Tag: toronto

Categories
geek in canada

the arthur conan doyle room

libraries are nice places in principle… but a beautiful one, with a literary giftshop aaaaaand an arthur conan doyle room definitely takes the cake! :D

we read about the room on (where else?) atlas obscura and put it on our plans. then, on a day of walking around downtown toronto, we made a detour to the toronto reference library, to discover this room.

it looks like a place right out of baker street, with its carpet and bookshelves, where you can find not only books by doyle, but also books about doyle and his works, translations in many languages, pastiches (which are sort of fanfiction!) and more. some are rare books, but despite this, the nice librarian just let us have a look around and even read, if we wanted.

we had it all to ourselves for a while, snapping photos and taking our time admiring all the spines of books collected over the years, from collections, auctions or just donations.

for a fan, this was such a treat! :)

Categories
foooood in canada

s’mores!

how many times have we seen people doing s’mores in movies, with sticks around a campfire? so naturally, this was on the list of things we wanted to try in toronto. :D

we got helpful tips from a friend’s teenager granddaughter on the proper way to do them, gathered the ingredients and off we went. the first step (if you don’t have a campfire nearby), is just to lay everything out in artistic piles, and then pop your creations in the oven to melt the chocolate + brown the marshmallows…

… which our oven did exceedingly well. :| sigh.

so after replacing all those burnt marshmallows, we tried again, this time keeping a careful eye on the whole thing. a minute or two was all it took for them to become golden, and then it was just a matter of topping them with another cracker to make a sandwich.

squishy goodness ensued! :D we discovered s’mores are delicious but extremely sweet, so we soon realized we’d been a bit ambitious with the quantity we made. oh well…

i’d still like to try them out in a campfire someday, but for now, i’m happy we succeeded at this quintessential north american experience.

Categories
in canada

kayaking in toronto harbour

when i wrote the list, i added “kayaking on the lagoon”, thinking it was time we took to the waters in the ria formosa… but it’s one of those things that is so close by, you never get around to actually doing it.

fast forward to last month, there were were in toronto, and our friend lynda mentioned that you can kayak to the islands in front of the city, and how the best view is actually from the water… so we rented one, strapped on some life jackets and went for it!

turns out, kayaking around in a busy body of water while trying to avoid the airport exclusion zone and dodge the big ferries isn’t as easy as it sounds. i confess i panicked a few times… but it was well worth it for the view. all those skyscrapers against a backdrop of water and blue skies! we parked the kayak for a while and just took it all in.

the view of the city from the open water was the highlight of this adventure, but we also enjoyed cruising between the islands in very uncoordinated zig-zags. kayaking is not easy, and at some point we broke the rudder in ours, making the return a tricky challenge. must practice more!

we stil plan to go kayaking on our own lagoon someday, but for now i’m happy to tick this goal off the list with a flourish — we did it! :D

Categories
analogue wednesdays in canada

analogue wednesday #155

walking around toronto.

Categories
analogue wednesdays in canada

analogue wednesday #154

looking up, in toronto.