A Toronto Gem: The Scarborough Bluffs

It always shocks me how tourists often seem to know so much more about what there is to see and do in a city they're visiting than the locals do. Maybe it's that locals miss out on reading the guidebooks, or maybe it's just that we get so caught up in our day-to-day lives and the mystique of travel that we forget to stop every once in a while and appreciate what's around us. In Toronto especially, I think we also get tripped up by the fact that the rest of our great country has such stunning landscape on offer (particularly in the west) and assume that anything we could have must pale in comparison. While we don't have any Rocky Mountains here, that doesn't mean our landscape isn't just as stunning (we are, after all, home to the Niagara Falls).

One of the estuarine inlets at the base of the bluffs. They'll full of fish, frogs and other life forms.

Proof that some good things do, indeed, come from Scarborough, perhaps one of my favourite oft-missed spots in the city are the Scarborough Bluffs - a 15km long escarpment running along the northern coast of Lake Ontario that reaches up 90m (or 25 stories) at it's highest point. Wonderful to visit in any season (though the beach can get quite crowded in the summer), I recently had the chance to explore them again with a friend who was visiting from Scotland in early September.  

A view of the bluffs from the beach.

The views of the bluffs are just stunning - but no more so than is suggested by its history. The bluffs are what remain of the eroded shoreline of Glacial Lake Iroquois, which covered an enlarged area of Lake Ontario and sat at the base of a large northern ice sheet during the last ice age (approximately 13,000 years ago). Surprisingly, the bluffs actually represent the last remaining geological record of this period in North America, making them incredibly important geologically. Unfortunately, due to their sandy nature, the bluffs are eroding fast - at a rate of about one meter per year. This isn't all bad though, one of Toronto's major attractions, the Toronto Islands, were actually formed by erosional deposits from the bluffs that were swept westward into the lake during a large storm in 1858! 

Looking out toward Lake Ontario. We were lucky enough to be there when it was warm.

There are a number of places from which you can enjoy the Bluffs, but two of my favourite (and two of the most easily accessible) are Bluffers Park at the base of Brimley Road and the Scarborough Bluffs Park above it east of Midland Avenue. Parking at Bluffers is free Monday-Friday before 5pm. To get there using public transit, take the number 12 or 12B Kingston Road bus to Brimley and then walk the 2km (10mins) south to the park. Just remember that the route in heads down, so you'll have quite the uphill on the walk back - it's definitely worth it though!

Toronto Treats: Exploring the City with Tasty Tours

Mmm, truffles. How can you resist them?

One of the things I`ve been up to since getting back to Toronto has been joining Tasty Tours Toronto as one of the guide staff. Tasty Tours is an nifty little company offering walking tours of Toronto that focus mostly on the deliciousness available at Toronto's bakeries and chocolatiers.

Some of the wonderfully delicious treats on offer on our chocolate tour.
This is quite possibly my favourite stop, with chocolates ranging in flavour from lavender and rose to chipotle, tequila and lime. 

Tours are kept small to maximize your enjoyment and run every, or every other, weekend depending on the season. Regular tours include the Kensington Sweets Tour and the Trinity-Bellwoods Chocolate Tour. People keep asking which is my favourite or which they should try first and, honestly, I can't decide. My answer? Do both!

One of the customer favourites on the sweets tour. Know what they are? Good. Then you probably want one :).

Taste testing is offered at all of the stops along the route and, even if, like me, you're a dessert-o-phile, you will find something new and awesome that you've never tried before or an excellently made well-loved favourite at every stop.

One of the chocolate truffles from our sweets tour.
This one was pumpkin spice, but you'll get to choose your flavour.

While the focus of the tour is mostly on the desserts, we don't skimp on the historical info either. Little tidbits about the neighbourhood, sweet making techniques and how to properly eat desserts abound. The guides are all knowledgeable (yeah, yeah, I know, tooting my own horn - but I did do my undergrad thesis on why we evolved to love sweetness and how cultures use and perceive it differently around the world!) and the neighbourhoods themselves are wonderfully unique. Plus, you don't have to be a tourist to enjoy them. Most of the tours are actually made up of locals who just want to better get to know the city and treats available in it!

I bet those who have been to Asia can identify some of these!
Just to keep up some of the suspense, I'll avoid telling which tour this stop is from.

Interested? Check us out at TastyToursToronto.com. Private tours are available for those who can't make the regular ones or, those who just want to spend some quality sweet time with their friends. Special thematic tours are also offered during dessert-heavy seasons such as Christmas and Valentine's, and tours are half-price for those going with a friend during their birth month.

Don't trust me to be impartial? Check out some of our excellent reviews on TripAdvisor.

Happy Eating!

Toronto!

I can't lie, part of the reason I have been so slow in updating now that I am back home in Toronto is that the prospect of trying to summarize 6 months and 7000+ photos worth of travel, flavours and experiences into a coherent body of blog posts is a singularly daunting one.  I'd also be lying, however, if I said that was the only reason. It's likely that an equal measure of my reluctance to post comes from the fact that being home after so long away always reminds me of just how much I love Toronto - it's crazy pace; quirky neighbourhoods; incredible mix of cultures; access to great art, drama and dance; the food; and, of course, my friends and family. While I love travelling and experiencing new cultures, sometimes it's nice just to soak up a little of home. It helps, of course, that I have a stunning view of the city from just outside my bedroom and loads to get done while I'm here. 

The lovely morning view of the Toronto skyline from the balcony off my parents' den (the floor of which I am currently camping on).

Though the classic reaction of all Torontonians to visitors stating how much they've enjoyed the city always seems to run along the lines of "Really?! Why???". I'm here to report that there are just so many reasons. Don't believe me? Head out to check it out yourself. In the spring, summer, and early fall, we have cultural and art festivals nearly every weekend. In the winter, we have theatre, Broadway shows, comedy, ballets and operas to keep us warm. We have access to nearly every food imaginable, decent museums, a plethora of unique neighbourhoods, wonderful parks, thousands of activities, a great lake, 4 distinct seasons, access to incredible nature not too far away and stunning foliage in the autumn. Really, what's not to love? While I'll unfortunately likely not have enough time to do too many Toronto-themed posts with the travel backlog I'm under. I definitely recommend a visit. And for all those of you who live here but claim not to like it, I encourage you to try something new, explore a new area or test out a new type of food. Who knows, you may just fall in love with it too!

A streetcar, possibly one of my favourite features of Toronto's transportation system, on Queen West. 

For awesome ideas on where to go when you visit, what to eat, current events or new fun things to try in and around Toronto, check out the super handy and awesome BlogTO.

Dragons in the Mist: Hạ Long Bay & Cát Bà Island

Probably one of the biggest tourists attractions in Southeast Asia (and certainly one of my reasons for wanting to visit Vietnam), is Halong Bay.

The karst islets of Halong Bay. I was here in March, in the summer, the gulf shows off it's incredible turquoise hue.

Located along the Northeastern coastline of Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin, Halong, or Descending Dragon Bay, is made stunning by the 1,600 karst islands and islets that dot it. 500 million years old and formed by 20 million years of erosion in a wet tropical climate, Halong truly is a marvel. It gets it's name from legends which claim that the islands were formed by dragons sent by the gods to protect the Vietnamese against invaders.

Looking outward from Cat Ba, the largest of the islands.

The most common way to explore Halong bay is by two or three day cruise on a (hopefully modernised) traditional junk boat. These cruises often include a stop at one or more of the incredible karst caves which riddle the islets, the opportunity for 2 or so hours of kayaking (at your own speed) around, under and through some of the islets at one of the floating villages, the chance to jump in for a swim (in the admittedly now polluted waters), excellent eagle watching opportunities and fairly decent food. Given the plethora of tours available and the range of prices and reputations, it's best to do a touch of research before you book. For the younger crowd looking for more adventure and a good party, Central Backpackers in Hanoi offers the perfect tour.

Fishing boats moored in a place we nick-named 'Pirate Cove' on Cat Ba. 

For the budget traveller, the cheapest way to get there is to organise a combined bus and boat ride out to Cat Ba Island from Luong Yen Bus Station in Hanoi (should be 10USD each way), or to get there by boat from Haiphong on the main land and to use Cat Ba as your jumping off point. Just be warned that there are several ports on the island and that if you arrive on the opposite side late in the afternoon, it might be difficult to find a ride across the 30km island into Cat Ba Town. The Island itself is stunning, the food there delicious (check out Hoang Y in Cat Ba town for the best there is), and the boat tours out onto Cat Ba or Lan Ha Bay, which boast the same landscape as Halong, much cheaper and less crowded. There is also plenty of cheap accommodation on offer on the island, beautiful beaches, excellent hiking, rock climbing and biking and, for those who want to get out on the water, the awesome Asia Outdoors offers kayak and deep water soloing trips. 

One of the beaches near Cat Ba city. Beautiful during the day, but arguably cooler by night when the algae in the water shoots off sparks of electric green bioluminescence in your wake.

Cat Ba is the largest of the 366 karst islands in the Halong area and, in addition to all of the activities above, boasts incredible scenery and biodiversity, with a national park comprising more than half the island. The park offers some great hiking trails, awesome rainforest insects, 1,561 recorded species of flora and fauna, and is home to the extremely endangered Cat Ba golden headed langur (of which there are only 68 left in the wild). It's easy enough - and well worth it - to just rent a motorbike or bicycle (be warned, there are lots of big hills) for day or two and explore on your own.

The view from the base of one of the trails in Cat Ba National Park.

And Then I Fell In Love: Hanoi

Wizzing around Hanoi with my backpack on the back of a xe om (motorbike taxi), I realised a few things, first among which was that, no matter what people had said, the drivers in Hanoi are not crazier than those in Vietnam's larger Ho Chi Minh City to the South. While the space is tighter, the pace was much slower.

A slightly atypical street view of Hanoi - only made so by the yellow temple festival decorations, everything else represents the norm. 

My other realisation as we wound through the narrow roads of old quarter, rubbing elbows with other drivers, pedestrians, and all manner of goods for sale along the way, was that I was very likely going to come to love this place. Unlike my two companions who began to find it cloying and claustrophobic, I couldn't help but draw energy from the constant flow of the crowd winding it's way through that maze of streets.

A local drives his produce across the long width of the red river that splits modern-day Hanoi.

Although it has only been the country's capital since it's reunification in 1976, Hanoi is arguably the true heartland of Vietnamese culture. Located on the Red River Delta, the area has seen continuous habitation since 3000BC. Though the country was occupied several times by foreign powers: the Han Chinese from the 2nd century BC until the 11th AD, the French from 1887-1940 and the Japanese from 1940-1945, Hanoi often played an important role in it's governance. For much of the country's Independence (AD 1010-1802), it remained Vietnam's most important political and economic centre. It was also used as the capital of French Indochina from 1902-1954. Perhaps most memorably in recent times, it formed the home base for the General Ho Chi Minh's pro-independence Viet Minh and the communist North. 

The Mausoleum of Uncle Ho Chi Minh. Embalmed and on display against his express wishes, his mausoleum is open to the public everyday bar Monday and Friday. Check with tourist info for times. Lines are always long, so get there as early as possible.

On Updates (or the lack thereof...)

Dear Readers,

Sincerest apologies for not having updated for a few months now. I promise that the updates are coming (slowly but surely they shall appear!).

Turns out that blogging from a phone is a lot more difficult than one might expect (and I expected it to be pretty difficult...). Rather than publishing terribly jumbled unformatted posts, I've decided to save everything until I get home and have my lovely little laptop back at my disposal. Updates should recommence come September. Rest assured that I am taking copious detailed notes until then ;).

Hope you all enjoy the rest of your summers (or winters depending on where you may be)!
Best,
Ally

Historic Hue

The view along the Perfume River in Hue

We decided to take the 4hr train from Da Nang (just north of Hoi An) to Hue - largely because I'd heard it was a beautiful journey. While the scenery was absolutely stunning, the clealiness of the train (I believe it was number S4) left a lot to be desired. Happily, the was not the case for our following overnight train (S20) up to Hanoi. That one was pristine.

The Thien Mu Pagoda (1601). Famous as the site of monk Thich Quang Duc's self immolation in protest of then Southern Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem's anti-Buddhist policies

Located around 70km south of the Demiliterized Zone established between North and South Vietnam after the 1954 Geneva Conference, the Vietnamese city of Hue (pronounced 'hoo-way') is probably best known to the slightly older generations as one of the main sites of the Tet Offensive - during which it was held by the Viet Cong for 25 days. Tet is the traditinal Vietnamese New Year and, in 1968, the communist Viet Cong used the holiday to attack unsuspecting South Vietnamese strongholds, turning the mental tide of the war and making it clear to those back home in America that the anti-communist forces were not as assured of victory as they were being told.

The gorgeously sprawling mausoleum of Emperor Thu Duc (r. 1847-1888). It took three years to build. It also houses the remains of his empress and mother and was used as his retreat for the 16 years prior to his death. I can't really imagine living in my mausoleum, but to each their own...

More of the same.

Although the city was largely levelled during the counter to the Tet Offensive, leaving the present city looking largely like any other, there are still a great number of beautiful historic sites located along the banks of the Perfume River - largely elaborate imperial mausolea dating from Hue's time as the Nguyen Dynasty capital (1802-1945). Most of these are located in different directions on the outskirts of town, so although bicycling them is do-able, it can make for a long hot day - I got a scooter.

The ruined floor of a no longer existant building of the imperial citadel.