by Allison Fritz

      Over spring break, my family and I visited two great cities: Columbus and Toronto. Even though these two cities are not very far from Cleveland, it feels as if not many people frequently visit these places. People mostly go just for the food. So naturally, my family and I weren’t sure of what to do once we got there. We have been to Columbus a couple times, so we knew what to do once we got there. In Toronto however, we didn’t know what to expect. Overall, I thought that Toronto was a great city. It was clean and friendly. Before the trip, we had asked around to find out what to do in Toronto, but most people told us that they only went to CN Tower, or to eat. And so, we decided to explore around ourselves. These are some memorable places that we visited.

Distillery District

One of our first stops was Distillery District, which despite its name, has nothing much to do with alcohol. Distillery District is a nice, open area where they took some old buildings and renovated them (while keeping the style pretty traditional). They turned those buildings into stores and restaurants and little coffee shops. It is a large space and has a lot of interesting structures that people can take pictures with, such as a giant heart. The stores are also really clean, and have unique architecture. After walking around, we got hungry, so we stopped by a cafe. This cafe is called Cacao 70, and their theme is chocolate, so it’s basically all things chocolate. We ordered a dark chocolate fruit crepe that was delicious, and it had very good chocolate.

Assembly Chef’s Hall

For dinner, we walked into a place called Assembly Chef’s Hall. It is a building with a lot of various stands of food, and you can sit anywhere, so it is sort of like a food court at the mall, and our order only took about ten minutes. These stands have many different cuisines made by the top chefs of Toronto. There are a lot of choices, but we decided to order from Ramen Isshin. I really like ramen, but sometimes the broth can be too creamy, or the flavor is too strong, so usually I don’t eat it that often. But this time the broth from Ramen Isshin was really nice and tasty, and the bowl was a good size, with authentic ingredients and chewy noodles.

https://www.assemblychefshall.com

CF Toronto Eaton Centre

The Eaton Centre is a very large shopping area and mall. It is clean, has interesting architecture, and many different items to shop for. In addition to many popular stores, they also have Canadian companies that are very nice as well. Inside the mall, there is also a massive bookstore, with two levels. I was surprised at how big this Barnes-and-Noble style store was and thought it was really nice how their regular mall has a bookstore.

Downtown

The actual streets of downtown Toronto are also very enjoyable. There are new surprises on every corner, and you can basically walk anywhere. For places that are a bit farther, we took the subway. There is everything from walking to a supermarket, to taking the subway to Ripley’s Aquarium. Downtown was pretty clean and safe, and it was fun to walk in the city, since in Ohio I don’t get many chances to.