Our time in Toronto was enjoyable, even with the frustrations surrounding buying a vehicle. The hostel began to feel like home and somehow “one or two nights” turned into a stay of 37 days! In this time we met so many interesting people sharing travel stories and plans.
During July there was a heatwave – up to 36c. No one ever warned us that Canada could be hot! We spent our days visiting car dealerships, planning where we would go after Toronto and eating a not-insignificant amount of fast food. Every night there was an event on at the hostel including bingo, trivia and movie nights (but BBQ Saturday was the one we looked forward to the most!).
We also had a few favourite bars to visit. The top one of course being Meltdown – an esports (that’s video games, dad) bar – during our last visit Dan finally won a trivia round and a $10 voucher reward! Another great place was an arcade called Tilt which had almost every pre 2000’s video game you could think of as well as the old arcade and pinball machines (finally Vikki found a game she can beat Dan at – pinball!). We even got a chance to try out skee-ball.
On a rainy Sunday morning when we’d both woken up a bit miffed about the whole car situation Dan suggested we visit the distillery district. We were glad to get out and do something and the rain and cold were actually a nice change from the heatwave Toronto had been experiencing. It turned out the distillery district is rather inactive on Sundays and we probably only saw four or five people the whole time we were there but it was lovely to have it to ourselves and be able to appreciate the buildings with their colours popping in the rain. We’ve heard they have a great Christmas market so another visit is a priority for December.
On the 2nd August we finally purchased our car and a few days later we were heading out of the city for good!
