Exploring The Annex

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This weekend we decided to explore an area in Toronto called The Annex, which is the area around the University of Toronto.  It’s very student friendly but has a wide range of restaurants and coffee shops, as well as some cool little shops to browse in.

Saturday we spent wandering down Bloor, where all the main shops are located and eventually turns into Little Korea.  A wander round a Korean supermarket resulted in Arthur finding some delightful coffee sweets, proof that the most random shops hold the most surprising wares!

On Bloor we also found a Candy store that boasted ‘British Chocolate’ so of course we had to investigate.  To my delight I found a variety of delights, including curly wurlys, double deckers and time outs.  Even better was the fact that they stocked the entire Tunnocks range so I now know where to go for my snowball fix.

In the evening we went along to the British Ex-Pat Quiz Night at a bar called Scallywags.  One of Arthur’s lab buddies joined us (she’s Scottish so she counts) along with a couple of random people to make up our numbers.  We managed to come 4th out of 24 teams, which was an amazing feat!  If it wasn’t for our team members we definitely wouldn’t have scored highly at all.  It was good fun though and I very much enjoyed getting out and meeting new people.  It’s good to talk to someone other than Arthur for a change!

Today we explored The Annex a bit more, this time heading down Bathurst St towards Bloor.  As recommended by BlogTO we stopped at Madeleines Cherry Pie and Ice Cream for some coffee and possibly a small treat.  Finally, we have found somewhere that sells decent coffee!  I was beginning to think you could only buy filter coffee in this City.  The place itself is very quaint and sweet and all the delicacies are homemade and available for eat in or take out.  They do sell large pies, both sweet and savoury, so we may be back to purchase one for a special occasion (Valentine’s Day is coming up Arthur… hint hint).

Since it’s Sunday there wasn’t much else to do but it was nice to get out and about in the fresh air, although I am all walked out now!

 

Things that are different (1)

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There are a number of things that are different here in Canada to the UK (no surprises there I know!) so I thought I’d share some of them with you:

1.  Everything is in French as well as English.  There are also a number of french speaking channels so if I ever want to learn French I’m in the best place for it!

i never knew concombre was french for cucumber!

2.  They don’t do cordial.  As most of my friends know I do like my cordial and I was worried about whether I would be able to get some before I came here.  I mean, what will I do without my Robinsons?!  I couldn’t find any during our first few supermarket trips so Arthur tracked down a forum where other British folk were asking the same thing.  Turns out the best approximation of it is a frozen drink you melt into a jug… weirdos!!

made by mccain :)

3.  They have bins… in the subway!!  Oh my god, are they not worried about terrorists here?  It’s not until you see a bin in the train station or subway that you realise… oh yeah, we don’t do that in England haha.

not just a bin but also a recycling bin!

4.  The eggs are white.  I’m sure you can get brown ones but so far they’ve all been white!

we do get through a lot of eggs

5.  No Grazia.  I’m very disappointed that they don’t have Grazia here in Canada.  I thought Toronto would be cosmopolitan enough to either have their own version or sell my beloved English version but no… I have to go without.  I did buy a celeb magazine because with a headline like this who could resist?  Although the article was actually pretty boring – they always promise so much but deliver so little!

i love how the picture they used makes Russell look ever so slightly unhinged

6.  You can only buy booze in a licensed retailer.  In England you can buy booze everywhere but not so here in Canada.  You can only buy alcohol at an LCBO, a liquor store.  It’s not a bad system really as it makes it less available, however it also makes it more expensive.  As there is less competition between retailers there are less offers, which is disappointing!  Luckily, we have an LCBO at the end of the road that’s fairly well stocked with wine, spirits, lager and ale :)

Snow!!

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Some pictures of the snow to prove it really happened and it was quite pretty… until we had to go out in it!  It was an incredibly cold weekend so we didn’t explore as much as we would have liked to but we gave it a go.

St Lawrence Market

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After a very dramatic weekend it’s taken a few days to get round to writing an update on what we’ve been up to.  More on that later…

Firstly, it finally snowed last week!  I didn’t think it would happen but it did and it turned out to be quite a lot… significantly more than the ‘light flurry’ stated on the weather report anyway.

The snow stayed around for a few days but was finally washed away by the rain yesterday.  However, it was around all weekend so I got to try out my snowboots when we took a trip to St Lawrence Market on Saturday.

St Lawrence Market is in downtown Toronto and is a few buildings with various markets.  When we arrived we were a little underwhelmed after reading it is apparently one of the world’s top 25 markets… it didn’t look like it was!  It turned out we were in the building that housed the farmers market and the main market was next door.  Wow, was it packed!  The number of food stalls was totally overwhelming and we ended up buying next to nothing as there was too much choice.  Some of the food looked incredible but we just didn’t know where to start!  In the end the best thing to do was just walk away.

A bit of exploring

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Today we decided to go out and about since it’s Saturday and we have the day together.

I’d read about Yorkville in our guidebook so thought it was worth a look around.  Unfortunately it was fairly disappointing – all expensive shops and rich people annoying the hell out of us!  We will go back another day since it has museums and galleries that we plan on visiting but today we just grabbed a cup of joe and got out of there.  However, check out the very fun museum subway station:

Then it was on to Kensington Market, via China Town, which is a very fun hippy kind of place.  Arthur and I thoroughly enjoyed browsing the many food shops around and managed to pick up a few treats.  Arthur got a bit chuffed on the vintage clothes shops, not in terms of shopping of course, but the random placing of shops next door to houses.  So far this is our favourite place!!

On the way home we stopped at a restaurant / cafe called The Stockyards, a place highly recommended when I was googling take-out places nearby.  It was definitely worth it as the burger was damn good.  We’ll be going back next Friday, fingers crossed, so I can try their half rack of ribs… yum yum…

Cooking a traditional English meal

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So I had an idea to make sausage casserole with yorkshire puddings but with no Coleman’s or Aunt Bessie to help me I had to improvise!

My granny would be so proud of me for consulting the bible of English cooking that is the Bero Recipe book for my yorkshires pudding recipe.  They weren’t perfect but I’m pretty impressed with myself!  What do you think?

they could have done with more time / less mixture but not bad for a first effort... at least they rose!

The finished masterpiece:

Yum Yum

Now Arthur’s making bread and butter pudding – can’t wait!

(update from Arthur: Here’s the bread and butter pudding)

Nom nom

Greetings from Toronto!

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This is my first post on this blog and I’m trying to make it count!  We’ve been here for almost 3 days now and we’ve done some fun and some not so fun things already.  I’ll take this opportunity to fill those who care in on what we’ve been up to…

Our new home (we're at the top)

Monday 2nd January

We arrived in Toronto at 12noon after what could have been one of the worst flights on my life, if not for diazepam and a lot of booze!  The flight was spent snoozing, rolling eyes, eating, miming various ways in which we could kill ourselves, and drinking.  You think when you pay for club class you wouldn’t be subjected to children… but no… this flight had a total of 3 children right next to us!!

My first impression of Canada was that they don’t care who you are, they’ll just give you a work permit regardless, and it’s bloody cold!  Nothing much was done on our first day apart from trying to stay up as long as possible… we managed until 7pm local time… not great but we tried!

Tuesday 3rd January

Yesterday was -15.  Yep you heard that right, -15!!  Wow, I can tell you that is damn cold.  So the only thing we could do was go shopping for some sensible clothes for us both.  What do you think of my new outfit?

All ready for my arctic expedition

Wednesday 4th January

Today has been spent mostly sorting the boring admin part of moving abroad.  I have managed to successfully acquire a Social Insurance Number, meaning I am officially a resident of Canada, and a bank account.  However, with no job yet I am relying on my wonderful husband to keep me in the manner to which I have become accustomed :)

We had a bit of a wander around Union Square and managed to find the CN Tower (not that it’s hard since it’s so bloody big!).

It appears Arthur has developed a weird growth...

It got closer...

And closer...

We’re still working on actually going in it.  Watching the lift go up was enough to send my stomach into somersaults so a bit of mental preparation is required I think!

More touristy things are being planned but they need to be properly thought out as random wandering in this weather is not a great idea.  This weekend will be spent mostly exploring so many, many more pictures will follow!

Is there a doctor in the house?

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Four years ago, I started a postgraduate degree in Birmingham (with Andrew Welchman). After much sweat, blood, and a lot of tears I submitted in October this year. On the 20th of December I had my viva and I’m happy to announce that I passed my viva with minor mods, so I am now a Doctor of Philosophy (Doctor Philosophiae).

Hello world!

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This is our first post on our brand new weblog about our adventures in Canada. At the moment this is just a skeleton – It will evolve a bit over time. I’ll install a photo gallery and the layout will change a bit to reflect ‘us’ a bit more.

Watch this space!