Toront was one of the reasons I agreed to move to Buffalo and it certainly fulfilled all of my expectations.
Friday night we stayed at the Doubletree Hotel where we were greeted with warm gooey cookies. What a welcome! We also took advantage of the indoor pool and shoved small children aside to ride the water slide which did not measure up to the expectations (e:drew) had fed me. But that's not why we visited Toronto.
First stop of the day, Chinatown:



More specifically, Bright Pearl Restaurant for Dim Sum. It was my first dim sum experience and in my haste I settled for steamed dumplings when I should have held out for more fried dough concoctions such as the fried dough stuffed with red bean paste pictured on the bottom. Drew had the fried squid on the right and we both had the sticky rice with pork wrapped in a leaf on the left.



We wandered around looking for lucky cats to add to the lucky cat collection, but no luck...



but we did enjoy the sights....



And I also found my favorite fruit from south asia...rambutan....



We visited the largest mall in the area. I'm not a shopper but it was an incredible view of consumerist culture....



We stopped by India Land to celebrate Diwali. India land was only two blocks long, not much to see, and the celebrations weren't hopping when we got there, so off to other things...

We wandered around some more. Drew had an improv workshop and by the end I was exhausted and ready to go home.



(e:Leetee) asked for impressions from a first time visitor. The public transportation system was incredible. The city was clean. People were really polite and really helpful. There was a whole range of accents outside of what I think of as the Canadian accent so I was a little intrigued. I didn't see a lot of historical sights, buildings, homes, streets, everything looked really modern, but maybe I didn't see those areas. Restaurants were everywhere. I swear I saw a sushi restaurant on every corner. I thought that was kind of funny. It seemed more expensive than Chicago, but less expensive than New York. So even though I really liked it, we probably won't be living in Toronto any time soon. But all in all, can't wait to visit again.