Toronto
Toronto — June 18-22, 2022
After seeing Niagara Falls, James and I made our way to Toronto. During our year of travel, we tried several different ways of planning our route, booking stays, packing the car, etc. Being nomadic was a learning process and we adapted as we went. During this Second Leg of the Trip™ (still not actually trademarked), we decided to do a little bit less planning so far in advance so that we could allow ourselves the flexibility to change our minds about how long we wanted to stay in a place. This had its pros and cons. It allowed for spontaneity and allowed us to adapt our plans based on other people’s recommendations. But it came with challenges, too. For instance, by the time we were ready to book a stay in Toronto, there were not very many affordable stays available. I had also been feeling like a lot of the planning was falling on me; we were bickering and not having a plan in place was stressing me out. After each of us scrounged Airbnb, VRBO, and all of the hotels apps, we settled on a stay in Brampton (or as we now live to call it, Brrrrrrrrrampton!), Ontario, about 35 minutes out of Toronto.
Aside: I struggled to write this blog post and struggled to choose a song to pair with it (as I like to do) because it was definitely not my favorite part of the trip. I’m trying to balance the positivity, recognizing how privileged I am to have done a year of traveling remote work, while also feeling challenged and frustrated at this point of the trip and trying to portray it accurately. Not everything was all sunshine and rainbows! My problems are very small. I am aware of this. But at this point, I was having a hard time balancing the planning and sightseeing with work and was not really enjoying myself. This, dear reader, is why my blog posts are coming to you more than a year later. Anyway, we went to a Paramore concert last night so I leave you with this song:
The place we stayed at was unlike any we’d been to before or since. It was advertised as a yoga and wellness retreat with nutrition and massage package options, a pool and a sauna. We booked what was called “The Nature Room.” It sounded like it was going to be a nice, calming experience with great meals, workouts, and community—the perfect place to destress and focus on wellness. I was on the brink of a menty b so this sounded great. When we arrived, it was immediately clear that the listing oversold the “retreat” aspect. It was NOT a calming escape. Our room was in a small, dark, smelly basement with a mattress on the floor. I’m not exactly sure why it was called “The Nature Room” because the only thing naturey about it was the basement-level view of an algae-filled pond in the backyard and a Himalayan salt lamp. The retreat was more like an old and run down house that was being used as a hostel. The photos on Airbnb were much nicer than reality. There were people living there who had been staying for several months and we were the only short-term stay that I was aware of. There were several cats living there that of course were immediately fond of James, the animal whisperer. It felt kind of like what I would imagine a commune (I don’t think I’d go so far as to say cult) would be like, something I’ve only read in books or seen in movies. I took zero photos of the place so you’ll just have to take my word for it.
The pool was closed for maintenance and the sauna could only be accessed at certain times—times which were not made abundantly clear. We didn’t end up using the sauna, but not for lack of trying. You basically couldn’t do anything in the house without notifying the host. Many of the rooms were separated by curtains and the furniture was not clean and sat directly on the floor without frames or legs like our bed was. The bathrooms were gross and there was a sign on the shower that said “Gratitude Shower,” probably to encourage people to be grateful that they had running water at all. The nutrition package was basically just paying the host to cook you a meal, which I’m sure would have been lovely, but we brought our own food and planned to go out to some restaurants so we didn’t take advantage of that. The yoga was also not available during our stay but the host made an exception and taught us a private class one morning when it was clear that we were disappointed in the accommodations and what really felt like false advertising.
This place was definitely meant for the free-spirited. And I like to think of myself as free-spirited—I’m an artist, I practice yoga, meditate, sometimes check the CoStar app or Chani for my astrological readings, have traveled solo and stayed at hostels several times, I even quit my cushy full-time corporate job to be a freelancer—but after spending time with folks who truly ARE free-spirited, I’ve realized just how normie I actually am. But the longer we spent at the wellness retreat, the more I warmed up to it. I’m not going to lie, I felt like we had been scammed when we first got there. We got to know the people there and they were just so interesting and kind, it was hard to be mad at them. We met people from all over the world, which was really cool, and one of the guests gave us a ton of recommendations for Montréal, which was our next stop on the trip. And our private yoga class was delightful. One of the cats helped us with the yoga, as cats like to do. And after learning some new meditation techniques, the host told us that we both should be stretching 3 times a day and that she had a strong intuition that James and I need to go to Bali. I feel like you can’t really ignore spirit guidance like that, right?? I guess that means we have a trip to Bali to plan.
We arrived on a Saturday late afternoon/early evening and stayed through Wednesday, so we planned to get some work done from the retreat. House? Retreat doesn’t feel like the right word. Anyway, the wifi wasn’t working and it was in a remote enough location that using a personal hotspot wasn’t sustainable for video calls. So, we found coffee shops in downtown Brampton and drove into Toronto to work. We were not prepared for Toronto traffic. Or for the cafes to have “no laptop” rules, or for the library to be closed. We really should have taken some time off work and should have done more research on where to stay and where to go. Staying that far out of the city is really not a great way to see it, especially if you plan to do all the tourist attractions. Note to future travelers to Toronto: just pay a little more to be where the fun is.
I had been to Toronto with my family back in 2009 during our ultimate road trip. We were underwhelmed by Toronto, mostly because the sanitation department was on strike and it was right after Pride weekend so there were lots of parties and not a lot of people cleaning up after them (read: garbage everywhere). But I remembered enjoying CN Tower and Casa Loma (and the Shoe Museum but I spared James of that), so we bought the CityPASS, which gets you into CN Tower, Casa Loma, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto Zoo, Ontario Science Centre, and City Cruise Toronto, which is a fantastic deal if you do at least 3 of those things and you pretty much break even if you do two. I think that if we had taken off of work we could have made it to most of the attractions, but since we decided to work and only had Sunday and weeknights to explore, we just went to CN Tower and Royal Ontario Museum. They were both fun but crowded—I’d recommend going during off hours if possible rather than the weekend. James and I agreed that going to the top of any building to look at the view is pretty much the same in most cities (except for maybe Paris) so after that we decided not to pay to do that anymore for the rest of the trip.
James’s friend Andrei lives in Mississauga, which is a city neighboring Toronto. We like to think of Mississauga:Toronto as Bellevue:Seattle. It’s like a small city near a large city. Basically, Toronto is too expensive to live in so people started moving to Mississauga. We went to visit his friend and it was nice for them to catch up and for me to meet him, and of course James made friends with the dog. No shade to Brampton, but if we couldn’t be in Toronto, I think we would have liked staying in Mississauga better. Andrei gave us lots of recommendations, one of which became the highlight of this stop for me—Toronto Islands. We packed a picnic and took a ferry through Lake Ontario, walked around the islands, and watched the sunset over the Toronto skyline. It was so beautiful and still remains one of my favorite memories of the entire trip. If I were to do it all over again, I’d spend a whole day at Toronto Islands and rent a bike or a kayak and explore more of the islands. I had daydreams of buying one of the cottages on the islands. Realistically, taking a ferry to leave home would be entirely inconvenient but sometimes I like to daydream about lives in an alternate universe. Maybe I liked it so much because I finally felt at peace for the first time since arriving in Toronto.
We enjoyed exploring neighborhoods like Kensington Market and The Distillery District, went to several coffee shops and had bagels, sushi, Indian food, and found respite in a familiar feeling dive bar. We went to Nathan Phillips Square. We got frustrated. We got a parking ticket. I cried a few times. The culture shock was real in Canada (kidding) because we had to get used to filling up the gas… er, petrol… in litres (liters) and had to adjust to people spelling things like the Brits by rearranging Es and Rs and adding unnecessary Us everywhere. We managed to make it through somehow. It was slightly easier than adjusting to the French in Montréal (but more on that later). My patience was tested in Toronto. Overall, I WANT to like Toronto because I know it’s a cool place and we just didn’t plan well. But that was my second time visiting and leaving feeling underwhelmed if not disappointed. I know for a fact that I was not a pleasant person to be around during these 5 days so here’s to James for sticking through it with me. Someone give that man an award.
I went on Airbnb and found that the listing for the wellness retreat was removed. I tried to Google it and discovered that it’s permanently closed. I hope the hosts followed their spirit guide to Bali or something.
Follow along to find out how even after these not-so-great few days, we still momentarily considered moving to Canada. Spoiler alert: we are not moving to Canada.
Why do they spell neighbors like that
Beautiful views from Toronto Islands
Pretty swan at Toronto Islands