Toronto
Today was our last day in Toronto. We are driving 8 hours to Quebec City now. Toronto was really fun! Here are a few highlights.
For food: My favourite was Pesto Pasta and Chicken from Cafe Landwer, closely followed by Truffle Balsamic Mozzarella from Scaddabush. St. Lawrence Market is really good for lunch. They also have some gift shops and dessert places, and on weekends there are markets outside, so going there is a whole experience. They have a lot of options, but it is usually really crowded so go for an early or late lunch, or for an afternoon snack. For coffee (sorry for going backwards) I would recommend Cafe 23, they have a beautiful patio, and they have good pastries, chai lattes, and coffee. (according to my mom for the coffee).
For activities: So this is all of my favourite things from all three times I’ve been to Toronto. I have two younger siblings, so we do a lot of things for younger kids. If you are looking for stuff for adults, you’re in the wrong spot! You are still welcome to read this though because a lot of the things are all ages!
First, playgrounds. We went to a few, and my favourite is Owl Park (no, I do not know the actual name, it was really long and started with bii and I’m in the car with no Wi-Fi so I can’t look it up, just look up Owl Park and it should come up.) It was huge, and fairly new. There were two zip lines, a huge sand area with different styles of water pumps that you could pump water into the sand and then it flowed in rivers down rocks. There was a giant owl and a giant raccoon, both of which you could go inside of. There were also these poles (with no handholds!) that you could use your thighs and arms to climb up, and then when (if) you made it to the top, you could press a button to ring a bell. It was really fun, I did it three times until it got repetitive. We also went to this park that had giant (wooden) asparagus you could climb on, and giant carrot you could sit on. There was also a spinning thing that my mom got really excited about and said “They had these when I was a kid! I haven’t seen one in probably over a decade!” I got to spin on it, and it was really fun.
Also I would recommend Toronto Islands. Take a water taxi there and a ferry back, the water taxi is cheaper than the ferry going there, but the ferry is free coming back. Also if you get seasick do not take the water taxi, it was very tiny and very wavy. We also went to the Centreville Amusement park on the island. It was very fun (for the most part, there was some ticket drama, which brings me to my next suggestion), but make sure that you calculate who wants to go on which rides, and plan accordingly. (For example, if you know someone will go on a lot of rides or you are staying for the whole day, just get the day passes, it’ll save you the trouble down the road.) Also, there were beavers hidden around the city, one for each soccer team in the World Cup!
For hotels: All three times we’ve gone to Toronto, we’ve stayed in the same hotel. We’ve stayed in Hotel X, it’s a Hyatt and it has a rooftop pool. Everyone there is so kind, and this time that we stayed there, we were Globalists (we stayed 60 nights in Hyatts last year), so they gave us honey from beehives that they had there! Also, the pool. It is beautiful. It’s on the roof, so you can see the whole city. They also have a resterant there. I give it a three out of five (that’s my average, and its just for food). The food was decent, and the location was convinient because it was in the hotel, but if it wasn’t in the hotel I would not have eaten there again.
Over all: Toronto was great! I highly recommend it!