Touristing: Toronto, Canada

 During May, my mom and I went to Toronto to visit my brother who is studying there. Although I completely forgot to post this entry these past months, my memories are pretty vivid. I can sum up Toronto with two words: organized chaos. I really liked the city, although it became overwhelming sometimes and enjoyed our time there which was 9 days. If you haven't already, you can watch all about this trip on my Youtube channel, I'll link the videos down below.

  I can remember that our trip took too long to get to Toronto, we had a layover at Amsterdam both when we were going there and on our way back, and it made it even harder to bare the flight on the last couple of hours. The weather, for our luck was beautiful throughout our stay so we had plenty of time to enjoy the city. Looking back, the first memory that comes to my mind was the people. I can swear I never saw any Canadian as Toronto was packed with Indian, Korean, Russian and other ethnicities, and I actually loved this. We didn't stand out from the crowd as I would during my Erasmus period in the Netherlands, and I felt like a citizen throughout my stay. People were so nice and friendly. One guy came up to me randomly this one time, and started making conversation about the book I was holding. In Turkey, if a guy randomly came up to me to talk to me, I'd think of him as a creep and run away, but it felt so natural in Toronto. Also, I loved how everyone, from the baristas to cashiers were smiling and asking how our days were going, it felt so good to have a friendly conversation even if it consisted of few sentences. Turkish people are very friendly too and I love them for it, but Canadians were something else. On another note, I was very surprised to see there were so many homeless people, beggars on the streets with suits on them. My mom was especially horrified by the druggies that walked randomly on the streets, and one time this woman was entering a mall just behind us with a needle on her hand, you can bet my mom was terrified and hurried me along with her, haha. I didn't mind it that much although it was very new for me as well, because I've only seen people smoking weed or doing soft drugs back in the Netherlands, and none of them were walking freely and openly as these Canadians were.

I'd say one of the most memorable part of this journey in my part was when we visited the University of Toronto and all of its buildings reminded me of old castles of Victorian Era, which makes sense if you think about Canadian history for a second. 

I went to the Eaton Center more than a couple of times actually, this massive mall that is in the center of the city, and in my defense, my mom also loved the place so we went there a couple of nights to have dinner, after I did a little shopping... I loved Casa Loma, the famous gigantic castle that was home to a lot of movie scenes including X-Men, the architecture was breathtaking although I got lost in it a couple of times and can't say it was that fun. But I'd say the most breathtaking view was of course the Niagara Falls, which is a little out of the city but is worth every step of the way. I still can't comprehend how beautiful the nature can be sometimes.