We’ve spent the past week in Toronto and it has been wonderful. The city itself is cosmopolitan, verdant, and beautiful. We’re staying in the Annex, a neighborhood full of trees, happy dogs, and young families. It is also really close to a bunch of excellent restaurants and cafes, several museums, and the University of Toronto. Garett did a great job when he chose the neighborhood.

One of my favorite things about traveling is meeting people who aren’t like me and Toronto is a city filled with immigrants. Today I met a man from Portugal. I was both disappointed and relieved when he wouldn’t speak Portuguese with me–for those who don’t know, I’ve been studying it for the past month or so. The thing that made me introduce myself was his amazing house. Check it out.

His van is also highly decorated.

On Thursday we went to Niagara Falls. I’d visited it before, I think, although I can’t really remember it and Garett had never visited. Regardless, Niagara Falls is a miracle manifested; I can’t imagine it gets any less impressive with subsequent viewings. We saw both the American and Canadian sides. Although I want to be patriotic, the Canadian side really is much better for viewing the Falls. It was so beautiful.

The American side

The Canadian side

And because people want pictures of us, this is us at Whirlpool Rapids.

We’ve gone on a lot of walks in Toronto; the city is big and diverse. There’s a lot of good public transit and reasonable sidewalks everywhere. If we had the endurance, I think it might be possible to walk the entire thing. We’ve gone on a few 2-3 hour walks and we’ve only scratched the surface. I’ve included a few photos we took throughout the city. The dog fountain is pretty fun–if you look closely, there are actually breeds of dogs represented.

Lastly, the museums. I saved this for last because it might be a little boring; I just like museums so much. Here goes.

The first museum I visited was the Bata Shoe Museum. I love really specific museums and this was a fantastic one.

Pope shoes. Apparently the Pope is supposed to wear red shoes. Pope Francis has controversially? shunned the custom in the first two days of his papacy by wearing black shoes instead.

Cow shoe!

Shoes made from MUSHROOM LEATHER.

This Nike ZoomX Vaporfly was almost banned from the Olympics because it can boost running performance by up to 4.2%. I wonder if the slanted laces make a difference?

The Royal Ontario Museum is one of the premier museums in the country. For me it was okay; it was pretty crowded and the explanatory signage for the art/artifacts wasn’t great, so I didn’t enjoy it as much as I could have. On the plus side, there was a lot of Roman stuff and a few really cool Buddhas. Here are a few of my favorite things that I saw.

Ancient Egyptian pallet. I love it that you can see the personality of the pharaoh from the work of art. Check out how neatly he had those bodies laid out. Dude really liked things to be tidy and organized. The function of this artifact is bananas–apparently it’s a makeup pallet for preparation of eye paint to put on a statue of a god.

That’s what we’ve done this week. We will be hiking in Ganaraska Forest this weekend and then spend the next week in Montréal. Thanks for reading!