Toronto Day 2

Continuing my final summer vacation series...


I started Day 2 by going to Abe's conference to see him present on his paper "Applying Voice Recognition to Vox Populi: State Transition Models and the Study of Public Opinion and Political Communication". There were 5 people on the panel and about 15 of us in the audience. Actually pretty good average for an academic conference.


Afterwards, we went to lunch at Richtree Market. I enjoyed delicious pad thai.


The restaurant was based on an open market concept. After being seated, you received a "shopper's card" and could then stroll through a maze of different eateries, swipe your card to get some of their food, return to eat, and then pay for your entire shopper's card when you left. Think high school cafeteria meets bistro.


After that I went to the Art Gallery of Ontario, which my guidebook said was $5. It was actually $18, so I left and went to the Bao Xi contemporary art gallery across the street (free). It was a two-story, 15-ish-painting gallery and I absolutely loved it.


Then I headed over to campus to see the rare book library and museum. The "museum" was 5 display cases with 16-18c books. But it was on a floor that sort of floated inside a round hall several stories high, filled with rare books. Despite the bust of Shakespeare, I sited no Shakespearean writings in the museum.




While contemplating vellum, I heard shouts and screams outside. Come to find out, freshman orientation at Toronto University includes 1,000s of students parading through several city blocks. Everywhere I went, I could see or hear their giant snake of different colleges and clubs, weaving up and down the streets.


Campus, sans students.


I met up with Abe and his academic folk at a Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown for dinner.


Abe got the XL soup.


We finished the night by walking to the city hall building. You can see the spacecraft ready to shoot up, just above the fountain.