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Hey guys, happy June! It’s getting really hot where I live, I miss when it was early June and I was waking up chilly. This blog post is getting really really close to the end of the month, I’m finishing it up Sunday night June 29th to make sure it goes out before the month ends.
Toronto Trip
Last week I got to go on a trip to Toronto, Canada for about 5 days and I had a pretty good time. I was much less stressed this time compared to Italy. I was flying by myself, but I knew what to expect when going international.
I got in Tuesday afternoon, and public transportation was pretty easy to get where we were staying. Although, about 30 seconds onto the train I ripped my pants pretty bad. They were my favorite pair too. I ended up having to change right there, but thankfully nobody else was on the train. I had met up with one of my buddies at the airport and we took the train from YYZ to Dundas West and then from Dundas West we went all the way to Victoria Park. That afternoon I got a HUGE shawarma plate from “Two Brother’s Shawarma” that was really good. Later that evening our other friends got in so we went to this place that served butter chicken pizza. I didn’t have any, but it looked pretty good. I was still full from the shawarma. The entire area was full of people who I assume were Muslim, because most places clearly announced that they were Halal. This wasn’t an issue for the most part except we wanted to go to a sports bar to watch a hockey game at some point, but the area was pretty much dry.
Wednesday morning me and my buddy got up early and got some Tim Horton’s and checked out a grocery store nearby for any interesting Canadian goodies. I’m not a big coffee drinker, but the jelly filled Tim Bits were really good. When the rest of us were awake we went to go explore downtown and the CN Tower. We didn’t go up it because it was going to be pretty expensive for all of us. I was hoping one of us would get pictures, but none of us ended going up. Still a really cool sight though. We stopped in at the St. Lawrence Market and all got some different food for lunch. I had some chicken katsu from this Asian place downstairs that was really good. Then we also got a pemeal sandwich to split, but that was a little disappointing. It was basically just ham. It was a good sandwich, but just pretty normal.
That afternoon we took a bus to Niagara falls, and that was my favorite place of the whole trip, maybe even my favorite place I’ve ever been. It was a 3 hour bus ride with the weather and traffic and everything, we were expecting at most a 2 hour ride. I was kinda bummed/annoyed cuz it took so long, I thought it was gonna be all this trouble to go see some stupid waterfall, but I was so happy to be proven wrong. I’ve never been super excited about places. I went inside the White House when I was a kid, I went to Italy, I’ve been to Las Vegas, but none of it really ever like grabbed me and made me excited to be there. Sure, there’s been places I’ve been like “wow, this is beautiful”, but nothing like Niagara falls. If you ever have the chance to go, please do, it’s so cool. I’ve never been to the New York side of it, but the Canadian side was mind blowing. I even got to see an Amish family for the first time, which was super cool and something my grandma would’ve loved. I didn’t take a picture of them out of respect, I did want to go up and talk to them, but I was kinda shy and I don’t know THAT much about the Amish lifestyle, so I keep that in the memory bank. We got to see the falls “lit up” when it hit sunset, but since it was the longest day of the year sunset was at almost 9pm. We had to rush back to catch the last bus back to Toronto, so we didn’t get to see them too lit up. The bus back was much more pleasant. They shut off all the lights and everyone pretty much slept. It only took about an hour and a half going back.
Thursday morning, into the afternoon, was the Hockey Hall of Fame. Pretty neat, but I don’t watch much Hockey or know about the history, so a lot of it was lost on me. Our friend Josh who is a huge Hockey fan didn’t get to go, but he probably would’ve enjoyed it more than I did. We got him a small Stanley Cup from the gift shop. Later on that afternoon, 2 of our friends were going to go see a live showing of a podcast for a game they play called Valorant. It was in the Shopify building in Toronto, and I thought that kind of funny. I have used some of Shopify’s back end interfaces, and they’re pretty alright, they get what they need done. But there’s been a few times where I’ve wanted to strangle the people who write them lol. Anyway, my friends were only able to get the 2 tickets, so the 3 of us without tickets just kind of walked around Toronto. We stopped at this art gallery, I forget the name. It had some neat exhibits. There was this empty lot where a school once stood, and during the pandemic people started hanging out there and it was eventually called “Bloor-Dale Beach”, even though it wasn’t near any water. Eventually it got sold and turned into apartments or something, so a bunch of people made tributes to it that were displayed for the art gallery.
Once it got closer to time that our friends were going to meet back up with us, we stopped in at this arcade bar called “Greta”. It was neat, not really my idea of the best time, but they had some cool games and some really good food. Our very pretty waitress, bless her heart, I don’t even remember her name, was the only waitress working after a little while. She actually had a group walk out on her, which was really lousy. So we tipped her well. I had this birria grilled cheese that was pretty good, but it had some parchment paper stuck to some of the cheese still. It was easy enough to peel off though, and I was pretty hungry, so I’d still say I’d order it again. We ended up leaving really late and were at risk of missing the last train home (this week the trains were closing much earlier than normal due to maintenance or something). We had to BOOK it to the station. My legs and feet were killing me, I was about to just call up an Uber and eat the 30-40 minute ride. I was hurting. No sciatica pain though, so definitely a win.
Friday into Saturday was sort of a blur because we were doing a lot and by this point everyone was kind of exhausted. 2 of us went out for breakfast at this places called Mildred Temple’s Kitchen, and I go this absolutely MASSIVE stack of blueberry pancakes that were delicious. They weren’t too sweet, or syrupy, but just perfect. The food in Toronto was actually surprisingly cheap. At the time we went we were pretty much able to use 75% of whatever we were paying in CAD to convert to USD, so the math was easy, and honestly all the prices we saw in CAD would’ve still been good in USD in my opinion. Anyway, we then went to a Valorant tournament, which was the main reason for us being in Toronto to begin with. I’m not a fan of Valorant, so I wasn’t as hyped as anyone else, but it was a decent experience. I fell asleep 3 times in the venue over the span of about 5 hours though, so take that for what you will lol, I was really tired.
Saturday was probably our most chill day, we didn’t have to rush anywhere to do anything, so we just went out to Toronto Islands. For lunch though before we got on the ferry we stopped off and got some poutine (french fries, cheese curds, and brown gravy). I’ve had it once or twice before at this place local to me, but it wasn’t real poutine because they were using shredded cheese instead of full curds. This place was pretty good. My friends got theirs topped with pulled pork, and another got bacon. I wanted it pretty plain, but I was pretty hungry so I got triple cheese. Which in hindsight was just a lot of dairy and could’ve gone very wrong lol. The Toronto Islands were pretty, there’s not much to say about them. There’s a small amusement park on one of the islands, but it’s mainly geared towards children. We were going to stop and get a beaver tail, but it was cash only and we didn’t have any cash on us and I don’t think there was an ATM anywhere. We also got to see some of the houses of the people who live on the islands which was kind of cool. There’s no cars except for the people who work on the island and the fire department there. The ferry to and from the island ran pretty often, it was like once every 40 minutes so we timed our walks pretty well with the departures. After we got back to the mainland we found this Korean BBQ place where you order the meat and cook it yourself. I’d wanted to try this for a while, but there aren’t many places like that around me I don’t think and I don’t have many friends who would want to go. Overall it was a good experience, I’m glad I went, but honestly it was kinda chaotic and overwhelming for me. It’s really loud, there’s this super hot grill in the center of the table, and you’re trying to make sure you cooked your meat where you won’t get food poisoning. I’m fine with some red in my beef, and I’ll eat sushi like nobody’s business, but I don’t play around with chicken or pork. I’ve heard from a few people that pink pork is safe, but I got food poisoning a few years ago and I’m pretty sure I almost died. Chicken also is just something I don’t wanna mess around with. Again, it was fun, and it was actually pretty cheap, I think it only came out to about $25 USD per person, but I’m not sure if I’ll be going back to any one soon. Later on that night still after everything kind of calmed down we went out and got Church’s chicken for late night snack. I’d heard of the place before, but never saw one anywhere near me, so I was sort of excited to try it. I wasn’t the most hungry so I didn’t really know what to get, but because I misunderstood the portion sizes of the biscuits I ended up with a 5 piece tender mean, 7 of their honey butter biscuits, an order of fries and a drink. I’m not mad I got that many biscuits though, I got to share them with my friends. But even if I didn’t get them to share, I would’ve eaten every single one, they were DELICIOUS. They were honey buttered, but it wasn’t like just biscuits with honey over top. The honey butter had started to caramelize over top of them, which may be because they were old or something I’m not sure how they normally come, but these were absolutely the best biscuits I’ve ever had. And I eat a lot of biscuits and have had a lot of biscuits in my day. Absolutely amazing, please go get some if you’re ever near one.
Saturday was my last full day because I was leaving Sunday afternoon. I’m not one for cities in the slightest, but I could’ve probably spent another couple of days there and I wouldn’t have been mad about it. Toronto is a nice place. I left our airbnb at about 10am and got the airport with plenty of time to spare. When I got into the US from my trip to Italy, we were all corralled into the area where the customs officers were so there was no way to leave without going through them. Canada kinda flipped it on me and confused me for a little bit, because there’s actually US customs officers at the airport in Canada so I only had to go through that process in Canada. It made it super quick because there were hardly any people in front of me, and I was only asked 3 questions. I thought I was still going to have to go through the process coming back form Canada, so when I got off my flight and was in this normal gate like I’d take on a domestic flight I was worried I’d not gone the right direction or something. But I’m still a free man, so I guess I did everything right lol.
That’s all I have time for this month, I’m going to go ahead and post this one. I really need to sit down and do a slight overview of everything that’s happened in One Piece recently. I’ve been reading whenever the chapters come out and it’s been insane. Loki right now is very quickly working up to becoming a top 10 favorite character of mine. I’m loving his backstory right now.
Anyways, see you guys!