We move into our Toronto sublet today! On Saturday we went to meet the host and have our first in-person look at the apartment. I love the place and the neighborhood and am so excited to start our 7 weeks there.

Over the weekend our family friends took us around southern Ontario. First, we browsed furniture and housewares at the Aberfoyle Antique Market – if we hadn’t been traveling I might have come home with a china cabinet and lots of cups and bowls! As it was, I didn’t buy anything (it wasn’t my fault they had no vintage scarves).

There were a great many fabulous things I wanted to take photos of, but I felt weird doing so without permission, and I was too lazy/diffident to ask all the vendors. So all you get is a wide shot of the market itself — one small section of it, anyway.

We had Thai food for lunch in the town of Dundas, and then visited the Niagara Escarpment (the same geographical feature that contains the famous Niagara Falls, as well as more than 100 other waterfalls).

I loved seeing the trees and the colors of the landscape; it all looks so different from California (as does the architecture). Blossoming trees were everywhere — the below tree was full of busy bees.

As a California girl, I’m used to seeing redwoods, palm trees, and stucco; brick houses and deciduous trees look to me like something out of a picture book. The below photo is of the recreational area by Webster’s Falls. It’s ridiculously idyllic… but I didn’t want to stop and make a sketch because the sun was strong! Somehow I thought the sun would be less intense further north, but no. I’ll need to get some higher-SPF sunblock than what I brought.

Finally, we parked above the lower part of the city of Hamilton, at an overlook. From there we could see Hamilton, Lake Ontario, and beyond it, Mississauga (where our family friends live) and Toronto.