Amazing Adventure- The Distisllery District

This past weekend my daughter and I headed to Toronto for a fun adventure. I knew it was going to be an unseasonably warm day (like 8 degrees) for January so this was a perfect day to take Mella to her first outing (my second time) to the Distillery District just East of Downtown Toronto.

It's so nice to go 'off season', we found plenty of parking and it wasn't too crowded and 'touristy'. We walked around for about 2 hours, in and out of beautiful shops, boutiques and galleries and stopped and had lunch and a coffee break too. It was gorgeous, historical and grandiose.

New for me this time (wasn't there 4 years ago)- this giant art sculpture/structure. Melanie couldn't stop asking 'Mommy, can I climb on it?'

Beautiful, old buildings. This one is a coffee shop.

Balzac's Coffee to be exact. We had a delicious coffee and juice and sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful day.

Old signage...

...great big chandelier...

...lining up to get a deep dark coffee- makes Starbucks tasty like dishwater...

Mother- Daughter hugs on the brick lined streets.

Still displaying some nice Christmas planters...

even Christmas ornaments...

...and a tiny twig reindeer...

We went to the Mill St. Brewery for lunch.

I had a Turkey/Pancetta 'Club' on Multigrain toast, removed the extra bread and put all the turkey on one side of the sandwhich. It was delicious.

It came with fries... but I substituted for a spinach salad with berries and almonds (yuk, I removed those onions though!!!)

Mella enjoyed a Grilled Chicken Ceasar Salad with Beer infused croutons. She was so excited that she 'had beer'.

We visited some real cool shops like Cube Works.

They make awesome wall hangings all made with Rubik's Cubes.

So amazing... they are in the Guiness Book of World Records for something too.

But the best..... they sell a whole bunch of Britto products... I died and went to heaven!!!! I love this stuff! I snuck this photo before the owner of the shop told me I could take photos so it's a bit fuzzy.

Here's a much better picture... this is what I want for Christmas next year. An awesome teapot. I already gave a hint to my dear mom.

We also went to the Soma Chocolatemaker shop. They make everything onsite, OMG, it was decadent and delicious. I told Melanie we were allowed to get one chocolate each.

Oh, the choices....

This is the one I chose.

Mella chose a milk chocolate pecan caramel. We had to sit down to eat it... it made our knees weak... it was so good.

These giant granite stones is what they use to crush the cocoa.

Here's the story of the "Melangeur".

Last thing we did... Melanie found a couple of art sculptures to climb on.

What an awesome day indeed. Thank you for not raining on our 'amazing' parade through the Distillery District.