May 2-3 Week-end Trip - Toronto

When the quite popular MUJI store opened its doors in Toronto last year, me and my friend jokingly said we should go down there to go shop. Well, it ended up we actually planned to go spend two days for a nice week-end in Ontario's capital city ! So here is how our week-end went ! 

We left on the friday night at midnight on a MegaBus double-decker, not knowing what was waiting for us up there.... We get on our upper deck seats, ready to travel 6 hours down to Toronto and sleep a bit during the travel, but little did we know, the bus would be blasting frigid freezing cold air down on us for the entire travel, making us shiver to the bone, hurt, and almost cry from the freezing temperature. Everyone was trying to get inside their coats, hoodies and scarves, and while my travel buddy Fanny was covered up by a long sleeve jacket, I had left mine in my luggage thinking it was going to be quite warm.... I so ended up trying to curl myself up into my short sleeved tunic and wiggle inside of it to keep my warmth until we finally arrived in Toronto in the early morning, knowing we could finally escape this rolling freezer and go have some warm coffee to survive the day with the very small amount of sleep we had gotten that night. 

It was barely day time yet when we arrived, so we proceeded to walk a little bit to find our breakfast destination we had checked out on Internet before time. Everyone knows most establishments aren't open too early on week-ends due to people sleeping in a little, but we were sadly wide awake and in need of a good breakfast, and even more so, some strong coffee. 

We quickly found the restaurant we had planned to go to, very empty, as it was barely 2 minutes past opening time. We got to have a good breakfast ! 

We had the whole day ahead of us, and we came to Toronto to go to the MUJI 無印良品

 store, as well as to visit the All Saints store in Yorkdale mall. So we headed up north and took the subway train up to Yorkdale to go shopping. 

We went around the mall checking some stores that caught our eyes, and before we could even find the All Saints, we ended up going to the LEGO store which my friend wanted to check out. I got caught in the series of event by going into small bins where you could choose LEGO pieces and make your own character, when my friend joined me and started making herself some lil buddies as well. We ended up with 3 small characters, which we could buy as a set of 3 for 14$ ! So of course, we did. You'll never guess who I created...... (you will) 

 

Look at him ! I even found probably the only head with blue lipstick in the whole bin (ahahah)

I tried to go with the EGA style on the right, but you can imagine that the LEGO

clothes are quite limited when it comes to looking like Mana. (I even had to get

extra pieces to stick to his feet to simulate platform shoes.... ahaha)

Well, I tried !

We continued shopping a bit and then had to stop for a small lunch so we could wait for our later dinner at Guu japanese restaurant ! 

And we found it. The glorious shop of all shops. And it's not that we didn't want to buy the entire shop, but that would have been slightly unreasonable. And also sadly impossible *looks at my wallet* 

So I just took a picture of the shop to remember that I was there and to keep memory of our pilgrimage to this holy store, leaving empty handed. And then, the tired girls fuckery began ! Taking the subway back to the downtown area, we started laughing real hard at our not so funny jokes, which made everything absolutely hilarious for no reason. 

Yes. That's very funny 

Can you imagine the royal Egyptian king hovering inside your subway tram ?

Cause that's hilarious.

And then we went to meet our AirBnB host to get the keys to the apartment we had reserved for our night in Toronto ! And the place was very cute !!! 

 

It was a small micro studio, just enough for us both ! The bed was on a loft and it was nice ! It was very conveniently located as well so we could walk downtown with no problem ! We really enjoyed our stay there ! 

So after coming to the apartment to put our bags and luggage, we went downtown to go to our dinner at Guu Izakaya !  I had heard about the restaurant from friends and also from publicity and we knew it was quite popular, so we went at 5PM directly at opening time... To find out the restaurant was almost full already ! We took place at the bar, and we could see the kitchen right from there ! I can't lie and must admit we had quite a good view on the good looking cooks as well..... Ahahaha. 

It's really noisy in there, with the japanese staff screaming hellos and goodbyes and calling tables out loud, it never stops ! It does for a very good ambiance, but beware to people who like a more calm dining experience. Service was very fast though, so for our full meal we were in for only just a few minutes over an hour, so we could easily tolerate the party style noise for that amount of time. And also, the food was absolutely delicious. Me and Fanny shared some food so we could taste many things, and all of our choices were great ! A+ especially to the karaage, which I had heard about before and that lived to our expectations. 

So after our very nice meal, we said bye to the very friendly staff at Guu and walked back to the downtown area, walking a little aimlessly at this point to just go see stuff downtown and walk some more. We ended up going to go get a glimpse of the CN Tower... 

 

Super Mana on his worldwide tour while in Toronto 

ahahaha 

Well...... a guy has his needs u know

Ok that's not funny 

(yes it is) 

And then, while visiting the Steam Whistle Beer Factory (only outside as it wasn't open for public at that time of day) we messed up some more Lego funnies. 

And then the evening was over ! We went very tiredly back to the apartment to try and catch some sleep, even though we planned to wake up early the next morning to have some breakfast ! So after resting a little and laying on the floor laughing until I was crying and almost chocked, we finally went to bed on our little lofty loft and fell asleep like rocks. 

Waking up the next day it was another very beautiful day, so we woke up, got ready and headed to once again, one of the very few shops to be open so early on a sunday morning, and went to Panera Bread to fill our tummies with bread goodness. I mean. What is better than bread in life ? Nothing am I right ? 

 I mean just look at this. And yes, that was all mine. And I enjoyed every single crumb of it. And that gigantic coffee definitely made me happy. After my liter of coffee and 2 pounds of bread were ingested, we went back to MUJI (we had gone the day before to check) to make some shopping ! And yes, we spent quite a little bit of money.... All Hail MUJI.

Look at this sheer feeling of happiness of spending money at Muji. 

And for lunch (it seems we keep eating.... Well that's what we do), I met with my dream. Chipotle Mexican Grill. So I took my friend inside so I could order a bowl to-go so we could go back to the apartment and chill for our last few hours in Toronto. And that bowl. It was God worthy 

Just look at all this guac.

I love guacamole.

I just do.

I love it.

And then it was time to check everything we had bought ! I forgot we also visited the absolutely gigantic H&M store and actually found stuff we liked ! So I got all of this ! 

At MUJI I got this !

- S hooks for my kitchen

- Rag fabric hair band to wash my face

- Pass case

- Powder paper for the face

- Acrylic organizer

- Home slippers

- Business card organizer

And at H&M I found this !

Cute shorts ! They even have pockets *_* !

A nice metal necklace that looks bomb 

A drapey no sleeve hooded top

And then we slowly made our way back to the bus station, praying to the heavens it wouldn't be as cold on our way back home. And it wasn't ! It was a far more pleasant adventure coming back, even though it was a very long ride. And we came home tired, exhausted, kinda broke but really happy ! It was a very fun week-end and I would re-do it again ! Fanny is a nice travel buddy, she has the same kind of relax pace than me, we don't have trouble agreeing on places to go, so it's nice ! 

I hope I can go other places sometime maybe ! I enjoyed this short week-end trip :) 

See ya Toronto ! 

Dahlia