I Went To Toronto!

I’ve been saying for a while that I am going to go to Toronto as it’s pretty close to the university where I’m studying. Yesterday was Homecoming Day, this involves sports and lots of drinking two things that I am not keen on. So therefore I decided that I wanted to just get off campus, and what better way to get off campus than to head out for a big city day!

I travelled via Greyhound which is new to me and a really good way to travel. We don’t really have anything like the Greyhound service in England. Not only was it a relatively quick journey but it was also a very comfortable journey, the Greyhound buses have a lot of leg room.

When I arrived I started in the Eaton Centre Mall, this is a really big mall with some great shops. It was good to wander around. I tried to restrain myself as I need to keep remembering that anything I buy over here is ultimately going to have to come back with me to England somehow but still I bought some stuff. (Of course I did!) I decided to have lunch in the Eaton Centre, I went to a Greek place in the food court which was really good value.

After I had lunch I walked over to the AGO (Art Gallery of Toronto). Over the years I have been to a lot of art galleries but I honestly think that the AGO is the best one that I have ever been to. It had such a good range of stuff on display. From paintings to sculptures to installations. The AGO has lots of ‘name’ artists like Picasso, Monet, Turner, Van Gogh, Brancusi, Matisse, Miró and Modigliani. Then alongside the classical artists there’s modern works that are both thought provoking and celebrating Canada’s First Nations Communities and the black community. I spent quite a while wandering around the AGO.

Afterwards I decided to walk down to the waterfront. It turned out it was a longer walk than I had anticipated. Although I found navigating Toronto on foot to be fairly easy, beforehand someone had hold me that everyone walks around Downtown Toronto and I can definitely see why. The waterfront is a really nice area. Had I not been conscious of the walk and the fact that I was going to have to do it again in order to get back to the bus station I could have spent a long time there.

Toronto is a great city, it is a busy city but it didn’t feel intimidating for someone on their own going there for the first time. I’d say that Toronto is fairly similar to New York in a lot of ways. However when I went to New York I found it to be dirty, bustling and a bit unwelcoming on the other hand I found Toronto to have more of a chilled vibe in comparison, once more Canadians prove the stereotype that they are generally genuinely nice people!

I really enjoyed my day in Toronto and I want to go again sometime. (Although even if I hadn’t enjoyed it I would definitely be going to Toronto again given DC are going to be filming there!) I kind of think of yesterday as a getting to know Toronto trip, it’s a big city and I only really begun to scratch the surface of it. I definitely want to go again so that I can get to know the city even better.