downtown Toronto

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Woke up at 6:30 am. Cold. Very cold. -14C. the first thing to do – grocery shopping. I guess I had culture shock. It was overcrowded. And I don’t mean just regular busy. It was OVERCROWDED. Crazy people running around the store getting food. The counters were empty in a matter of minutes. As if there’s a hurricane coming! Weird Canadians. :)

Marina and I went downtown. She said I’ll see some really weird characters there. I didn’t understand what she meant by weird characters at that time, but now it’s all perfectly clear to me. Some people around here are just scary. Mostly bums. They really look pretty ugly. I mean scary yellow teeth sticking out of the mouth, dirty clothes and a laugh that gives you shivers. There’s the wintercity festival happening for the next 2 weeks. It’s a huge pavilion downtown with ice-skates and music and lights and lots of fun. Downtown Toronto was pretty impressive. The biggest bookstore, the biggest mall, the biggest music store, hard rock café, I don’t know what else, so many things! I really liked the way tall modern skyscrapers stand there with old-fashioned European style house of parlament and university of toronto. The streets are filled with people. Students mostly ‘cause university campus is about 10 minutes of walking away. Lots of little coffee shops, long narrow streets, parks, bars and some really unexpected places like bata shoe museum, where they have celebrity shoes, or st. vladimir institute, which is apparently named after Russian prince (which is sooo weird!). not too far from down town there’s Chinatown where all the cheap souvenirs are (and also some really crazy food).