Working for the Weak-end: Patio Princesses

It's 8am in the morning and it's Terrible Tuesday. Your eyes are groggy and your stomach still has not settled down from last night's disaster spinach chicken dinner. Five clients come in at the same time while the phone rings and you think that having a couple of bullets in your face is the only cure to the volcanic rage that comes with middle of the week blues. Only three more days to Friday. You would see that Finally Friday finish line clear in sight....if only your eyes weren't so blurry with sleep deprivation and gastrointestinal distress.

We're all working for the weekend. But I think I might speak for all nine-to-fivers out there when I say, 5 days is way too long (and painful) a wait. And so is born a new branch of Tout Toronto called Working for the Weakend. Myself along with my good friend Lisa break the monotony and the soul-killing boredom of the proverbial nine to five and throw our office dramz into an apple martini. Or a beer if times are hectic.

This week, Toronto's miracle high temperatures and Lisa and Karen's Tuesday low spirits lead to us to the patio of Milestones at Yonge and Dundas Square.

Lisa's extra tall Sex and the City-esque bellini. A tell-tale sign of the Terrible Tuesday syndrome.

Karen's extra large please-kill-me-now-esque glass of wine. A tell-tale sign of the Traumatize Tuesday syndrome.

While drowing our sorrows in large glasses of alcohol does not sound like the ideal way to deal with life's problems, it does change your outlook on life when you combine booze with sunshine, a large plate of delicious food and a patio on the third floor overlooking the city.

Just to be fair though, save the Milestones rockstar treatment for those Tuesdays that are superbad. You know those days when you wake up and you stagger and stumble on your way to the bathroom, fall asleep on the toilet, cry when you see the Mount Everest of paperwork piled up from I-Don't-care Friday and Can't Function Monday and completely lose it when you miss your bus because some asshole kept you on the phone at work to tell you about his tomato plants.

For days that are morderatly uneventful, unproductive, unnerving, unexciting and unhappy, we will go Tout Toronto on the world and search till we find our appletini oasis.

Appropriate average price of the night: The average cost of 2 beers.

Apropriate days for Working for the Weakend: Terrible Tuesdays and/or Wackjob Wednesdays.

Remember to wear sensible shoes to prepare for walking with after-work feet. Hydrate and cool down with some water and an icecream cone. Have a theme song with an equally frustrated 9-5iver friend and beer up!

V for Vintage

I have finally gotten out of the lazy funk to get my ass back into Tout Toronto mode. However, it has not been all couch potato and The Office re-runs. I have been out there trying to find ways to make waking up at 5:30 in the morning tolerable by means of having adventures with clothes. One of the least expensive, afforable and creative ways to achieve this has been scouring vintage and thrift stores.

Here are some of the best finds:

I decided to stick to the basics. And the basics are the countless boutiques and thrifts stores on Queen West. Somewhere around Queen West and Ossington, I found this gem:

Vintage 69:

Vintage 69 is one of those stores that make going thrift shopping look like the epitome of cool. Anyone who is cool thrift shops. They have a wide array of vintage T-shirts, scraves and belts.
They had a wide selections of everything actually, although, it might have just been a downer day for me wherein I could not really find anything to my liking. I really like the way this store is set up though, and its always fun looking at outrageous outfits. I would definatley go here again.

Walking down Queen Street is probably one of the most soul lifting things you can do for yourself on a hot summers day. Even if you have the artistic personality of a goldfish, there is something about summers in Toronto that inspires you to want to get out and create something. Even if its just a castle in the air of creating something.

There are tons of boutiques down on Queen West but don't let them fool you. One of the aspects of vintage shopping is great finds on a budget. Most of these shops have enticing display windows that draw you into heart attacks when you flip over to see the price tag. When you find a dress that costs the same as half your monthly rent, there is no shame in jetting out of there like you just saw the devil.

Another one of my favorites is CTS on Queen and Spadina.

Canadian Thrift Stores (CTS):

There is always something for everyone at CTS. From funky hats for $5.00 to gorgeous purses below $10.00. You know how sometimes you've been shopping all day and you find nothing and then you walk into a store and you see a below average scarf and you buy it because its cheap and you don't want to feel like the entire day has been a waste?

Yeh, you will probably not have that experience at CTS. Like one of reviews for this place so eloquently stated "its like someone scoured all the Value Villages and Vintage Stores from the GTA for the best finds and brought them over to CTS"

At this point after an hour or so of walking on Queen Street, it is always a good idea to stop for a bathroom break and a $2.00 double scoop ice-cream cone. Once we are have sufficiently hydrated and fueled up, its time to kick up the pace by hopping on a streetcar and moving up to the mother of all vintage: Kensington Market.

Kensington Market:

Kensington Market in my opinion is one of the most interesting place in Toronto. You have everything from vegetable markets to vintage clothing stores to pot stores. Most of which have a sketchtastic, new agey feel to it. And I love it!

Where else would you find Victorian style teapots, earings from Mrs. Hubbard's jewellery box and 50's vinyl records. Not that you need any of this garbage, but really, to me Kensimgton Market is more like a museum of all the interesting phases of clothes, music and lifestyle of the past decades.

Probably one of my favorite store in Kensington Market is Vintage Depot.

Vintage Depot:

Vintage Depot is store with gorgeous $5 scraves and color cordianted clothes racks. Not feeling gray this summer? No problem. Skip on over to the pink, or the reds sections (which will somewhat be arranged according to sizes too). They have leather jackets and blazers galore with price ranges galore. Cute dresses and even sports jerseys.

Yes, this is the one exceptional time when you can take your boyfriend shopping without having to worry about him looking like he'd rather have a bullet in his face.

Funky Junky:

Funky Junky is a store that will invariably side track you. It is honestly the coolest little store that looks more like a polished version of your grandmother's attic. It has everything from old school telephones to $3.00 comic books from 1974. I'm still dreaming about a cute little 60's looking set of tea cups and saucers. So dangerous if you are a weak willed shopper with a penchant for cute antique-esqe items.

Definately more of a museum than store seeing as how there is very little in there that would actually be worth buying. But every once in a while, you can afford to splurge on a brightly colored 2 dollar mug.

And that's what I did on this hot beautiful Victoria Day weekend. Perfect for hours of walking and bargain hunting. And if bargain hunting is not your thing, walking in downtown Toronto in the summer is sure to be just as fulfilling. There's really nothing like seeing the world without heavy jackets and mittens. Smiles are wider, walking is lighter and the streets are sunnier.

Until next time...Happy Hunting. Or sunshine shopping! ;)

And don't forget to check out Flats and a Starbucks Coffee this week!

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Home Favorites and Cheap Food

This weekend, my cousin Andrea came to visit me in Toronto all the way from Kingston. Since the start of Tout Toronto, I've been a busy tourist bee, hopping on and off street cars, peering over city maps and making google my BFF. Naturally, I was dying to show off to her what I had found and I had been introduced to.
I'm excited to share this post with you for the main reason that all places mentioned in this post are not new discoveries. They are some of the places that I frequent regularly...or would like to frequent regularly.

Chez Laurent:

Chez Laurent is a French-Italian restaurant that was discovered by roomate and I when we first moved into the Yonge and Finch neighbourhood. It's a quiet little place located on Yonge Street. The charm of this place is that it is a cute little house converted into a restuarant by the family that ownes it. The food is delicious and the atmosphere is warm and intimate. There is an unspoken understanding between my roomate and I that when one of us has a really really bad day, we go to Chez Laurent. Their soups could scare away a bad day and their bread is always freshly baked. And it's a 20 minute walk from home!

Cafe Princess:

Cafe Princess is another place very close to home that I only found out about now. I pass by this place everyday and never thought much of it until my friend Margaret took me there. It's a cute place, predominantly frequented by Koreans. They have comfy couches and cool high chairs everywhere! The atmosphere is warm and cozy and it a great place to hang out with friends or read or study. The cafe is open late hours and their cheesecakes are to die for. They even rent out board games which means hours of Cafe Princess fun.

They do not serve food though. Just drinks and good cheesecake.

Red Room:

A long day of shopping at Kensington Market really works up an appetite. And its fairly uneconomical to be stuck downtown Toronto with an elephant sized appetite. Which is why we chose to go to the the Red Room. The Red Room is a restuarant located on Spadine Avenue close to Kensington Market. The food is extremely cheap. The decor is very artsy. Apparently all the furniture at this place is put together from thrift stores. (This may or may not include the very expensive looking antique chandaliers)

The service is blah. But really, when you pay 6 bucks for your food, there are only so many expectations you can have.

And that's it for Tout Toronto this week folks! Until next time...

First Train Home

I really was not sure what to do with my weekend. On Friday, I finally started my immigration process with a lawyer. I signed a contract and it all seemed so official. I had tried not to think about all the paper work too much and concentrated on the King Street scene on my way from the lawyers office. All of sudden, it struck me. I had a lapse of complete discouragement. Why was I doing this? What if I had to leave next year? Toronto is so huge, I would never be able to even cover the known spots over the next year. This would be yet another project half started and half done. I actually didn't even care about not finishing. I cared more about not being able to do this a year from now.

I kept taking random street cars, probably subconciously hoping to stumble into a comforting little spot where I could just sit and calm down.

I found myself in Kensington Market, with all of its eccentric little shops. And then I found it. A cute little haven, tucked in a corner of bustling little hippie stores. It's call Hibiscus.

It's so easy to miss. And that's probably why I was so excited to find it. I sat in there and pulled out the 1000 page application form from a manilla envelope that my lawyer gave me and brought myself to go through them over a comforting cup of rice and asparagus soup. The soup itself sounds downright gross but it was warm, hearty and surprising tasty. An hour later, those papers did not look as intimidating or overwhelming and I knew that I would have to come here again. Where else would I find feel-good food and atmopshere for a mere $3.48?

The rest of the weekend was spent trying not to think about Monday, cleaning out my bedroom, pulling out my spring clothes and arranging them to look like a display rack at a vintage clothing store.

And speaking of vintage clothes, I found some cool vintage stores on Queen Street too yesterday. Vintage shopping opened up my eyes to some suprising discoveries:

- Better than vintage clothes were the vintage purses that I went crazy hunting for.

- A lot of the stuff I was drawn to were things that looked a lot like stuff my mother wore in her glory days. I beamed with pride, now certain that my mother was the shiz back in her hay day.

- I like shoulder pads.

- I'm only going to vintage shop from now on. Most of the time. When the mood strikes.

Immigration Status: It has begun.

Creamy Banana Sunday...with a side of grilled cheese

And so begins my new project of the year. (as opposed to old projects like running a mile everyday, intergrating vegetables into my diet and starting a Happy Book). I'm on a quest to find out the best of Toronto. I romanticised many a time about the idea of setting out early in the morning bright eyed and ready to stumble into quaint little shops and bistros boasting about how I "discovered" cheap cutsey places. I sadly let go of that notion when I discovered first hand that I'm a lazy ass in the morning and hence would not successfully be out of bed and ready until well into the afternoon hours. That coupled with the fact that I'm unbelievably awful with directions leads me to believe that I would just go circling around the block multiple times trying to "discover" Toronto and finally being so famished that I would give up and eat KFC. Delight.
So to make life easier and pleasant, I turned to google to tell me where I should begin my discoveries. And google spat out The Cupcake Shoppe.

BEST CUPCAKES IN TORONTO: The Cupcake Shoppe

Where: Yonge & Eglinton (approx subway) I totally thought this would be one of those really cute little coffee places where you would have a giant latte and a cupcake. Alas, it was actually just a shop.

Regardless, Mikhai, my partner-in-caffiene and I were super excited to go to the Cupcake Shoppe. And it did not dissappoint.
The cupcakes are actually really good. Scrumptious and creamy. They also have cute little names for their cupcakes. Mikhai picked The Crummie, which tastes NOTHING like its name. I picked Curious George because it reminded me of Jack Johnson and there's nothing chiller than eating a Curious George cupcake and listening to Jack Johnson on a sunny Toronto day.

Above is Mikhai all happy with her Crummie.
And then there's me with my Curious George and banana cream on my nose. Quite frankly, there's no other way to eat a cupcake.

BEST GRILLED CHEESE IN TORONTO: Bloor Street Diner
Where: Bay and Bloor
Here's something Google did not help me out with. My personal discovery. Actually, its really not much of a hidden gem to discover. Its right smack in the middle of Bay Street and its called Bloor Street Diner. Going there was a product of aimless walking hoping to "discover" something. Anyway, I got myself a grilled cheese sandwich, bistro style.

You have to see this.
My grilled cheese was probably the best I've ever tasted, came with thin crispy fries and a tiny little bottle of ketchup. None of those nasty ketchup sachets. Just look at how cute that bottle is! And trust me, best grilled cheese EVER!
And that folks, was this weekend's episode of Karen's Toronto Adventures.
Note to be made about the aimless walking. Although, I did walk around completely unaware of where I was for about an hour, Toronto did not fail to dissappoint. I got some great shots of the The Annex. So until next time...

Welcome to Tout Toronto!

So here it is! My new blog!

First off, I want to thank all of you for taking the time to read my posts. All of your comments and messages are really what made me want to write and look for things to write about. In fact, it is what has lead me to the making of this blog.

I've always loved just taking the subway by myself and going to the city for no reason at all. There are so many incredible things to see and experience down there. It kind of makes you forget everything and you just lose yourself in the little streets and stores. It's the only place where I can be completely on my own and not feel alone.

So I decided that I'm going to share that with you in this blog. We will try to cover everything from museums to markets, concerts to churches, coffeeshops to Chinatown, bars on Bloor, sushi on Spadina, Yorkville, Yonge and everything in between. That's a lot and let's face it, I probably won't get to do it all. But this blog is not the Yellow Pages of Toronto. It's just a diary of a twentysomething who decides to spend weekends escaping on treasure hunts in the city. Friends are welcome. Actually, friends are strongly encouraged.

A little sidenote on my immigration issues. There is a good chance I won't be leaving next year. However, there is also a slim chance that I might. In either case, I think its time I got to know Toronto a little better.

So, enjoy! My post of my first weekend excursion will be coming soon! Stay tuned :)