Toronto, Friday, 15-Jul-2022
Our first full day in Toronto included going through the Royal Ontario Museum and doing a walking tour of Chinatown and Kensington Market.
Since we had gotten up early for our flight the day before, we had little if any jet lag, but we still decided to keep things open-ended in case we ran out of energy during the day.
We showed up at the dining hall as breakfast was getting underway, and there were only a couple of other people there. We sat down in the leather and oak chairs, put our trays on the heavy leather placemats, and ate our meal. When we were done, we grabbed a little extra fruit to have with breakfast the next day, since we planned on leaving before service started.
Royal Ontario Museum
We had purchased our tickets for the Royal Ontario Museum ahead of time, so we were able to just walk in and have our tickets scanned. Most of the first floor is free, but we were given small pins to wear so we could go upstairs.
We decided to follow the audio tour of museum highlights, which started on the first floor, but first, we looked around the entryway with its mosaic domed roof and main hall. On to the tour. We saw a birchbark freight canoe that could carry several tons. There was also a huge mural named Paradise of Maitreya on clay which has been moved multiple times, necessitating the cutting of several pieces of wall.
On the way up the stairs, we looked at the totem poles, one of which almost touched the ceiling of the third floor. We also got a closer look at the mosaic dome over the entrance. The first stop was gems and minerals, where we saw a blue diamond, a fragment of a carbon meteorite, and other specimens which weren’t on the tour.
On to fossils, which included one that was in shale. The rock was split right in the middle, and the halves were opened like a book, each side with a full impression. We then flowed into the dinosaur skeletons, with all of the popular ones (think tyrannosaurus rex, stegosaurus, etc.) and some less common ones.
Next up was the bat cave. The audio on the tour was quite long, so we stood at the entrance for quite a while as we listened to what we would be seeing as it ended up, it took less time to walk through the cave.
Time for lunch, so we grabbed a quick meal at the café on the first floor, then went back to the second floor to continue our tour of animals. There was an impressive bird display which showed some of them in flight overhead. The largest display was reserved for Bull, the name of the museum’s Southern White Rhino. At the time of the display’s creation, the species was on the rebound, but the audio tour explained that it has since become functionality extinct.
One floor up, our tour continued in the ancient civilization displays, including a fragment of a statue of Cleopatra (the audio tour was less definitive and said it’s presumed to be her) and a brick wall with the relief of a lion from Central Mesopotamia. At about this time, a guided tour showed up, so we let them go ahead to the next piece (which was on our tour, too) so we could hear the audio on our tour.
The last piece on the tour was wall-sized and made completely from bottle caps. The caps were tied together, and some caps were reshaped to form what looked like a fishing net.
We felt like we covered quite a bit, so went back to the room to relax a bit.
Walking tour
Having recharged, we headed back out to do a walking tour of Chinatown and Kensington Market. To get to the starting point, we walked through a different part of the University of Toronto than around where we were staying. We looked at the sundial, which seemed to be a bit off at first. We looked at the table for how many minutes to add for the date, making the sundial quite accurate.
Walking further through campus, we noticed the university’s slogan was “Defying Gravity”. It struck us as funny since we first noticed it near the physics and astronomy buildings.
Before we entered Chinatown proper, we walked around the Art Institute of Toronto, with its building easily recognizable as being designed by Frank Gehry (he also did the MoPOP at Seattle Center and Disney Hall in Los Angeles).
Once we got into Chinatown, the streets narrowed and we saw lots of produce markets, gift shops, and herbal stores. As we started to exit the area, we stopped at a bakery to have a strawberry tart. Very good. We then went through what seemed to be an area known for vintage clothing. Nestled among the stores was a gelato shop, and since we had walked quite a bit, we felt justified in stopping again.
Towards the end of the walking tour, we walked through Bellevue Square Park (the name being only a bit confusing as Seattleites) where we saw someone rising a colorful penny farthing.
By the time we finished the walking tour, it was late afternoon. We found a store to pick up some breakfast items for the morning, got some dinner (a lamb shawarma platter split between us which included a big hunk of lamb shank; there were leftovers), then went back to the room. Since we had walked quite a bit, we decided to try the streetcar to get us a bit closer, and it worked well. They’re like the San Francisco cable cars where the tram goes down the left lane of traffic, so you need to make sure the traffic in the right lane has stopped before boarding or getting off.
Back at Massey College, we were more than ready to settle in for the night.
