Day 2 of the Great Canadian Adventure involved more wandering around through Toronto, and in this particular case, that meant that our fine host 
cowsolarbird
Queen Street was a good walk, not too strenuous or long, especially given that I’ve done comparable walking daily getting to and from work. There was a lot of construction along the route, but there was also some nice art, like the animal mural we found under one particular bridge! And I gotta say, I really like the random bits of under-bridge art we’ve seen in Toronto so far. Apparently Toronto’s bridge trolls are quite artistically inclined!
I didn’t get shots of all of the animals on that mural, but yeah, it was very pretty.
We eventually wound up at a place called the Distillery, this neat little walkable market area down near the lakefront, with a lot of nice old brick buildings. At the Mill Street Brewery pub, we stopped for some very tasty lunch. There were super-tasty pretzels with sea salt, and this day’s venture into Cider Science brought us Thornbury Cider. Which was tasty, a bit sweeter than the stuff we’d had the night before, but still not quite as intense as Strongbow!
Then we wandered more around the general Distillery area. We stopped in a tiny sake shop, which was awesome. The guy at the counter was very knowledgeable about the various sakes they were selling, and Dara and I did “Tasting Flight”, which was small samples of three different kinds of sake. We wound up buying a bottle, and Dara was particularly happy to be able to swap a bit of Japanese in conversation with the gentleman.
And we found some seriously neat skiffy-esque sculpture!
After the Distillery, it was time to head to the St. Lawrence market and meet up with Susan! Cow parted ways with us at that point, but it was great to meet Susan face to face. It was not surprising to me in the slightest that one of the first things she did was hand me one of the smaller posters for the Le Vent du Nord show she arranged, hee!
And it was also not surprising that the boys of Le Vent du Nord were one of my and Susan’s primary conversation topics. But we also yakked about Doctor Who, since Susan was wearing an adorable “Doctor Pooh” t-shirt–think Pooh with the Tom Baker scarf–and about audio equipment, Toronto, our various personal histories, the St. Lawrence market we were wandering through, and more.
The market, by the way, is worth mentioning just because it reminded me a lot of Pike Place, only more vertically oriented rather than sprawling. Much of the same kind of stuff sold therein, only involving a lot more maple snacks. I bought maple candy and icewine candy, the latter of which I hadn’t heard of and which proved to be tasty.
We wandered around the University of Toronto campus a lot, too, which was a nice place to walk. By the time we got there, though, a thunderstorm was rolling in–and neither Dara nor I had thought to prep for a thunderstorm! Dara didn’t have her umbrella, and I didn’t have my raincoat. DOH. Taking shelter from rain did however find us a neat arch with a WWII memorial.
The plan HAD been to take Susan to dinner, but we wound up blowing the time we had available just by talking and wandering! We did at least have a chance to duck into a cafe–again, to hide from rain–and drink hot beverages and yak more. But eventually we had to return Susan to the subway so she could scamper back to Uxbridge by bus. And Dara and I made our way back along Queen Street, heading back to Chez Cow!
On the way, we saw a spaceship building. I was a bit disappointed it wasn’t an actual spaceship.
It got to serious raining by the time we made it off the streetcar, so we ducked into the first open restaurant we could find, a pizza place. Which had perfectly acceptable pizza, and a friendly waiter who told us he was from the Yukon and that he quite disliked the bit of Toronto he lives in, but that he quite LIKED the bit the restaurant was in! I.e., Cow’s neighborhood, Leslieville. We are so far in agreement on the excellence of Leslieville.
It continued to be quite thunderstormy as the night progressed, to degrees I haven’t experienced since I was a kid, or since Dara and I were in Orlando for the Worldcon in the early nineties. I dreamed of lightning as I slept. And I’m told that Toronto really needs the rain, so it’s all good.
Today, though, I’ll be heading out with my raincoat!
Spaceship building is the New City Hall … and if there had been more time & we’d traveled further north, I could have taken you to Casa Loma, which is a REAL castle and was, apparently, transported to Toronto Brick by brick by a lunatic (I suppose I shouldn’t be judgemental) Back in ’75 when I was located smack downtown, I was able to watch the CN tower being erected to the south and the lights of Casa Loma to the north from my place. Casa Loma’s a hoot and a half, albeit very touristy.