Day 6: Niagara Falls and Toronto Road Trip

You can jump to a specific day:

Toronto: St. Lawrence Market, Distillery District, City Cruises Toronto, Financial District, Yonge Street and Sankofa Square, Queen Street West

View of the market below from The Market Gallery at St. Lawrence Market, Toronto, ON, Canada

CLICK TO JUMP TO:
St. Lawrence Market • Distillery District • City Cruises Toronto • Financial District • Yonge Street and Sankofa Square • Queen Street West

I had originally planned on us doing the City Cruises Toronto boat tour on Friday at sunset, but the weather forecast showed rain for Friday, so I switched our Friday plans with our Thursday plans and did the boat tour on Thursday afternoon when the weather was nicer. It was very easy to change our reservation times on the My CityPASS app for both City Cruises Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum; we used the My CityPASS app for our Toronto CityPASS reservations.

We used SpotHero again for our parking. We headed toward St. Lawrence Market. On the way we passed the Berczy Park Dog Fountain. The water wasn’t running when we were there, but a local told us that it looks so cool when the water’s running. Even without the water running we could still appreciate this distinctive fountain. From what I observed, it put a smile on the face of everyone who passed it.

Near the the Berczy Park Dog Fountain is the Gooderham building, AKA the Flatiron. There are a number of flatiron buildings througout the world, and because we both enjoy seeing interesting looking buildings we often will do slight detours to check some out on our trips.

ST. LAWRENCE MARKET

Less than three minutes away on foot from the Gooderham building is St. Lawrence Market. This market has plenty of food options to please most people.

Click here for a map of St. Lawrence Market.

Click here for the directory for St. Lawrence Market.

Below is a general photo gallery of the market.

For lunch I had a barbecue chicken sandwich from Churrasco St. Lawrence. Churrasco St. Lawrence serves sweet and savory Peruvian food. They have a spicy sauce that you can get extra of which went very well with the sandwich. The sandwich itself is nothing special, IMO, but it wasn’t bad; it was a bit dry and the chicken meat was cold, which I didn’t expect. The best part of the sandwich was the spicy sauce.

For lunch my husband had a lobster roll from Buster’s Sea Cove, which he enjoyed. The price to portion ratio is good, so we were both happy about that, plus it came with french fries that we both enjoyed eating.

Inside of St. Lawrence Market is The Market Gallery. You can clearly find where it is when you’re in the market because it’s the red brick building inside the market. According to this link, “What was once Toronto’s first purpose-built City Council Chambers now houses rotating exhibits that dive deep into the history of our city.” This gallery is free to visit. What was on display there when we went was not our type of art, however the view of the market below from the windows in the gallery was worth our quick visit to the gallery.

We decided it was time for dessert so we tried a couple of small desserts from Future Bakery One of the pastries was a butter tart, something that is said to have originated in Ontaria, Canada. We saw butter tarts throughout the city, they’re even sold in the grocery stores, and they sell them at the Costcos there as well. The butter tart I tried at Future Bakery was the first one either of us had ever tried, and I did not care for it. My husband liked it more than I did, but he didn’t think it was very good. The other pastry we tried there was just ok.

Something we both enjoyed a lot at St. Lawrence was ChocoSol. The chocolates there are wonderful! The woman working there was friendly and very informative and she gave us small samples of different types of chocolates. We ended up buying the Mon Cherry D’Amour bar, but we wished later that we had bought more of their chocolates because their chocolates are so good and so unique. They’re the type of chocolate that’s good to let melt in your mouth and savor.

We spent about one hour and forty minutes at St. Lawrence Market before walking about twelve minutes to get to the Distillery District.

DISTILLERY DISTRICT

The Distillery District is a fun area to explore. This area is made up of a number of Victorian Industrial buildings that had been neglected over time. The area has been repurposed as a fun, pedestrian only experience with a variety of establishments including dining and shopping.

Click here for a self guided tour of the Distillery District.

Click here for a Distillery District site map.

Click here for the Distillery District directory.

The photo gallery below gives a general feeling of the Distillery District.

We stopped at Izumi Sake Brewery to try a sake flight. This brewery has a type of sake that I doubt I had ever tried before – “freshly pressed, unpasteurized and unfiltered sake,’ and this was my favorite sake of the ones we tried in our sake flight, but all three of the sakes we tried were good. Wow! That was a long sentence I just typed!

Inside the Brewery is a self guided tour that takes less than a minute to do; you can see it in one of the photos in the photo gallery below.

After walking around the Distillery District a little more we came across Sweetie Pie bakery. We tried a slice of sour cherry pie and we both enjoyed it.

Next we went to Mill Street Brew Pub. The weather was perfect so we sat in their outside seating area and each of us ordered a beer. The waiter said they have a brewery in another location in Toronto where most of their beers are made, but they do make some at this location. We both enjoyed the beers we ordered.

Then we walked around some more and went to SOMA, a place that makes and sells chocolates and they sell gelato as well. We were hoping to at least try a small sample of their chocolate so that we could know if we liked it, but they don’t give out any samples of their chocolate. The prices for their chocolates is on the high end, and I didn’t want to buy it and then find out we don’t like it, so we didn’t buy any.

Fo their gelato they let each person try one very small sample of one flavor. We each tried one flavor and opted to buy one of the Thai coconut flavor to share. The cup is tiny as you can see in one of the photos below.

After finishing our visit to the Distillery District we walked along the Toronto waterfront to City Cruises Toronto for our sixty minute boat tour. It was about a half hour pleasant walk.

CITY CRUISES TORONTO

The tour started on time (at 3:30 p.m.) and ended just a few minutes shy of one hour. The employee who explained everything we were seeing (over a speaker system) did a great job and was humorous. Near the end of the tour we just sort of moved very slowly as if to kill time before getting back to the pier. It wasn’t an exciting tour but it was a beautiful day to be on a boat on the lake. Plus it was nice to get a chance to sit and relax for a bit.

The photo gallery below shows a shot of the Toronto waterfront on our way to the pier, the waiting area for the tour and some shots from the tour.

TORONTO FINANCIAL DISTRICT

From our City Cruises Toronto boat tour we walked to Bay Street, which is the center of Toronto’s Financial District. While the term “Bay Street” is used to represent Canada’s version of Wall Street, the actual street offers much more than that. I loved the combination of cool looking modern buildings mixed in with some neat looking old buildings.

After walking slowly up Bay Street for nearly thirty minutes admiring the architecture, we made a right onto Queen Street West. At the intersection of those two streets, and facing Bay Street as we were walking up Bay street, is Toronto’s Old City Hall – an old, cool looking Romanesque style building. The new City Hall is right across the street from the old city hall on Bay Street, and it’s so very different looking; it has a really cool, modern look to it.

The photo gallery below is of our walk from City Cruises Toronto to Queen Street West.

YONGE STREET AND SANKOFA SQUARE

Right next to Old City Hall is CF Toronto Eaton Centre. This is a mall and office complex. According to this link, “CF Toronto Eaton Centre is North America’s busiest shopping centre, welcoming millions of visitors from all around the world.”

There are a few levels to this mall. I was concerned going in because I cannot go in many malls in the U.S. due to the strong fragrances that some stores use for their branding, but I haven’t encountered that problem in Canada, yet. This mall was safe for me, with no strong fragrances and possibly a good ventilation system.

One of the things we really liked about this mall was the Purdy’s Chocolatier shop. We had never tried their chocolates before, and we both thought they had very good flavors in their chocoates, and the chocolate itself was pretty good. We ended up going back the next day to buy more chocolates to bring home with us.

At the bottom of the mall is a food court with a good variety of eateries. We ended up going back the next day and one of the Chinese fast food eateries was offering an end of the day special for a pretty good price on containers of food that had been pre packed. My husband chose one that had fried fish, veggies, noodles, and battered chicken. I wish we had taken more photos of this mall and its food court.

We exited CF Toronto Eaton Centre onto Yonge Street. Nearby across the street was a really cool looking modern building (Massey Tower) built right behind a neat looking old building (the Canadian Bank of Commerce’s Queen-Yonge branch). I love that they didn’t tear down the old building to build the new building in its place, but instead incorporated it into the plans for the new building. A photo of this is in the photo gallery shortly below.

We walked up Yonge Street and checked out the very nearby Yonge-Dundas Square, which is now called Sankofa Square. This square has a very energetic vibe to it; it made me think of Times Square, though it’s not as exciting and bustling or as large as Times Square. It also reminded me of Shibuya Scramble Crossing in Tokyo, a place I’ve not yet visited, because Sankofa Square also has a pedestrian scramble, but it’s not nearly as busy as Shibuya Scramble Crossing.

The photos below are of our walk from CF Toronto Eaton Centre to Sankofa Square.

From Sankofa Square we walked a couple of minutes up Yonge Street to World Food Market, which is located on Yonge Street and Gould Steet. This market has a good variety of eateries with its over 18 food stalls.

We ended up trying food from three places for our dinner. We ordered onion rings from Squares and Affaires, which offers sweet and savory dishes, most of which, if not all, are fried. Some of the items they offer are funnel cake, chicken and waffle, corn dogs, fried shrimp, fried calamari and much more. It felt a lot like food you can get at a fair. Oh! I just realized – maybe that’s the reason why part of the name of this food stall has the word “fair” in it! The onion rings we ordered were very good!

We also ordered butter chicken with rice from Karma’s Tibetan, Nepalese and Indian food. The butter chicken was delicious and we dipped our onion rings in the butter chicken sauce because they gave us a generous portion of the sauce.

The other place we tried food from was D’Brew. My husband ordered the garlic butter shrimp pasta. They showed fresh basil in their photo of it, and my husband asked before he ordered if the photo was accurate and if it really does have fresh basil in it. The woman said yes, fresh basil is what they use in it. When he started to eat the pasta he immediately saw, and tasted, that there was no fresh basil in his pasta dish, only dried basil. When he brought this to the woman’s attention, she assured him that it’s fresh basil because that’s all they use. Right there on the counter was a bottle of dried basil! So my husband asked her to show him the fresh basil they have. She said she just put it back into the refrigerator. After digging for quite some time and searching on different shelves of the refrigerator, she finally pulled out a small batch of fresh basil. If she had just used fresh basil, I would think she would have known where it was stored without having to search so long for it. Plus, it was unquestionably dried basil. It was also made with garlic powder, and the shrimp were rubbery. It was not good at all.

The photos below are of the food we ate and the places we got the food from.

As for seating, we were there on a Thursday evening from a little after 6 p.m. to a little after 7 p.m. and there was enough seating for all the patrons while we were there.

One thing we wish we knew was that the area we ate at is not the only place you can get food from at World Food Market. Right behind that area, facing Gould Steet, are a few more food stalls; we didn’t notice those until after we had eaten and started walking on Yonge street again.

The photo gallery below is of the rest of World Food Market other than the places we ordered food from.

Our tour of Yonge street ended at World Food Market, and the following day we walked up more of Yonge street, so you can click on Day 6 of this vacation story and jump to that part if you would like to see more about Yonge street.

QUEEN STREET WEST

Next we headed to Queen Street West; this street has lots of restaurants and shops and is also knows for its art.

We started out at Nathan Phillips Square, which is at the corner of Bay St and Queen St W. From this lively Square you’ll see Toronto’s new City Hall, Old City Hall across the street and the Toronto Sign.

Right next Nathan Phillips Square walking east on Queen St W is Osgoode Hall. There is a restaurant inside Osgoode Hall which, as of this writing, “is open from September until June between the hours
of 12:00 noon and 2:00 p.m. To book a reservation at the Osgoode Hall restaurant please call: 416-947-3361.” Click here for information on tours of Osgoode Hall.

We did not go inside Osgoode Hall, we just briefly visited the grounds.

Then we continued walking east on Queen St W until we got to Portland St. I enjoyed seeing the many old buildings on Queen St W.

Our plans were to make a left onto Bathurst St From Queen St W and check out the Fashion District and then check out Stackt and then Toronto Music Garden, then walk back to our car, but due to one of us not feeling well, we made a left onto Portland St instead and then a left onto King St W and walked back to our car.

The photo gallery below is of our walk from Portland St to our car.

You can jump to a specific day: