Two weeks ago, I travelled into the city with one of my best friends and spent the weekend in Toronto. In this blog post I'll share with you what we got up to, and give you some travel recommendations if you are ever stop in the city for a quick trip!
Our first order of business was finding a place to stay for the weekend. There's a number of different options in the city for accommodation from hostels, to AirBnBs to hotels. To keep it simple, we went with a relatively cheap hotel and stayed at the Holiday Inn Express on Lombard St., near St. James Park. It was a cute little hotel, perfect for the two of us for one night.
Transportation
Since I live outside of the downtown core, I would usually use my Presto card to get on the Go Train and take the Lakeshore East line straight to Union Station. From there, I would usually hop on the subway to get downtown. If you don't have a Presto card already, you can purchase a day pass at the station or you can pay for your fare by cash. Once you're in the city, navigating around is actually pretty easy! There's a number of different ways to get around including subway, bus, car, walking, Uber and taxi. For our trip, we used a combination of walking and taking the subway.
Things To Do:
Visit the Toronto Waterfront
After meeting up, our first stop was the Toronto Waterfront. The weather that weekend was stunning, not too hot or cold and clear, blue skies. We thought it would be the perfect day to relax by the water. The waterfront expands over 46 KM, so to say there's a lot to do there is any understatement. On this particular day, we just felt like chilling and chatting by the water, but there were a number of people out biking, walking and running. There's places were you can rent kayaks, vendors were you can buy tasty snacks and there were even a few morning fitness classes going on. I'd highly recommend you check it out!
Grab brunch
I believe that brunch is 100x better than breakfast, and like any city, downtown Toronto has so many breakfast and brunch options! However, if you are looking for a spot close to the water and a place that has great vegan options (that isn't just a fruit salad 🙃), try Evviva! She's a little pricey for my post-grad budget, but the food and the service was incredible! There was a bit of a wait when we arrived, but we didn't mind since the waterfront was so close by. Definitely worth the splurge!
Hit up St. Lawrence Market
After brunch, we took the 20 (ish) minute walk to St. Lawrence Market. It's an in-door farmer's market that's open year round! You can get fresh produce, delicious cooked food and yummy desserts and treats. This place is a very popular spot in Toronto and normally gets very crowded by early afternoon, however, thanks to COVID, it wasn't too busy when we went. My friend was eyeing the flower stand that sold gorgeous sunflowers, so if you get the chance to visit St. Lawrence Market, be sure to scoop some up for your room or apartment!
Visit a coffee shop
To get us through the rest of our day's activities and avoid the afternoon slump, we stopped off for some more coffee at one of our favourite coffee places, Blazac's! The coffee is delicious and their pastries are to die for, need I say more?
Shop at the Eaton Centre
We actually didn't spend a lot of time at the Eaton Centre since we only needed to stop off at one store, but I was always recommend this mall if you are looking to do some serious shopping in the city. Clearly it's HUGE and there's a bunch of different stores from lower to higher-end to match your budget. The mall also has two subway stations that you can access directly in the Eaton Centre, which makes travelling to the mall super easy!
Shopping on Queen St. West
Ah, Queen St. West, A.K.A The Fashion District! Queen St. West is a very long street lined with a ton of different clothing shops and thrift stores that you might not catch at the traditional malls. Our main motivate for Queen St. West was to hit the thrift stores and they did not disappoint! I managed to cop the cutest vintage bomber jacket (which you will see in an upcoming fall clothing haul)!
Some stores and shops you might want to check out:
- Black Market Clothing
-Flashback Vintage
-Chive Plant Shop
-The Latest Scoop
-Sud Forno (For the best gelato!)
Visit another coffee shop
Since we're coffee enthusiasts, we decided to check out another coffee shop before our last adventure of the weekend. Dineen is coffee shop my friend recommended and it did not disappoint! Not only did they have the most aesthetic decor, they also made some excellent coffee! I just stuck with my traditional Vanilla latte, but it was delicious! 10/10 would recommend this place!
Visit the Art Gallery Of Ontario
Our last stop for the weekend was to the Art Gallery Of Ontario or the AGO! We decided to see the new Andy Warhol exhibit, which was incredible! You can"purchase" a free, annual pass if you are under 25 and then tickets for the Andy Warhol exhibit are free. All you have to do, is select the time you want to head to the exhibit and show your "purchased" tickets at the front desk and Volià!I don't know a whole lot about art or art history tbh, so if going to an art gallery sounds intimidating don't fret! There's signs everywhere that you can read and follow along. Once you're finished at the Andy Warhol exhibit, you are also free to check out all the other exhibits at the AGO. There's tons to look at, so be warned! If you want to make a day out of it, there's also an AGO restaurant, where you can grab a bite to eat.
Here's a few of the exhibits we saw (volume on 🔊):
And BOOM, that's it! I hope you guys enjoyed my first (of many) travel guides! There's SO much to do in Toronto that I might have to do another one for the holidays, let me know if you'd be interested in that.
Talk soon!
Love,
-M
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