A Flying Visit to Toronto

The one major benefit of studying American and Canadian Studies is that the vast majority of my friends from Birmingham are also on a year abroad in North America. I have friends dotted all over the continent, and thus an endless number of potential holiday destinations (if money allows). 

Five of my lovely friends (Eva, Amelia, Suzi, Becca and Cara) are studying in Ontario, so this weekend Lois and I jetted across the country to visit them. The weekend was magical! It was so refreshing to see some familiar faces, and to have a bit of taste of home after 3 months of being pushed out of our comfort zones.

I arrived in Toronto very late on Friday night, and it was about 1:30 am before I managed to meet up with the girls. It was an unusual feeling to fly there, because I was literally flying half way back to England, so I had a vague sense of homesickness when the plane came into land. This soon evaporated though when I saw the girls. We had an Airbnb just outside of Chinatown, an excellent location right by Kensington Market. Although we had a number of problems with the flat (the toilet blocked and the fuse went causing half the electricity and light switches to stop functioning) we still had a cosy time there. After a slow wake up on Saturday morning, and an unsuccessful attempt to cook eggs due to the lack of electricity, we set out into Kensington Market to fill our boots. Until this weekend, I somehow hadn't eaten a single waffle in the whole time I’d been in Canada. Considering the Canadians are so maple syrup obsessed, I felt like this was something that desperately needed to be corrected, so we stopped into Wafles&More for breakfast! Lois and I shared the classic Nutella and banana combo while others opted for syrup, ice cream or, in Becca’s case, salmon and avocado. We had a quick explore around Kensington Market as well. The Market is a very quirky and cool area. There is graffiti art all over, small unusual buildings that host unique and independent cafes and even weed plants growing under heat lamps in shop windows. A few of the girls managed to get to Graffiti Alley which is just by Kensington Market as well. Although I didn’t have a chance to go, their photos looked fantastic, and so it is definitely worth checking out if you are ever in the area. The alley is, as the name suggests, home to some huge and quirky graffiti art.

After the Kensington Market we caught the streetcar down to the Distillery District for the Toronto Christmas market! The streetcar was a fun experience. We don’t have any streetcars or trams in Vancouver – the whole city relies on the sky train and buses – so it was fun to see how this different way of transport worked in Toronto. Also, another side note – Toronto has Uber! Something BC is lacking. Anyway, onto more important things... the Christmas Market!

The Toronto Christmas Market was beautiful. It was a rainy and bleak day but that didn’t stop there from being great energy within the market. The Distillery District is adorable, featuring cobbled streets and breweries where you can buy flights of beer and watch the beer brewed on site – rather like many of the breweries that Vancouver boasts. The cobbled streets were the perfect setting for a Christmas market. You have to pay $6 to get in, but all of the proceeds go to charity so it is definitely worth it! It was November 18^th, and the first weekend that the markets had been open, so I was a little sceptical that it might be too early to start thinking about Christmas, but after going I have concluded that it is never too early for Christmas.

The market featured those classic Christmas stalls, serving piping hot poutine and hot apple cider, as well as small nick-naks, decorations and potential Christmas presents. Most of the stalls were offering freebies and samples, such as soup, chocolate and shortbread, which we happily snacked on as we looked around.  The whole district was decorated beautifully with fairy lights and tinsel, and there was a huge Christmas tree as well as a countdown to Christmas. The atmosphere was very magical, made even more so by being reunited with our friends again. After exploring and shopping, we went into a fairy light tunnel to have some drinks. The drinks in the market are ridiculously expensive, as would be expected, but we deemed it a special occasion and indulged in mulled wine.

The market was highly enjoyable and definitely got me in the Christmassy mood. I think we actually benefitted from the fact that the weather was a bit grey, because it meant the market wasn’t overly crowded, so we actually managed to look at every stall and take our time going around. I think you would need about 2 hours there if you were going! After the Christmas Market we walked back through Queens Street, just generally exploring Toronto as Lois and I had never been. There is so much we didn’t get a chance to do, most specifically going up the CN tower, but as this is $40 and it was a pretty grey day we didn’t think it was worth it.

It was Lois’ 21^st birthday the next day, so Eva and I treated her to an early birthday present by taking her to BITE on Queens Street in Toronto. This is a Lipstick Lab where you can design and make your very own lipstick! I’ve added this in as a side note, because the process of making the lipstick was actually incredibly fun. You get to choose colours and combinations, your finish, how you want it to smell… as three poor students it was pretty fun to pretend that we could afford to frequent such places. With brand new birthday lipstick in hand we set off back to our Airbnb.

That evening, the group of us went to see Mura Masa perform at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto. He was fantastic. I won’t go into great detail about the show, because I don’t consider myself knowledgeable enough to write a review of Mura Masa, but it really was an incredible performance, and we had the best time being stupid and dancing together. It was a great end to a fantastic day and I’ve had ‘Helpline’ stuck in my head ever since. The next day we went to visit Niagara Falls – a trip worthy of its own blog post. And then I flew back to Vancouver on Monday morning in order to be back in time for class in the afternoon! When I say it was a “flying” visit to Toronto, I really mean it, because the time literally flew past.

It was so refreshing to be reunited with my university friends, and I felt like we all benefitted from a break from the year abroad environment. The year abroad is, of course, incredibly fun, but it can be a little overwhelming at times. It was good to go back to some sense of normality. I had the most incredible time in Toronto, and I am keen to see some of the other major cities in Canada now, specifically Montréal and Quebec. However, the flight was 5 hours, so I’m not sure how soon I will be flying back to the East… Time will tell!