An awesome weekend in Toronto

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Toronto has always been a favorite city of mine. I was visiting the city for the 3rd time. The modern downtown with the high rise condos never failed to amaze me and this time there were few more added to the pile. We left Thursday evening at 5 pm and by 11 pm, we were driving past the familiar university dr, Gerrard st and Yonge st towards Bay st. where Lavanya (Rajesh’s sister) stayed in another high rise apartment with a gorgeous view of downtown Toronto.

On Friday we went to Scarborough which is primarily a Srilankan neighborhood to eat lunch at Anjappar, the famous chettinad restaurant in Tamil Nadu. We indulged in the best south Indian buffet we had ever eaten in ages. The fish curry was utterly delicious and the kids indulged in crispy dosas and aromatic sambar. After lunch, we went to Murugan store that sold tamil periodicals and books, dvds and some puja items as well. We picked a lot of Tamil and Hindi Dvds, the hindi ones were on sale for $1 and the Tamil ones cost $2. I couldn’t wait to go back and watch them all.

In the evening, we walked past the Delta Chelsea hotel, where we had stayed before and went to the Eaton Center Mall. It’s a beautiful mall and we shopped at Aeropostale and Swarowski and roamed aimlessly for some more time window shopping and people watching. I ended the evening with Gin and sweet lime, while the guys finished a bottle of Italian wine that I had brought from Albany accompanied with sumptuous chicken biryani.

Saturday morning arrived and we took the street car to St. Lawrence market. Riding the street car in Toronto is a lot of fun as the car passes through the main downtown area, past the CN tower, Rogers hall of fame, the harbor front, china town and many more sights. It was a fun experience for the kids. Niki made up her mind that she wanted to live in a big city like Toronto when she was out on her own. We bought delicious pastries and Rajesh bought some wine in the market. We ate lunch in the food court at the basement of Lavanya’s apartment and proceeded to watch some of the movies that we had bought.
That evening we were invited to Valentina’s house for dinner. Jack and Valentina lived in North York on Gordon Rd. in a 2 million dollar mansion. It was so nice to see them after almost a year. Their house was beautiful, tastefully decorated and gorgeous. The basement had a cozy bar and ping pong table as well as a fuze table. Grandma made us a hearty dinner of oven roasted turkey with the most delicious stuffing I’ve ever tasted, tiny roasted potatoes, French bread, crepes and her famous layered cake that they always call as Rajesh cake. Meg was so scared of their dog Frosty that she kept yelping at him whenever he came by to snuggle. After dinner, Jack and Rajesh played ping pong while me and Valentina chatted over cappuccinos. Niki was equally happy to play with her old friend Alexandra and it was a wonderful evening spent with old friends.

We woke up late on Sunday morning and were very hungry. So we proceeded for brunch at Anjappar again. This time we feasted on idli, chicken curry, crispy dosas, vada, pongal, puri-aloo and the best filter coffee ever. Stomach full and craving for something sugary, we went on to Gerrard street to Little India and bought a box of Mithai and walked past the shops, all selling stuff from Indian saris and handicrafts to groceries.

It was time to leave and we set off to Albany around 4 pm, stopping at Niagara Falls Canadian side upon Niki’s insistence. I’ve never seen the falls in winter and it’s definitely a sight to behold. There were mounds of ice floating on the water like icebergs and the falls was very misty and there were so less tourists that I closed my eyes and was able to hear the rhythmic sound of the falls. It sure had an extremely soothing effect on me!

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Comments

[Ann Anhalt]

great write-up
Going to Toronto next week and I read your trip blog. Great. I have one under http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/DrakeSmart/.