Downtown Toronto

I will always remem­ber the first time I came to Toronto.

It was in 2002, after our crazy long trip from Mex­ico to Brazil. I had never been to North Amer­ica before and I wanted to see Canada, so I flew back to Toronto with Feng. It was Feb­ru­ary and I didn’t have any warm clothes after a few months in Latin Amer­ica. The only jacket I had was a thin leather jacket I had bought in Argentina dur­ing the Peso cri­sis. Feng had warned me: it was going to be cold.

Nathan Phillips Square

In Ottawa, we have the Rideau Canal. In Toronto, local pol­ish their skat­ing skills on Nathan Phillips Square, where the New Year cel­e­bra­tions took place.

Toron­to­ni­ans seemed to have a blast with friends and fam­ily as they were skat­ing around the man-made ice rink that cov­ers the square. I wanted to try it, but the queue at the skate rental was huge!

Yonge & Dundas

Dun­das Square, located at the inter­sec­tion of busy Yonge Street and Dun­das street, is famous for host­ing pub­lic events. This is one of the busiest inter­sec­tion in Toronto. The square is sur­rounded on all sides by gigan­tic com­mer­cial bill­boards, which is fairly unique (and con­tro­ver­sial) in Canada.

Kensington Market

Past Chi­na­town, we ended up in another cute mul­ti­cul­tural neigh­bor­hood: Kens­ing­ton Mar­ket. The eclec­tic shops and cafés are stuck between Spad­ina and Lit­tle Italy. We spot­ted Latino, Euro­pean, Middle-Eastern and North African small busi­nesses and vin­tage stores in old Vic­to­rian houses.

Toronto's Chinatown

Toronto’s Chi­na­town didn’t dis­ap­point me. It was col­or­ful, messy and it smelled of exotic and spicy food. I observed the peo­ple attend­ing their daily busi­ness: bik­ing around, shop­ping, cook­ing and chatting.

New Year In Toronto

In Toronto, most of the party takes place down­town, in Nathan Phillips Square, at the cor­ner of Queen and Bay. There is a small skate rink (small by Ottawa stan­dards — remem­ber, we have the 7.8 kilo­me­ters long Rideau Canal!) and skat­ing seemed to be the num­ber one activity.

A Sunday In Toronto

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.

The 416 Escape

I had landed in Toronto quite a few time since it’s Ontario’s big hub. The city was my first stop in Canada when we came from Brazil in 2002 and I went numer­ous time since then. How­ever, I never really had the chance to explore it since I mostly went there dur­ing win­ter time. Oh, and I was broke, too. So I was look­ing for­ward to explor­ing the big city.