Posts tagged toronto

I was actually lucky enough to visit john st. whilst studying abroad at OCAD in Toronto earlier this year. Cool place, check out their blog.

Did a day-trip to Niagara Falls on Saturday. The falls were beautiful but the city itself was horrible - a tacky mix of casinos and haunted houses. It’s kind of revolting that a place like that was ever allowed to be built next to such a natural wonder. Sad. I actually really enjoyed the road trip there and back along the highway following the shores of Lake Ontario. It’s so huge it sometimes actually looks like the ocean. At some points you can just make out Toronto’s skyline rising up from the water on the horizon - an amazing sight. It’s cool to think that since being here I’ve visited three of the five Great Lakes (Ontario, Huron and Erie).

Did a day-trip to Niagara Falls on Saturday. The falls were beautiful but the city itself was horrible - a tacky mix of casinos and haunted houses. It’s kind of revolting that a place like that was ever allowed to be built next to such a natural wonder. Sad. I actually really enjoyed the road trip there and back along the highway following the shores of Lake Ontario. It’s so huge it sometimes actually looks like the ocean. At some points you can just make out Toronto’s skyline rising up from the water on the horizon - an amazing sight. It’s cool to think that since being here I’ve visited three of the five Great Lakes (Ontario, Huron and Erie).

Walking to school. I wouldn’t watch if you’re prone to nausea..

Walking West

Since I’ve been in Toronto I’ve been walking copious amounts (weather permitting, of course). This increased level of wandering has coincided with an increased level of shopping. In my defense how can I stop myself when there are just so many interesting shops here? The other day I was working my way down Queen West when I decided to cut down to King West via Spadina. I turned the corner and right in front of me was the gorgeous old building - a block-long red brick warehouse. It looked so interesting so I decided to go and have a closer look and what I discovered was amazing.

Inside this building lives a marvelous little shop called Swipe Books. I walked in and nearly died. It’s Canada’s only advertising and design bookstore, and also the official bookstore of the RGD (Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario) and the ADCC (Advertising and Design Club of Canada). This place has everything from great design books, to all of the award annuals (One Show, ADC, Communication Arts), to quirky gifts. I actually think it almost beats-out the MoMA Design Store. It also has a store within the store called Built which has hundreds of great architecture books.

The 401 Richmond building is really cool and would be fantastic to visit in the summer as it has a huge rooftop garden (Toronto has been trying to bring in ‘green-spaces’ to the city by rooftop - even City Hall has one… I look down on it from my window!).

Needless to say it didn’t look like this the day I visited. But very cool. (Photos from BlogTO).

We decided to venture out during the tail-end of the groundhog day “blizzard” to visit the ROM. It was great, very different to any museums we have in Brisbane (ie. the concrete bunker which is the QLD Museum). The exhibits (especially the animal ones) were awesome. I can imagine being blown away by this place as a kid. It was a lovely old building, complete with rotundas and atriums, with a modern extension called “the crystal” designed by starchitect Daniel Libeskind. I knew about this building before coming to Toronto, so I was excited to see it. Strangely enough, I ended up liking the original building much better than the deconstructionist extension. The interior of the Libeskind wing was so confusing to navigate (a huge negative when it comes to a museum or gallery where wayfinding is the key to a visitor’s experience) and also somewhat claustrophobic.

This weekend was so cold! They even issued an extreme cold weather alert, so I knew it wasn’t just the Australian in me overreacting. On Sunday morning it got down to -33°C with the windchill. Needless to say, I didn’t go outside exploring much. But the freezing conditions did make for a pretty winter sunset out my window.

This weekend was so cold! They even issued an extreme cold weather alert, so I knew it wasn’t just the Australian in me overreacting. On Sunday morning it got down to -33°C with the windchill. Needless to say, I didn’t go outside exploring much. But the freezing conditions did make for a pretty winter sunset out my window.

From TO

I’m finally in Toronto! It took me two 14 hour flights and one five hour stop-over to get myself here. That was the most insane, tiring thing that I’ve ever done. I’ve been here about a week and a half now, and it’s great so far. I think I will get used to the cold. I’m not so sure I’ll get used to the noise from the snowplows at 4am anytime soon, but we shall wait and see.

I’m here on exchange for a semester at OCAD University. I’m taking classes from both the Graphic Design and Advertising majors of their B.Des program. So far, it’s everything I expected it would be - amazing, amazing and amazing. But also a lot of work - the projects are way more in depth here than back home - which is both exciting and terrifying at the same time.

One of the first places that I have discovered in Toronto so far was the result of a trip with some other exchange students down Dundas West on the streetcar to a neighbourhood called Trinity Belwoods. We had brunch at a diner called the Lakeview. It was great - super busy but with cosy little booths. It was pretty much everything you would imagine a diner to be (except a little classier as it also had a bar area). We had amazing buttermilk blueberry pancakes and french toast with Nutella.