July 12, 2006 - Wednesday
| | 9:41 AM - Toronto is one of the coolest places ever. I love love love Toronto. The city is beautifully maintained, the buildings are really diverse and the architecture goes from being gorgeous to breathtakingly ugly within seconds (though the latter case is rarely true). There'll be an historic stone home from the 1700s nestled in between a few classy high rises as you* walk toward H&M to buy some much-needed cheap accessories (red hat, red hat!). The boulevards are really wide and open, and the people walking along them are pleasantly diverse and usually pretty smiley. This could be a Janet-only impression, however, as I tend to smile at strangers in most cities and find that even in notoriously "mean" cities (e.g., NYC), people appreciate a smile and will probably be relatively friendly in return. My mom and I were commenting on the various ages of the pedestrians strolling about (as pedestrians are wont to do) here in the city--you'll see a couple of teenaged girls followed by some preteen skateboarding boy followed by a decrepit man with a walker followed by a young stud (to use Dr. Hebert's favorite word) wheeling in and around these people on his bike. People seem to be on their way somewhere, but not really in a self-absorbed rush.
Last night we went to Little Italy with the intent of getting some good food and probably heading home afterward. Thinking it'd be like New York's Little Italy--charming but densely packed and overwhelmingly crowded into a five-block stretch, I was ready to make a short night of it. But Toronto's Little Italy is beautiful! There were, of course, scores of restaurants to choose from, but there weren't men out on the street harassing us, coaxing us to choose one little dining room over another. That, in fact, is one part of NYC's L.I. that I love when I'm in the right frame of mind. Instead, we had a selection of really nice places to eat and chose a corner cafe.
Only after dinner did I notice this place across the street and wish we had eaten there.
My parents decided to get another glass of wine after dinner; I chose instead to wander around some more, further bruising my feet (damned new flip flops that I love) and exploring the side streets. The second I stepped off of College, the commercial zone switched into a beautiful residential area. Huge houses, many of which had been converted into gorgeous apartment homes, were lit up yellow from the inside as the sky got darker. I wandered around, listening to my headphones turned low so that I could still hear the clanging of dishes and conversation from people's houses through their open windows. It was really beautiful.
When I returned to the main street, my parents were starting glass two and were giddy and silly. The charming waiter gave me a drink menu and applauded my choice when I ordered "the Beautiful." In my limited bartending knowledge, I thought it sounded like it had the most fancy martini ingredients combined with things to cut the harsh edge. What came out looked nothing like a martini, but it sure did make me the talk of the bar:
view from the bar
So that's all for now. I could go on and on, and I could not. I choose option two.
*and by you I mean I 2 Comments - 4 Kudos |
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