Canada Fall ‘24 - Ep. 07 - Le Plateau-Mont-Royal & Downtown Montréal
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Canada Fall '24 - Ep. 04 - My Personal Local Tour Guide
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this already but the whole reason for my Canada trip is to spend some time with Juli. A little bit of a background story, we’ve actually been friends since the 7th grade and apart from the first two years we spent together, the rest for our friendship has always been long distance. We did the Jakarta and Australia long distance when I moved to the land down under for high school. And after she moved to Toronto, we’ve been doing the Toronto and wherever-I-currently-am long distance since. During this more than two decades of friendship, apart from quick meet ups when she’s visiting Jakarta, we only have taken three trips together. One time during college when she visited me in San Francisco, one time after we graduated college when I visited her in Toronto, and the most recent one was when we went to Disneyworld in Orlando (technically, the first two trips weren’t even trips where we both went somewhere together, but we did spend time in the same place so you get what I mean).
So this year, since it’s been a while since my last visit to Toronto and we missed each other last year (I was in the US when she was visiting Jakarta), I thought it’d be fun to pay her a visit and see what her life looks like these days since she told me that her job is now not as crazy busy as the previous ones that she had.
We decided that I’d come for a three-week visit. That way she doesn’t have to take any time off work while we’d still have plenty of time to do catch ups and sightseeing during her free time. That also means that during the weekdays, our first half of the day was usually spent at home with both of us working. And since we both don’t really cook (she sometimes does and I don’t), we did a lot of Uber Eats orders for our meals. All of that is just me trying to say that you’re probably going to see a couple of Uber Eats orders on some of my blog posts. Anyways…
Quintessential Canadian Breakfast
I started the day with one of the most quintessential Canadian thing out there, Tim Hortons which according to Google is the equivalent of Dunkin’ Donuts in the US. I ordered the Bagel B.E.L.T (CA$5.39) since I’m craving bacon and Juli said their bagel is pretty good. I also ordered the Farmer’s Breakfast Wrap (CA$5.39) and the decaf French Vanilla (CA$3.29) per Juli’s recommendation since those are two of her favorite breakfast menus from Tim Hortons. And after trying them, I get why she likes them because they are pretty delicious. I liked all of them, even the decaf French Vanilla (a little too sweet for my personal preference, but it’s still good) which surprisingly sat well with my non-coffee-drinking stomach.
Sushi Delivery
We spent the day at home because I had some stuff I needed to work on. And so for dinner we decided to get some sushi from one of Juli’s favorite sushi place, the R Sushi.
We ordered the Salmon Ikura Don (CA$25.95) that’s served with Miso soup and the Cherry Blossom Roll (CA$15.95) which basically a salmon avocado roll topped with tuna. The sashimi and Ikura were pretty fresh, the rice was good, and the portion was pretty fulfilling. A solid 8/10 from me. Also, we actually ordered quite a number of times from this place since Juli really likes sushi and sashimi and I do too.
First Time Riding Toronto’s Subway
The next day, after having a slow lazy Saturday morning at home, we finally left the house around 1 pm. Me, Juli and Tom took the subway and headed to Downtown Toronto to do some sightseeing. This was my first time riding Toronto’s subway since last time I was here, me and Juli pretty much just walked around the city since she lived in downtown.
The fare for adult is CA$3.30 if paid with debit/credit card (CA$3.35 if you pay-as-you-go) and kids ages 0-12 ride for free. Apple Pay also works for paying the fare so it’s super convenient. I have to say that the station and the subway cars (at least the ones we were in) were definitely cleaner than New York’s subway. Inside the subway car wasn’t too quiet either. Unlike Japan or Korea’s subways that are usually pretty quiet and silent, here people talk among themselves in a moderate voice level.
Strangers Asking for a Photo
We got off at Union Station and started our exploration in downtown Toronto. The first interesting building that we passed by was the Fairmont Royal York, a landmark Toronto hotel. The historic luxury hotel was opened in June 1929 and its tall Châteauesque-styled structure is certainly a head turner for people who walk by the building, including me.
I stopped to take some shots of the building and suddenly a group of three teenage boys approached me. One of them asked me if i can take a picture of them. Strangers walking up to me asking me to take their pictures is nothing new to me and has happened multiple times during my travels. Even so, every time it happened, it never ceases to confuse me on why you would want a stranger—who you probably will never see again—to take your pictures. Nevertheless, when I feel like it, i usually oblige to their request just to see what will happen. this time, the conversation went something like this:
“Excuse me, can you take a picture of us?”
I looked away from my camera and found the boy who asked me the question standing not too far from me with his two friends behind him. A little surprised and confused at the ask I replied with, “Why?”
The boy just shrugged. “Just because.”
Well, the answer was simple and innocent enough so I said, “Sure.”
He then called over his friends and i told them to stand in front of me with the Fairmont Royal York building in the background and took a couple of shots. After i finished with my shots and told them I’m done, they thanked me and starting to walk away. I quickly asked them if they want to give me their email or something so I can send over the pictures to them. One of them said sure so I handed over my phone to them so they can type out their email address.
“You guys from around here?” I asked while the boy was typing.
“No, we’re from up north.” he replied before handing me back my phone. The reply made their request make more sense now. Fellow tourists asking for a photo isn’t that weird. Although what’s weird is that they didn’t ask me to take one with one of their phones.
“Cool.” I said checking the email address he wrote before slipping my phone back to my pocket. “I’ll send over the photos.”
“Thanks!” he said and the three boys gave me slight nods and waved before walking away.
And that’s my the first another random encounter with strangers on this trip. Went pretty normal I’d say. If you were me, would you take their pictures?
Touristy Things
After that encounter, we arrived at the first spot Juli wanted to take me to, the Berczy Park. The park is pretty nice. Not too big, not too small, and not too crowded. There were a lot of dog-owners roaming around the area since it’s a dog park. There were also people who are sitting around on the benches and picnic tables around the park. It’s a pretty nice place to people and dog watch I’d say, especially when the weather is nice like today (it was 21°C when we were there so the weather was perfect).
We then stopped by at the Gooderham Building, another one of Toronto’s landmark that is dubbed as Toronto’s version of the Flatiron building. It’s smaller in size and even though it looks like a dupe of the NYC’s Flatiron Building, interestingly this building was actually build first. Photographing the building can be a little bit challenging since you have to take the shot from the other side. Even more challenging if you yourself want to be in the shot. But it’s doable. And if you get it from certain angle, you can also get the CN Tower in the background.
After a short 3-minute walk from the Gooderham Building, we arrived at St. Lawrence Market. The market kind of reminded me of Granville Island Public Market in Vancouver. Similar vibes, but I feel like maybe the space here is a bit more spacious. There are lots of food vendors inside the building and a great place to grab a bite if you want a lot of options to choose from.
I wasn’t really hungry when we were there and there was nothing in particular that I was dying to try so I just did some sightseeing and didn’t buy anything. Juli was hungry so she bought Buster’s Sea Cove East Coast Lobster Roll and she offered me to try some of it (read my review here).
The Well
It was cloudy and drizzling a little when we made our way to The Well, one of Toronto’s newest and biggest development. The place was just opened last year in November and Juli wanted to take me here since she thought I would like the architecture of the building. And she was right. The giant complex do have a very impressive architecture and I had a lot of fun shooting around the place (you can see more photos here).
Apart from showing me the cool shopping complex, one of the main reason why Juli wanted to come here was to pick up the two Labubus she bought from Facebook Marketplace from Mr. Surprise, a designer toy store on the upper ground of The Well. The seller has dropped off the items she bought at the store and she needed to pick them up. The whole Drop-Off/Pick-Up Service the store provided is pretty cool actually and definitely makes it easier for people to buy and trade stuff through the store (read more about it here).
We didn’t go into a lot of stores since I didn’t feel like shopping. So we mainly just roamed around the area to sightsee. We did go to Indigo though. This bookstore is huge and you can also find a bunch of lifestyle products inside the store. It kind of feels like Kyobo Bookstore in Korea (although some Kyobo locations are even bigger than this one). A couple of things I like about the store, first, the layout of the store feels open and not too cramped. Second, there are chairs available in different sections of the store for you to sit on. Both are a plus for a bookstore. The design of their manga section is also pretty cool and the kids section is pretty big as well. I think kids would love it if they come here.
Italian Dinner
At the end of the day, we found ourselves at Cibo Wine Bar at King West for dinner after a failed attempt at getting a table at a nearby Mexican place. The appetizer was good, the main was okay (read the full review here) and the portion was pretty big for me. Also, it is highly possible that it’s just North America’s regular portion and I’m just not used to it.
When we’re done with dinner, we took the streetcar to head to the subway station. This was another first time for me. The streetcar was pretty nice and clean. Way better than San Francisco’s Muni streetcars from what I can remember from the last time I rode one more than a decade ago (I don’t know if they’re better now). Apple Pay also works on the streetcar and Juli told me that if you get off and transfer to the subway, you don’t have to pay again. Toronto apparently allow riders to switch between subway lines, streetcars, and buses in any direction using a single fare, within a two-hour period. So unless you go over the two-hour period, you won’t be charged any additional fare which is a pretty good deal I’d say.
After walking around downtown Toronto for 9.4 km and more than 16,000 steps, we finally arrived home and called it a night.
Places Visited:
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Canada Fall '24 - Ep. 03 - Watching Them Argue About Real Estate
First Morning in Toronto
After 11-hour of good night sleep and two hours of rolling around in Juli’s comfortable bed after I woke up, I finally dragged myself out of bed in search for food. It’s past 1 pm and my stomach was starting to grumble in protest, demanding to be filled since my last meal was only half a cup of Machi Machi’s black milk tea from yesterday afternoon.
Apparently, Juli hasn’t had her lunch yet either so she heated up the leftover food from yesterday’s lunch for us to eat (which also reminded me that food portion here in North America is huge).
“Do you want soy sauce for the seafood pancake?” She asked while pulling out a large ziplock bags filled with single packaged condiments from one of the kitchen cabinets.
I was shocked looking at the bulging clear plastic bag she’s holding and how many condiments it holds.
“What is inside this thing?” I asked while laughing at the slightly absurd view in front of me because I don’t think any one person needs this many packaged condiments in her house.
She smiled and while digging through the pile to find a package labeled with ‘Soy Sauce’ she said, “I know right? It’s crazy how many I got and I don’t even know when all these are expired.”
“Are you collecting these ma’am?” I teased because her hobby of collecting things seems to extend from toys to packaged condiments.
“Tell me about it. And I don’t even use these. I have high blood pressure so I don’t eat soy sauce.”
“But you keep them?” I asked curious.
“Yes, cause it’s a waste to throw them away,” she said with a concerned face, making me laughed even more.
“So Asian man.” I teased as she put the ziplock back to the kitchen cabinet after pulling one of the soy sauce out for me to use.
Half an hour later, we finished our lunch and both of our stomach were full and stuffed. Juli went back to work while I went to shower and freshened up myself.
A Walk in the Park
Later that afternoon after Juli is finished with work, she suggested that we go for an afternoon walk since the weather was really nice. We left the house around 5:30 with Tom—Juli’s boyfriend—who joined us and drove us to the park.
The 19°C weather was a nice welcomed change from Jakarta’s constant hot 33°C+ weather. I was still able to walk around outside without wearing a jacket on, enjoying the cool breezy temperature without getting sweaty or feeling cold. A rare occurrence since I rarely travel during in-between season.
After 30 minutes of Tom weaving through Toronto’s afternoon rush hour traffic, we found ourselves at Sherwood Park. It’s a large family and pets friendly wooded park in midtown Toronto with walking/running trails, picnic area, large playground, wading pools and a fenced off dogs off-leash area. It looked like a beautiful park with plenty of area to walk around in.
Finding myself hanging out with Juli on a weekday when the sun’s still out without the sight of her glued to her phone was a pleasant surprise. It did feel a bit foreign to me since our hangouts usually involved her checking her work phone every so often to reply to work-related messages. So it was really nice seeing her having a normal afternoon after work for the first time.
Honestly, I was keeping my expectation low for this trip given what happened during our Disneyland trip (read about it on Ep. 02 post). I didn’t exactly know how busy her new job is so my plan was to just go with whatever is more convenient for her schedule. But turned out, this trip started with a bit of an unexpected surprise seeing how she actually clocked off at the end of a normal business hour.
Another (totally unrelated) unexpected surprise that I got this afternoon was the inclines that were present on the route Juli and Tom took me to. What I thought was going to be a relaxing afternoon stroll in the (flat terrain of the) park turned into some sort of a hiking session (at least according to my own definition of hiking. It might not be for everybody else who’s more in shape than me I think). It wasn’t that bad, but it was a bit of a hike up and down hilly terrains and stairs. Juli told me that if we were to come during peak autumn, the view is supposedly really pretty. But since it’s not peak autumn yet, most of the leaves were still green.
Real Estate Talk
After we got to one end of the park, we decided to take another route back to where we parked. Mainly because Juli wanted to show me what she called the rich people’s neighborhood around the park (and not because I was scared of the climb up back to where we started as she said in the vlog). So our afternoon stroll in the park turned into a before sunset stroll in the rich people neighborhood.
Yesterday, I was listening to her telling me all about her favorite Pop Mart and Labubu collections. Today, I was listening to her telling me all about her preferences in real estate while looking at the nice residences we passed by along our walk. She told me about which type of houses she likes and dislikes and which type of houses she wish she could buy in the future. And honestly, with the amount of hard work and ambitions that she has, I wholeheartedly believe she probably could own one someday.
“If you ended up buying one of these houses, I think a Mercedes-Benz is a requirement,” I said after noticing the type of car parked in front of the third house she pointed out as the type that she likes.
“Why?” She asked confused.
“Didn’t you noticed that all the houses you pointed to have at least one Mercedes-Benz in their front yard? At this point, it just looked like a requirement to me,” I shared my observation with her. “Look, another one,” I said pointing at the German luxury car in front of a house with her preferred look and style.
She just laughed and shook her head. “Nah. I won’t get one. Car is a depreciating asset and I don’t even drive.”
“That’s exactly what my cousins said!” I said surprised. A couple of my cousins told me that car is a depreciating asset when we were talking about asset and investments and that’s why they never really feel the need to upgrade or buy another car as long as their current ones are still useable. It’s funny how they have the same view on the subject.
At some point, Juli and Tom had a little disagreement on which area should be included in the rich-people-neighborhood list (and I was just standing in between the two, listening to them arguing back and forth). Tom seemed to think that the area we were in is not part of the list while Juli think it is. In the end, they still disagreed with each other on this particular area but both agreed that Bridle Path, a neighborhood a couple of blocks north of where we were, is definitely part of the list.
“We’re talking about homes that are worth $26 million,” Tom informed me on the housing price of the said most affluent and prestigious neighborhood in Canada.
“You know Drake? The singer Drake? He has a mansion in the Bridle Path neighborhood,” Juli added excitedly.
Thai for Dinner
We finally made it back to the main road where we started right during sunset and just in time for dinner. The walk we did in the past hour seemed to have burnt a lot of our energy because all of us were starting to get hungry. Juli asked Tom if he prefer Italian or Thai for dinner and surprisingly, Tom chose Thai. And so we went to their favorite Thai spot around the area, PAI (see full review and more photos on this post).
The place was pretty busy when we got there. But fortunately, there were tables available for people who did walk-ins like us. The host led us into the dining area where a lot of yellow lantern-like lamps are hanging from the high ceiling (which immediately reminded me of the lantern scene in Tangled, but maybe not as romantic considering we’re inside of a casual Thai restaurant) and we got seated immediately.
The energy was high inside the dining room. Chatters were heard from different tables with patrons half-shouting to their dinner companions trying to talk over the loud upbeat live music playing in the background. It was a fun atmosphere if you like this kind of vibe like my friends do. For me though, it was fun, but the place was a bit too loud, especially because we were trying to talk to each other during dinner. I was tired from shouting over the music by the time we finished our meal. I think I’d enjoy it more if we came her to just get a drink, listen to music and wind down.
Dinner was nice. I really liked the spring roll we ordered for the appetizer. The Pad Thai and Pad See Ew me and Juli ordered were also good. But I personally think that the flavor profiles were a bit different than the ones I usually have in Asia. Understandable though since they probably adjust the flavors to cater to the local market.
Juli told me her favorite menu, the Pad See Ew, is the closest thing she can get to an Indonesian Kway Teow in Toronto because there seemed to be no good Indonesian restaurant in the city. And I can totally see what she’s saying. The food is definitely good enough to satisfy your cravings when you’re missing a little taste of home.
MILK TEA RUN
After dinner, we went across the street to Coco because I wanted to get a Jasmine Milk Tea to bring home. Random TMI about Coco, I was introduced to Coco by Davina when I was visiting her in NYC. Since then, every time I see Coco, it would reminded me of her. They really do have great milk teas though. My go-to is the basic Jasmine Milk Tea. An 8.5/10.
With my Jasmine Milk Tea safely tucked inside Juli’s take away paper bag from PAI (once again, we didn’t finish our food since the portion was pretty big for us so we took home the leftovers), we made our way to the car to head back home. After 11,308 steps (6.3 km) of walking today, it’s a wrap for my second day in Toronto.
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