Wanderings

Each Sunday we've been taking a day to explore. Odd thing about this city is how some people who live here don't have much excitement about it, and yet its filled with amazing neighbourhoods and history. I only really understand a city if I can walk around it (one of the reasons Tokyo was so hard to understand...) so each Sunday we point ourselves in a new direction... based on architecture, or food, or some literary or musical highpoint... Sunday we wandered over to the Danforth, which seemed like it might be a new and exotic territory, then the plan was to walk down to the Indian neighbourhood and then down through Leslieville to the Distillery District (an old brick distillery that's been preserved and is now home to Soulpepper Theatre Co.)

Well.... the Danforth wasn't quite as exotic neighbourhood as I'd thought... pleasant, lots of shops, Starbucks etc etc etc... and friggin' cold... soooooo friggin' cold... last week we had a foot of snow, then it got warm and it all started to melt, then it got reeeal cold, so it all froze back again.... so now the sidewalks are covered in an inch of ice... So we stumbled away from the dull Danforth a little soon down to Gerrard to search for Hot Curries and Chai, but we'd missed Little India and it was just too cold to search so we slipped our way down to Leslieville. And, happily, when we retreated into an 2nd hand store to escape the cold we found a very cool piece of furniture for our currently extraordinarily empty apartment....




Anyway...buoyed by that discovery we finally gave up on walking over the icefields (we felt morally justified...Lisa will spend the next two weeks in -30 C weather in a pair of snowboots) and sensibly hopped into a taxi and admired Queen St. East from the warm interior of an old cab and sped to the Distillery District, which was all they said... beautiful - reminded me of Scotland - and containing an Oyster bar...which we inhabited and warmed ourselves with BC Wine and East Coast Oysters...