Art-Walk-Eat Travels: Hello Toronto! Market, Harbor, Views!

What a glorious morning

We were not too rushed in the morning but we did have to move along to be out of the apartment by 10 am. We had brought some breakfast foods along. Jeanne and I had a chance to check out where the close coffee shops and grocery were for future reference. We called for a Lyft driver. Our first event was a Secret Food Tour. We have used that company in other cities before and have liked them.

We got to the St Lawrence Centre for the Arts (our meet-up point) a little early, so we had a chance to wander through the Berczy Park.

A famous mural in Toronto

Dog fountain.

Note the dog bone at the top of the fountain and one lone cat.

Hand sculpture is named Jacob's Ladder but it seems to be missing the string.

We met Paris, our tour guide. Our group ended out being 14 people. The maximum was 12 but someone messed up. That threw some of Paris's plans off. We went to the Lawrence Market. It is an indoor mall but it is an old space that has changed through the years.

Sockeye salmon cured in maple syrup at Mike's Fish Market

Anton Kozlik for mustard tasting.

We could each pick the flavor we wanted to try.

I tried the Sweet and Smokey

Our food tour guide, Paris was very good.

Peameal BLT from Paddington. I don't think that they put any lettuce in the sandwich.

Nanaimo bars from Future Bakery. We ate them in the old jail.

We left the market. We went to Butter Chicken Roti for our next stop. You guessed it, we had butter chicken and roti. It was very good. I also had a mango lassi.

Sharon had a Limca (a favorite Indian soda)

Jeanne and me

Kris and Sharon

Hawaiian pizza from District Pizza

Close up of one of the cut-out symbols of peace.

The last stop was a butter tart from Sweetie Pie.

We had over an hour to get to Queen's Quay for our harbor tour. We thought that would be plenty of time. Best laid plans. We walked as we tried to hail a cab, we hadn't had a chance to research the street car system. Finally we called a Lyft driver. There is a lot of road construction, so the going was slow. I was getting nervous as we were getting close to the 3 pm tour time. The harbor tour people even called me to see if we were on our way. Our Lyft driver was trying his best. Whew. We got there just in time. We were the last ones on the boat. In fact, they had to start a second smaller boat because they had overbooked. This was a blessing. We could moved around in the boat because it wasn't full. Sean was our guide and Robert the pilot.

The bridge on the right was donated by Amsterdam, Toronto's sister city, but not the restaurant.

Feed the birds. Lots of seagulls.

Note the airplane in the lower left corner. We got to watch it land. I couldn't see my phone screen so I wasn't very good at aiming the camera. There is a small airport by the water.

Our tour went around this harbor. There are 15 islands which are all (except 1) connected by pedestrian bridges. Very pretty area.

Nice view of the skyline

They let this little kid "pilot" the boat for a little while. Cute.

A lot of people live at Yacht Island. They can only live there for half the year.

Cormorants

Snowy Egret

The tour was only an hour but it was well worth it. We got a Lyft back towards our apartment. We had them drop us off at the close grocery store (Metro at West Queen West) so we could buy some essentials.