The Last Chicken In…Canada

Remember what I said about the beauty and calm of Willimantic? How I didn’t miss tall buildings and hectic city-pace? Well, we decided we needed a holiday from all that peacefulness and nature, and went to Toronto.

We chose Toronto for many reasons, but mainly because neither of us had seen it and because we knew it was a big busy city.

Reader, we loved it.

We left on Tuesday, stayed in Toronto for three nights, and returned late last night, after a brief detour to check out Niagara Falls.

I must explain right away that our approach wasn’t particularly touristy. We didn’t go up the CN tower, we completely ignored the Hockey Hall of Fame, and we avoided all the museums. Our approach consisted of two parts: 1) explore various neighborhoods 2) find as many South African food shops as possible. (Unlike Boston or even New York, Toronto has tons of South Africans!)

Here’s what we’ve noticed about Toronto:

1) It’s huge. It’s got a downtown with its share of landmarks and interesting neighborhoods: Kensington Market, University Area, Chinatown, garment district, etc. But the fun doesn’t end there. Other parts of the city – somewhat removed from the downtown – are equally lively. The Greektown – immortalized by My Big Fat Greek Wedding – was endless. The Beaches area, where we stayed, was full of funky stores and coffee shops. Then there were suburbs -- also well developed (even if less distinct), often walkable, and full of their own attractions.



2) The architecture is hard to define. Overall, it’s very modern, with a lot of high-rise apartment buildings. It reminded me of Moscow. Movie Dictator loves the idea of living in a tall apartment building. (Or so he says.) Me? Not so much. There might be some things I miss about Moscow, but smelly/broken elevators are not one of them.



3) Toronto seems truly diverse and cosmopolitan. Not in a perfunctory “one-Black-one-Asian-person-on-a-college-brochure-cover” kind of way, but for real. It’s got a huge Chinatown, Koreatown, Greektown, Little Italy, Portuguese area, Indian Bazaar… There’s probably more that we’ve missed. And the residents aren't trying to please anyone. This is clearly their home. And not just in those central neighborhoods either. The kinds of “ethnic” shops we’d have to hunt for in Boston or Hartford areas are everywhere in Toronto, even in the suburbs. Apparently, there are actually five or six Chinatowns, in addition to the one we saw in the downtown area.



4) People seem more relaxed.



5) Very few of them are overweight. Whether it’s because everyone walks/takes public transportation, or because they eat better food than us, we don’t know. But the fact remains: they are slim.

If sightseeing is the primary touristy activity, shopping must be the secondary one. And shop we did – though perhaps not in a way you’d expect. We bought PG Tips tea in a tin can. We bought six rolls of flypaper. But mostly, we bought sauces and spices and headache pills from South African shops – we visited 3 or 4 of them. It was incredibly sad to realize how huge the South African community must be to warrant all these shops, and how far it was from where we live.

On the last day, as we were leaving for Niagara Falls, we decided to look for Nando’s. It’s a Portuguese restaurant chain that makes very spicy chicken. I've seen them in London, and apparently, they are all over South Africa. There were several in the Toronto area, mostly in the suburbs. We showed up at one of them, bright and early, only to discover that it didn't open until 11:30 am. To be honest, we'd kind of suspected that. It was around 9:00 o’clock, and we figured the most sensible thing was to give up on the chicken and start driving to Niagara. But then, at the last minute, we thought we might try one more location. It was kind of on the way. Okay, it was 10 miles out of the way, but what’s 10 miles when you have over 500 miles to go?

It took us a while to find it. By the time we did, it was 10 am and the place was at 11. But what’s 1 hour when you have more than 8 to go? Movie Dictator said we should just go to Niagara. I asked how important Nando’s was to him. On the scale of 1 to 10? He said, 10-ish. He took a picture of Nando’s closed doors.



Naturally, I insisted we should wait. We had tea and coffee at a place called Second Cup, which is a chain like Starbucks. Then we went back to Nando's. Movie Dictator got some extra-extra-hot chicken and a load of freebee sauces. He got me a Lemon Herb Chicken sandwich, which wasn’t supposed to be spicy at all. But it was. It burned so bad, I gave up after one bite. But it still was worth it.

And then we drove to Niagara Falls. From a distance, they looked underwhelming, but once we got close (on a boat) the power of all that falling water took my breath away. I mean it literally. I had a hard time breathing.





And then we rested on a bench, soaked and overwhelmed, while a kind British couple took this picture: