I hadn’t seen the City Hall plaza dur­ing the sum­mer in a while and I could barely rec­og­nize it. Last time I was there, it was a skat­ing rink!

This is Toronto’s Hockey Hall of Fame. I love the lit­tle play­ers on the wall!

In the after­noon, we walked in Chi­na­town, a huge dis­trict in Toronto, much big­ger than the one in Ottawa. It was extremely hot and we kept on stop­ping by lit­tle shops to buy drinks. I loved the nuts, spices and veg­gies on sale on the sidewalk.

The busi­ness dis­trict was empty. Dom­i­nated by huge sky­scrap­ers, the place is usu­ally buzzing. A Star­buck in each block pro­vides office work­ers with their morn­ing drug and packed tramway stop every few min­utes. But on Sun­day, sounds are muf­fled and there are few pedes­tri­ans. We felt lost among the sky­scrap­ers.

Sweaty, hun­gry and tired, we headed back to the hos­tel to take a shower and then go to the Ontario Place, where the con­cert was.

Related arti­cles:

1. The 416 Escape
2. Toronto Har­bor
3. Toronto, Here We Are Again
4. Nel­son: From Venezuela to Toronto
5. Down­town Toronto