Kensington Market

From Chinatown, walk further west and you hit Spadina Avenue.

Cross Spadina and somehow Chinatown begins to fade. That's the CN Tower yonder! :-)

One block further and you're in Kensington Market.  A completely different world!

Gone are the exotic Oriental foods.  How about some fashionable beanies, hats and bandannas?

Kensington Market feels like a hippy haven. The place is quite laid back and unpretentious.

Two words come up prominently to mind here: graffiti (the good kind!) and bicycles.

Look at this house! :-)

...and this wall!

The Kensington Market bike rack. Can you make out the letters?

Scooters are cool too.  

This place makes me want to shoot in black-and-white too!  The finger is pointing at a man playing a drum. :-)

Fiddler on the sidewalk.

Time for a snack.  Many coffee shops around.  It's really a great place for people watching!  We chose a cafe called "Fika"...which I learned meant "to have coffee" in Swedish.  

...and that's my snack and Swedish coffee...in a French mug!  I could spend the whole afternoon just lazing and fika-ing here. :-)

This is getting to be a long post.  So I'll end with one tip.  That's the Art Gallery of Ontario on Dundas St. West.

No, I am not the gallery-and-museum type...and I am not going to tell you about this-or-that exhibit.  What you should know: This place has clean public washrooms in the basement.  ...and the museum shop is quite cool too.  :-)

And this concludes my "Toronto" series.