Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Summer in the City of Toronto

Remember my ranting on how AMAZING summer is in Canada…and how beautiful and fun and green and sunny and rainy and, and…I can go on. Well here are snippets of some of the things I have been doing this summer. (Titles without pictures are click-able so you can see the pictures on a different page)

Planting Trees Across Toronto

The City of Toronto is great about sponsoring/organizing events, of all sorts during the whole year and the best part is most of it is for free. So I have been looking out for things on their website and found this early in May. Volunteers come out to plant trees across Toronto in areas that need more trees. I planted 2 trees :D


Visiting the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) and having some Pho soup

Tuesdays are free for students at the ROM. It is so big, we spent 4-5 hours and only made it through the Natural History Gallery and a quarter of the World Culture Gallery. I really want to go again soon.

There is a cheap Vietnamese restaurant right across the street, and since I've never had Pho soup, we headed there. Turned out to be a wise decision, especially since I was cold.


Going to a 1920’s themed party

Felipe, a friend from French class invited me for his and other 2 people’s birthday party. It was great fun, full of ESL students, since his roommate is an ESL tutor. With Felipe being Chilean, it was Salsa music for the night.

waiting for the bus :)


Watching fireworks on Victoria Day

I started off the day by going to High Park, one of the big parks in Toronto, to play Frisbee and then headed to Woodbine beach to watch the fireworks. Being a national holiday it was packed, people playing volleyball, lighting fireworks, eating, etc. Also, just to point out, the beach is Lake Ontario, and it is FREEZING in the summer. I went later that summer, on a hot day, with Crystal and Julia and the water was freeeezing. The scene over there looks like one of a typical summer day; plenty of people doing regular beach activities; volleyball, tanning, listening to music etc but not swimming in the “beach” I was SOO disappointed. I did miss back home…I miss getting in the water. However, since I promised myself to get in the water when we got there, I ended up taking a VERY quick dive in and ran out…I checked later and the water temperature was around 15C that day!!




Having Ice cream and Open Doors TO

Toronto was hitting records for high temperatures during those two weeks of 31 and 32 C :p so I decided it was warm enough for me to treat myself to some ice cream. Looking at the Best Ice cream shops at blogto we decided to go to the Big chill. We did not realize how much we needed it until we spent 4 hours playing tennis and getting sun burnt. That ice cream was a real treat. That same weekend Toronto had the greatest event of all, called Open Doors Toronto where all the buildings that define Toronto open their doors to the public for free and give guided tours or hold activities. There were 150 buildings opening their doors for the event that I had a hard time choosing which ones to go to. However, I made it to the sailing club, which was awesome; we went on a sail boat for 10 min, I loved it :D. My next stop was the Redpath sugar factory, but by the time I got there, they stopped receiving people for tours.

Don't feel too bad for me because on the way to the factory, we passed by the carving that marks the start of Yonge street and I've always wanted to get a picture of it. It used to be listed in the Guinness Book of World records as the longest street in the world. It starts at Lake Ontario and end by Lake Simcoe at 1,896 km.


Celebrating Canada Day and seeing the Tall ships

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