East Canada trip, Post 5: Ontario

We didn't take very many photos during our 4 nights in Ontario, but here's what we got up to...

After driving 6 hours from Montreal on Sunday afternoon, we dropped David and Kela at David's friend's apartment in a suburb of Toronto (David studied in Ontario, so he had lots of contacts for this part of the trip!), and then drove another hour to Hamilton. There we stayed with Aaron and Michelle and their gorgeous sons, Bentley and Ethan. They had moved away from Vancouver last October, so it was great to see them again!







On Monday we headed into Toronto for some sightseeing. But first, we picked up a friend from Guyana, whose month-long visit to her many Ontario relatives happened to coincide with our trip. Long-time blog readers may remember Theresa from some 2007 blog posts - yes, we met when we all lived in England! Getting to see her was yet another wonderful coincidence on this trip!

After leaving the car at the apartment where David and Kela were staying, the five of us walked to a bus stop and took a bus and then a train into downtown Toronto.

Here's a sign I noticed at the bus stop...



After lots of walking once we were downtown, we eventually made it to Kensington Market, a historic multicultural neighbourhood full of quirky shops.

We had a yummy lunch at a Thai/Hungarian (!) restaurant - that's Theresa next to me...





Had a look through some of the shops...





And spent the rest of the afternoon shopping in downtown Toronto (where I found my dress for the upcoming wedding).

For dinner we went to David's choice (a favourite from his uni days): Marché Restaurant, where we met up with Garth and Becca (on the left in the photo below). Garth is the son of Bayfield and Roma, whom we stayed with on PEI earlier in the trip. We had met Garth when he was travelling in Australia 5 years ago, so it was great to see him again and meet his wife. They live in the nearby city of Guelph, and Ben and I had a thoroughly enjoyable time staying with them for the next two nights!



Marché is a fantastic European restaurant chain that is like a big fancy foodcourt. The food you order is tracked via swipe card that you pay the total of upon exit. I decided on a strawberry, raspberry, kiwifruit, maple syrup and lemon sorbet crepe (Ben had German sausages), and had another fantastic "small world" experience with the girl who made my crepe...

I could tell she was an Aussie, so I asked where she was from, and she said: "the Sunshine Coast; do you know it?" I said: "yeah, I lived in Bundaberg for 4 years". She said: "Bundaberg?! I lived there for the last 2 years and I worked at the local paper!!"

The next day, Tuesday, David and Kela decided on a quiet morning in, so Ben and I drove into Toronto and checked out St Lawrence Market. This is a big indoor food market that sells everything from souvenirs to scarves (I got one) to cheese to wine to meat to imported sauces to hot meals. We enjoyed a three-course lunch: perogies; crackers with Wensleydale and Cranberry cheese (our favourite cheese from England - that we can also get in Vancouver); and Turkish delight and Jelly Bellies!





When we left the market, it was raining, so we spent the next few hours reading books in a nearby branch of the Toronto Public Library. We have been known to do this before on rainy travel days!

In the late afternoon, we met up with David and Kela again, and spent a while sipping hot chocolate in a café in the historic Distillery District. This is an area of former distilleries that are now home to cafés, galleries, theatres etc - popular with locals and tourists. The café we were in was once a pumproom!

That night we met up with Garth and Becca for some improv comedy in Toronto. Unfortunately it wasn't as good as the two other times we have been to improv, but it's a bit of a hit and miss activity when you're not familiar with the company!

The next morning, Wednesday, the four of us headed on to our next destination: London, ON. This is the city where David studied, and we had lunch with some of his friends from those days, sitting around a farmhouse kitchen table that he had sat at many times before...





Then we headed into London to the home of our hosts for the night: David's old roommate Steve and his wife Rebecca. They have a Wednesday night tradition of taking it in turns to host dinner with some of the other young couples in the area, so we went with them to dinner at the home of their friends Sarah and Brandon. There were about 10 of us there - it was a really delicious dinner and a tradition we rather enjoyed getting a taste (hehe) of!

After that we headed back to Steve and Rebecca's place for the meeting, and afterwards we sat around looking at all three couples' wedding photos and just chatting. Here we are with our hosts...



The next morning saw us headed for Niagara Falls. And since we definitely took lots of photos there, that will need a new post!

PS. More photos in our East Canada road trip photo album.