Our homebase for exploring Toronto was a cute little basement apartment in the cool up-and-coming neighborhood of Liberty Village. It was kind of like if Edgehill was smashed up against the trolley barns. And on a scale 10 times as big. Toronto is full of hip streets that go on forever and ever. There seems to be no end of chic cafes, hidden public art, black ice cream cones (made of charcoal! who knew?), street tacos, graffiti, and weed shops run by mobsters (I am not judging you, Toronto). In short, it was our kind of town. Definitely the cooler, more Seattle/international brother to its mysterious French cousin, Montréal. A really fun stopover. See proof of Toronto’s hipness below:
Let us introduce you to just a few of the cast of characters from Toronto. I met an ex-hockey-playing-Canadian-army-dude who said the Canadians were in Afghanistan two weeks before anyone else after 9/11. He enlisted at 16. And said “we’ve always got your back.” I told him the same. He did put $300 on Colin McGregor and I told him he might as well go out in the street and throw it up in the air. He called me a snowflake. I of course loved the smack talk. Great guy.
I told a sassy waitress at a taco joint a new fact I had just learned from Eugene, that tequila is the only liquor that’s not a depressant. She laughed and said “Of course I know that! Didn’t you go to university?” Touché. Smart-ass French waitress – 1. Trent – 0.
Another cool dude was our gracious host who stopped by just to see who these crazy people were who were driving from Nashville to California via Canada. We had a great chat. He gave us tons of local tips including his secret pingpong table and encouraging us to check out Graffiti Alley, a highlight of our trip for sure. We loved how unconjured and outlaw it seemed to be. Cue the montage of graffiti shots:
Our last night there, we walked to the waterfront which was only blocks from our apartment. It was both bizarre and breathtaking. Sort of like a cross between Fountain Square and the Knoxville World’s Fair site, sunsphere and all (note that our TN sunsphere smokes theirs). Once we got through the post-apocalyptic maze, the shore of the Great Lake itself was really beautiful and kind of primitive. Saw a sailboat race that made us miss our old girl, the Wayward Wind (we never did rename that boat. I always thought the Tennessee Three was a good name. Casey preferred Celebrating Nothing. Can’t argue with either of them).
So in all, Toronto is a really interesting place. Kind of sprawls on with about five different clusters of modern highrises and skyscrapers knit together by brick warehouses and neighborhoods. Felt both old and futuristic at the same time.
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