A long journey for dim sum

[vaneramos]

Danny and I had a pleasant outing today despite biting cold. Our first stop was St. Lawrence Market where we picked up a few vegies for tomorrow night's dinner. You can also find the best bagels available just about anywhere. I indulged in one warm and chewy out of the oven.

He had to stop at work for an hour. I sat and delved into Heart of Darkness while he did his thing. Then we headed for a late lunch.

To avoid the cold we decided to walk all the way through The Path, a concourse which runs under many blocks of downtown Toronto. This turned into an adventure. You have to know where you're going. Danny did, mostly, but we got caught down one dead end. What a perfect setting these tunnels would make for a post-apocalyptic thriller, a little overwhelming for a outdoors bear from a little city like Guelph. Moving from King and University in the financial district, which is practically abandonned on weekends, we neared the Eaton Centre and the corridors became more and more crowded.

Eventually we struggled to the bus terminal at Bay and Dundas. We were hot, hungry, tired of carrying groceries, and verging on cranky. We emerged from the bus terminal to run around the corner onto Dundas Street for dim sum.

This destination was indirectly inspired by androkles and currawong's recent post, after I commented to Danny that I hadn't had dim sum for about 12 years. The Chinese Palace Restaurant was unlike Sydney's East Ocean. It was quiet, almost intimate, with winter afternoon sunlight streaming in the windows. Fried shrimp dumplings, BBQ pork noodle, shark's fin dumplings, squid curry, almond jello. It was delicious.

By the end we were both ready to fall asleep in our seats, but the subway was another busy ordeal. It was a relief to get back to the house for a nap.

I have several images to post when I get home on Thursday.

Comments

[bigmacbear]

I remember that particular dim sum place from when Gary (gmjambear) and I were members of Bear Buddies Toronto and would join the BBT folks there when we were in town for Aurora Bearealis or some such event.

One time (it would have been the August 2000 event, which was the first Aurora Bearealis but wasn't talked up as such) we walked down to the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres from the restaurant by way of PATH. There was some construction going on in the little underground mall that connects to the bus station, and they had a bunch of photographs of three construction workers (one of whom was this big bearish fellow) hung up on the otherwise blank walls that separated the construction zones from the public. One of these, featured the big bear tucking into a candlelit lunch -- which unfortunately you can't see in the picture -- while his co-workers made do with brown-bag lunch or slept. This caught my eye and we all decided to pose in front of it, like so:

Fourth from the left is of course Danny (djjo), three over from him (counting the gentleman behind him) is yours truly, and on the far right is Gary.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I saw that poster and one other in the series yesterday and admired them! It wasn't far from the bus station, probably still in the same place as you described. Thanks for posting this. Nice to see a pic of all you handsome bears.

Yup - same underground area!

[djjo.livejournal.com]

The location of the construction wall is different, but the pictures are still the same. They have been using those for several years now whenever they have a large area of change / construction in that underground.

The other two pics have the big bear limboing under a paint roller pole, and him playing with electrical cables to zap one of the other workers. He's the big ham in all the pics.

Hugs Mike, hugs Van. Danny

dim sum

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

Drool. (Well, maybe not the squid--too chewy for my tastes)