First snow in Toronto

If you try really hard you can actually see some snow there, so it is officially winter here. The last day of November!

Another wonderful left-over breakfast

Well, it is scrambeld eggs with salmon and some fresh salad on a side for breakfast! Yummy!

After Thanksgiving Dinner in Estonian House Café

Another duck bites the dust!

Black Friday!

I am sure that by now, even all Estonians know what does Black Friday means?
Basically ALL stores give huge discounts for their customers and they earn massive profits before when the Christmas shopping rally starts.

Walk in downtown

CN Tower

Canadian version of a flatiron building

Fairmont Hotel

Cool mural and brick buildings

Harbourfront

Had a nice walk in downtown with nice shots here and there before a great show in Air Canada Centre!

Jay Z

We even made fan apparel with Evelyn. I was wearing Jay and she was wearing Z and the backs said She 99 and me Problems.

Coolio!

Thanks for Ian who literally made this concert real for me. And of course Evelyn for a wonderful company!

Jay Z and Kanye West!!!

Oh yeah, my long-time dream came true - I was able to go and see Jay Z live. Who could have known? Not me! The house was wild and packed, and people smoked lots of weed, which seems so average in this country. 

I got these few shots, which I consider the best of the show with my small compact. Actually it belonged to Evelyn's mom :O

CN Tower views at tusk

Incredible, eh?

Look at the last photo and you can see many landmarks in Toronto, as Roy Thomson Hall on the left and black towers aka Toronto Dominion Centre designed Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

View from CN Tower...

...can't be compared to anything...um, perhaps Empire State Building :)

What a view and it really shows that Toronto is a green city - so many trees. Wow. On the first photo you can see Rogers Center, where I went to see baseball - the white dome.

More to come when it is darker.

CN Tower here I am!

So I was thinking that badlands is pretty cool, but well yeah, I think nothing in Canada can't be beaten by CN Tower. My former host Donna was so kind to give me tickets to visit it and its attractions. 

Here I am standing, but a little of glass between me and ground which is approximately 440 meters away! Spooky!

A lot more to come from that great experience, as the view from the top was breath-taking.

Collingswood art gallery (one of the many)

This is how we made it to Collingswood to check out Carrie's two paintings she sent to the art sale-show. She was able to sell one. Good luck! It was a nice day trip to a little village like that. One of my first places I got to see other than Toronto after my arrival two months ago.

Cheltenham Badlands

This is by far the greatest sights I have seen in Canada. My friend Carrie took me and her friend to a road-trip to Collingwood. On our way there we stopped at Cheltenham Badlands,which I would say is one of the coolest sights you can find in Ontario. 

The formation was exposed by poor farming practices in the 1930s that led to soil erosion and exposed the underlying shale. At one point in time, the Cheltenham Badlands were occupied by a large river. The hills signify the riverbed and as you follow the trail, you begin to see the river history of the badlands. Thousands of years ago, this lake dried out resulting in today's version of the Cheltenham badlands. The formation is mostly red in colour due to iron oxide deposits with some faint green streaks due to ground water percolation changing the red iron oxide into green iron oxide

Check out more in Wiki.

Santa Clause

You know it is getting close to that time of a year - Christmas. My favorite holiday, but first time celebrating it in Canada. I am pretty excited to see how that would turn out. 

My friend was playing Santa Clause for a fellow Estonian-Canadian swimming pool and I was glad I could accompany him there to see this event. Again I must say that this is not very common for us here - to sit on Santa's lap and present your Christmas wishes. Through we are getting it in little by little. Well, it was sweet and the children were really glad to see such a nice Santa Clause. Pst! I was able to sit on Santa's lap, too :)

Toronto Estonian House Café

This is how the Estonian House Café looks like before a birthday party. Tables are dressed in white, so are the glasses, flowers are in bloom and food is ready in the kitchen. 

You are welcome to dine in here at Broadview 958, East York. Pastry is excellent!

Subway

Using subway, seeing its commuters and realizing how big the city really is was definitely a new perspective for me. We have no subways in Estonia!! We have no such colorful crowds. We have no such big cities where it would take an hour and a half to get from one side to another by subway!

What an experience!

A plant

My landlady's second sink became alive!

Occupy Toronto

I happened to be in Toronto when the occupy movement made its way over to many bigger cities around the world. Of course Toronto was no exception, so the main area for it was St. James Park in downtown Toronto. I happened to pass this by on one nice Sunday and a lot was happening - people were present in heaps, tents were up, music was played, speeches were held and yeah, it was very inspiring. Me and my friend were thinking of staying over there in a tent ourselves, but since we didn't have a nice tent and it was cold, we dropped the idea.

Anyway, check yourself before you wreck yourself!

Distillery District

There is a nice and artsy area in Toronto's south-east side called Distillery. It used to be as the name refers mostly distillery for beers and spirits. Some of that still take place there, but mostly it is all about art, galleries, restaurants, workshops etc. So a great place to have fun at. They already have Christmas tree out and it is nicely decorated. Oh, on the first photo you can see an interesting monument, but since it was too interesting I shot only a fragment to expose ;)

More will come in the future, as I expect going back there :)

The Distillery District is a historic and entertainment precinct located east of Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It contains numerous cafés, restaurants, and shops housed within heritage buildings of the former Gooderham and Worts Distillery. The 53,000 m2 district comprises more than 40 heritage buildings and 10 streets, and is the largest collection of Victorian-era industrial architecture in North America. The district was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1988.

Estonian House Cafe Brunch leftovers

Estonians are big potato eaters, while in Canada, I haven't had so much potatoes as I used to, as here is more interesting stuff to eat. Scrambled eggs I just can't enough, as this is one of the first foods I knew how to prepare for myself. Well, it was more like a bull's eye, this is how we call it here - härjasilm. 

I was able to get some leftovers from Estonian House Café's Saturday Brunch and boy that food looks good and tastes excellent with fresh salad sprinkled over the meal.

Welcome to Estonia in Toronto. Sounds good to me!

Remembrance Day

There is actually a deeper meaning to November 11th than shared in the last post.

Remembrance Day (also known as Poppy Day) is a memorial day observed in Commonwealth of Nations member states since the end of the First World War to remember the members of their armed forces who have died in the line of duty. Remembrance Day is observed on 11 November to recall the end of hostilities of World War I on that date in 1918. Hostilities formally ended "at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month", in accordance with the armistice signed by representatives of Germany and the Entente between 5:12 and 5:20 that morning. ("At the 11th hour" refers to the passing of the 11th hour, or 11:00 am.) The First World War officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919.

The red remembrance poppy has become a familiar emblem of Remembrance Day due to the poem In Flanders Fields. These poppies bloomed across some of the worst battlefields of Flanders in World War I; their brilliant red colour became a symbol for the blood spilled in the war.

During the beginning of November when the Poppy badges come to sale they are to be found here and there, as people tend to loose a lot of these. I have found several and shared these with my friends.

Magical 11.11.11 11:11

Such moments doesn't happen often. I am blessed to face this moment.

Timberland boots

Well, it is getting kind of cold here, so I needed a nice pair of winter boots. My favorite spot to check sweet deals is of course Craigslist, so I was able to get these from there with just $20!!

Yeah, log on to Craigslist.

Harbourfront

Harbourfront is a neighbourhood on the northern shore of Lake Ontario within the downtown core of the city of Toronto, Canada. Part of the Toronto waterfront, Harbourfront extends from Bathurst Street in the west, along Queens Quay, with its ill-defined eastern boundary being either Yonge Street or York Street. Its northern boundary is the Gardiner Expressway.

The area along the waterfront is composed of mixed uses. The federal government lands to the south of Queen's Quay include a community centre, a Toronto fire department station, various boating uses, parkland and the Harbourfront Centre. To the north of Queen's Quay, all of the industrial lands along the street have been replaced with high-rise condominium towers. To the east of the federal government lands, the waterfront is mixed with industrial uses, a hotel, ferry docks, boating uses, a sugar factory and vacant lands.

Read more from: wikipedia.org

King Street

Toronto is beautiful in low-light, as of course most of the big cities are.

The traditional Mexican holiday of Day of the Dead i.e. Día de los Muertos

While the holiday's observances include spending time in cemeteries, making shrines to the dead, and displaying artistic representations of skulls and skeletons, the occasion is festive, rather than morbid. Death isn't seen as the end of one's life, but as a natural part of the life cycle; the dead continue to exist much as they did in their lives, and come back to visit the living every year.

So it is mostly about celebrating life and representing skulls and skeletons. It gets bigger and bigger every year, so if you want to know more about it, then please check this link for example.

My first Halloween vol. 3

My night came to an end and while cycling home to East York I came across this cool decoration outside of somebody's home.

Way too cool and way too freaky!!!