Toronto - The City of Festivals
Posted by Candice on June 14, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Every city has a catch phrase. Toronto should be “The City of Festivals.” There is a festival every weekend here. I think sometimes its a bit silly - everything ends up getting called a festival just so it is taken seriously. But, anyway Tom and I have had quite a busy weekend taking in some festivals.
Yesterday, while Tom worked, I went with one of my classmates to a “Brazilian Guitar Marathon.” It was a beautiful sunny day and we sat and watched several Brazilian guitarists and singers. Some of it was really cool. The first performer I saw was making percussion sounds with her mouth while humming a melody and playing the guitar. I’ve been trying to mimic it since then but while she sounded like a tropical party, I sound like a dying animal. Sadly though my Portuguese is quite rusty (or, well, completely non-existant), so after a while everything just sounded like it should be background music at a Mexican/South American restaurant. I left my friend (a native Protuguese speaker) and decided to explore the area a little bit.
The concert was set up outside in the Yorkville neighbourhood. This is a swanky neighbourhood with fancy restaurants, high end designer boutiques, swanky hotels, and so on. I had heard there was a Whole Foods in the area and decided to wander around until I found it. Which I did, eventually. It was nice to walk though all the streets though. However, I don’t understand all the people there around my age with babies in designer strollers and dogs and BMWs and Dolce and Gabanna bags. How do they manage that? Really. And Whole Foods? Is grocery shopping heaven. If you can’t do your shopping at markets and indie natural food stores, then it is the next best thing. I wish I was trendy enough to shop there.
However, Tom and I got our groceries in creepy-suburbia land (ie. our neighbourhood) this morning so that we could have the afternoon to head downtown. It was another beautiful day - about 28 degrees and sunny. We went to Bloor and Spadina to check out a street festival that was going on there. They had the road closed for an entire block and it felt very odd to be walking down the middle of the street in Toronto. Basically we just walked up and down the block to see the different vendors that had set up, to listen to some groovin’ South American music and watch two strangers salsa to it, and watch some people playing a giant chess game. Tom attempted some kids math puzzles. Luckily he got them right, or he would never have heard the end of it!
From there we headed on a human sardine tin streetcar to Kenzington market to see if there was anything interesting happening. Surprisingly it was quite calm and we did a few errands without stress. From there we headed down to the waterfront to check out (and scope out potential wedding food choices) at the “1000 Tastes” event - part of the Luminato Festival. Check out our forthcoming VIDEO BLOG for details about it!
Subscribe to the comments for this post