Toronto, Ontario - Day 9 - Tuesday 30th April 2024 - Day In The City

A relatively small breakfast this time

A day for myself, I had a quick small breakfast of juice, coffee and a fried egg on sour dough with melted cheese. I caught the metro to the university area and wandered around for a bit. The old Lash Miller Chemistry building was open so I wandered in and took the lift to the 6th floor where my lab used to be speaking to one of the professors on the way up.

The 6th floor of the Lash Miller building

After leaving the old Chemistry building behind, I continued towards bloor walking past my old gym and the GSU student pub. There were lots of memories, all distant all ghosts. The people I used to love, play squash, get drunk with were all ghosts of the past.

The Lash Miller building at the U of T

On Bloor, I had a coffee at the future bistro, which used to be called the future bakery and then walked towards Spadina where I dropped into the Native Canadian centre where I was swiftly directed towards the gift shop. The selection was worse than I remembered it being, I still have a dream catcher from there but they were no longer on sale. As the Madison pub was closeby, I tried to enter but it was shut so I decided to continue my journey by foot. I left the Madison and all its good memories behind me.

The Madison bar where memories are kept behing closed doors.

I went to Chinatown which was decidedly less impressive than I first remembered it. We used to go to Chinatown regularly for a cheap and tasty meal either during the day or at night for prices like 4 Canadian dollars. I did however go to the Kensington market too, a place I actually never went to when living there.

The Churchmouse English Gay Bar

Tired of walking, I tried to find an Irish bar on Bay Street but it was permamently closed, so I walked on to the Gay Village, extra weary I went to the English bar called the "Churchmouse" and ordered a nice big Pino Grigio, I chatted to the friednly barman from Saskatoon and to two women who were on the honeymoon, both were English but living in Australia, one of them was from Southend-on-Sea. I shared my tips for exploring Toronto and Niagara. I tried a Canadian red wine before moving on towards the Flatiron building.

Paddington's Pump with a Canadian Pinot Grigio

I took the subway to the Flatiron bulding and the Laurence market, taking pictures and resting up in another English bar called Paddington's Pump trying out different Canadian wines and chatting to an older Croatian lady from Istria who was knocking back beers like there was no tomorrow. In a usual Balkan way, she was quite reserved and didnt give away too much.

Trying a Cabernet Merlot

My time for dinner was getting close, so I had one more pitstop quite by accident, in a pub called PJ O'Briens and got chatting to two ladies, one Indian and the other who was part Guyanese. We were close to a large map of Ireland on the wall so I was pointing our where I lived and some of my favourite places.

A little bit of Ireland in Toronto

I finally made it to Andrew's place where Stanislav was already dipping into a drink, so we had a few drinks before heading off to a pretty amazing Mexican restaurant where of course I ordered nachos.

Toronto's Flatiron building

After dinner, I headed to Woody's for a few drinks finishing in at the Paddock close to our accomodation.

#Toronto #Ontario #ChurchStreet #Canada

In a word #Goodbye