Art-Walk-Eat Travels: Let's SEE the City! 'Gems of Toronto' Tour

We have a great location for sunrise.

The day before I had pre-scheduled a Lyft ride pick up for 8:30 am. We had a tour with a 9-9:30am pick-up. It was a challenge to get us all ready by then, but we made it downstairs a little before 8:30 am. ARGH!! no Lyft ride showed up. They had given us a name and a window of 8:30-8:40 am. We called another Lyft. This driver was amazing. We explained our situation. He drove like a demon, but he got us there in one piece and in time. I had called the True Experience Tours office to tell them that we were running a little late. They assured us that they would not leave without us. But it was an all too stressful way to start the day.

Sculpture by the Marriott City Centre Hotel where we met our tour. I don't know the story about it. Maybe we will find out on Sunday when we have to meet here for another True Experience Tour.

Our van for the day.

Patrick was our guide and Marian was the driver. They were both very friendly. Patrick is quite a talker.

First stop was the CN Tower. When it was built in 1976 it was the tallest in the world. It stopped being the tallest in 2007. But it is still plenty tall.

Patrick

We went up 1,136 feet to the Observation deck in a very fast elevator.

The airport where we saw a plane land the day before

Amusement Park

What a view.

The ceiling was a mirror so I had some fun.

We went down one floor to the glass floor area.

Those are my feet as I look straight down. There were a lot of people all trying to take different poses. It was fun. Kris didn't venture on to the glass. I must say that I was not very comfortable walking around on it. Even though I knew that it was perfectly safe.

We COULD have done the edge walk. We weren't that brave.

This is a picture of where the edgewalk people would be strapped in

(picture is downloaded from the edgewalk website)

Then we left the tower and continued on the tour. Patrick told us about all the different buildings we passed and how they were important. He had stories about everything. It was very interesting.

There was a map of the Great Lakes and Patrick was showing us where we were.

An art piece made out of found junk.

The Princes' Gate

It was fun getting the picture of the old and new.

The oldest house in Toronto, but this was not its original location.

Jennifer Kateryna Koval's'kyj Park - On April 2, 1996, six-year-old Jennifer Koval's'kyj died trying to stop her mentally unstable father from attacking and eventually fatally wounding her grandmother in Bowmanville, Ontario. The man had already stabbed his mother several times with a kitchen knife when Jennifer arrived on the scene. She courageously stepped between her grandmother and her knife-wielding father and pleaded with him to stop. Knowing that her father was irrational at that time, she told him she loved him in an attempt to calm him down but the man tragically turned on her and inflicted multiple stab wounds which claimed the little girl's life. It is a small park but it provides a nice view of the skyline of Toronto.

We went to the Distillery District for our lunch break.

I had the tuna sandwich and cider. Yummy.

Crocheted ice cream cone.

Another variety of nanaimo bars

Lawrence Market

Yonge Street is the longest street in the world. It goes from Lake Ontario to the Canadian/Minnesota border about 1243 miles.

This is where all the taxis were!! (We had spent a lot of time looking for taxis before we would call Lyft).

We went to Casa Loma (castle on the hill). Jeanne and I went to the tippy top turret for the view. Kris and Sharon got more pictures of the grounds. We will have to try to find a place to get a picture of the whole castle.

Can you see Sharon? (right)

The castle

Where Patrick lives in the Kensington neighborhood.

The famous Toronto sign in front of city hall

Artwork they were painting when we were there.

This was the end of the tour. We talked them into letting us off at some other location. Patrick told us about the street car and how to use it. We were on Queen St which was a straight shot home. We got off the van and got on the street car. We found that we could pay with our credit cards. We got off on Dufferin Street. We stopped at the grocery store for a few more essentials.

We walked through our neighborhood to get pictures of some of the local murals.

Whew. We were ready to get our feet up for a little MDT.

We called a Lyft to head out to dinner.

We went to Adrak's, a VERY classy Indian restaurant!!

Prawn Tandoori on a skewer

My drink was Golden Nine Yards. It wasn't that great.

Murgh Makhani (butter chicken - fabulous), Tandoori Gobi Chaat (this was my favorite). We also had Dal Makhani (very good)

Asparagus Kofta (this was a little disappointing because there were very few stalks of asparagus)

Raita with pomegranates. We also had garlic naan.

For dessert we shared the Cocochoco Rasmalai Cheesecake (coconut cremeux, chocolate hazelnut crunch, coconut snow, citrus gel, and cardamom ice cream!!)

The food was very delicious. I see why it is so famous.

There was a hidden door to go down to the washrooms.