A Weekend in Toronto

I’m back at work today – I wish I had another day off! This week is busy for me though. We still have testing at school and tomorrow night is prom, which I’m a chaperone for again. Friday, I have a hair appointment and this weekend I’ve got a wedding to go to and a photoshoot! So much to do, so little time!

As promised I’m writing about how I spent my weekend in Toronto this past weekend. I’ve been to Toronto many times in my life because I have some family there, however I haven’t done any real sightseeing there in years. The past few times I’ve gone have been for purely visiting family and/or some sort of family function like a big birthday or wedding. So my parents had made plans a while ago to go up to visit. They were driving up (Toronto is about 10 hours away from me). I did not plan on going because of work, but when I found out I would be given an extra day off making my Memorial Day Weekend a 4 day weekend (and I had no other plans) I decided to use air miles to go up for the weekend.

I arrived very late Friday night due to delays and left early Monday morning so when I say I just spent the weekend in Toronto, I mean it! I didn’t do a ton of stuff during the weekend, but I think it was a good amount without being exhausted from a jam-packed weekend. Plus, I did have to fit in family stuff.

Saturday
After eating breakfast at the hotel and making it to my aunt and uncle’s house about 20 minutes away, we went downtown to visit the Royal Ontario Museum or ROM.  I love museums and Saturday was rainy, so this was perfect. We spent a few hours there exploring the current special exhibition, “Treasures of a Desert Kingdom”, seeing the dinosaur section, getting a tour of the Chinese Exhibit, and seeing the minerals and gems.

We had lunch at the museum cafeteria, which was absolutely nothing to write home about, and after our time at the museum we walked a few blocks down to where we were having a big family dinner.

I was pretty exhausted at this point after having slept 4 hours on Thursday night and only 5 hours on Friday night so after doing some stuff on my laptop in bed and watching the Toronto Raptors win (on TV), I went to bed. I’m not a Raptors fan, but it was exciting to actually be in Toronto for this exciting time for the city and country. This is their first time in the NBA Finals in franchise history and I think they’re the only basketball team in Canada?

Sunday
On Sunday, we had plans to go to the Bata Shoe Museum. Apparently this is the only shoe museum in the world. My uncle has been telling me about this museum for a few years so I was going to try to go Sunday morning since we were short on time on Saturday. However, when we made it to the museum via subway from my uncle’s place it was about 11:15am and they don’t open until noon! So I didn’t get to see the museum, but maybe next time.

We then headed to the CN Tower.  I’ve been up the CN Tower once when I was probably about 8 or 9, so I didn’t really remember it too much. Although, I do remember the glass floor section. And I think I was slightly terrified of it as a kid. We headed over to the tower and got tickets. Then, waited in line for an hour to go up. The elevator goes up so quick. You’re up in 58 seconds! I took some photos of the views from the tower, got something to drink from the little cafe up there, walked down one flight of stairs to see the outdoor section (which is hard to photograph because it’s all fenced in) and walk on the glass floor. It wasn’t scary at all!

Next, we walked over to the Stackt Markets, which is this new area with food, shops, and space for people to hang out. What’s cool about it is that it is made from old shipping containers! The concept is really cool and it looks really awesome, but it was a lot smaller than we were expecting from what we saw online. There were only a handful of shops, some of the containers are still being set up for shops and some don’t look to be rented out yet. There’s also a few that are just for event space so you can rent them out. A lot of the shops looked like pop-up shops. In any case, it was cool to see and definitely interesting and artsy.

We got lunch at the brewery which is in the back section of the market and stopped at Donut Monster to pick up some goodies to take back to my uncle’s for an afternoon snack.

We thought about heading over to the shoe museum after this since we were done with Stackt so much sooner than anticipated. However, I didn’t think the donuts would last that long since it was pretty warm out. I also didn’t know if we’d be allowed to walk around with a box of donuts inside the museum. By the way, the donuts were so good!

We finished off the night hanging out at my aunt and uncle’s and then going to a Japanese restaurant across the river from them.

I got up early Monday morning to head to the airport and fly home. I captured a few good photos out of the plane window on the way home. This one below is my favorite!

Look at how green! And that river! I’m not sure where this was, but the possibilities between Toronto and New Jersey are pretty limited to New York state and Pennsylvania. We were about halfway through the flight so it definitely wasn’t Canada or NJ – so New York or Pennsylvania it is!

So that was my quick trip to Toronto. Next time I’ll have to hit up that shoe museum! I also want to do something on the lake next time.