Toronto Day 4: The cavalry arrives!

You can tell our days are getting busier by how much briefer these updates are; I come back too late and too tired to put much into them. So this will be mostly a shout-out to my local peeps:

• nitouche and her smoking hoincredibly affable husband gave shape to a nothing day yesterday by immersing us in Toronto's Koreatown, showing us the neighbourhood "where the Italian people really live", and tipping us off to the existence of Xi'an cuisine in Chinatown. Oh, and incidentally introducing us to their charming little "triumph of recessive genes".
• bitterlawngnome gave me my first real photoshoot. I really think y'all are going to like these. I didn't know I could look so hot! (Or that my body could bend in some of those ways.)
• After more than four hours in the studio, danthered let me clean up at his place and then took me out for a lunch of tasty tasty goat. What a mentsh!
• Moments after monshu had thrown down the gauntlet by ordering the Wooden Plate at Country Style, paulintoronto rode to my rescue by consuming half of what would've been left to me--not to mention treating us to the dessert I never would've had room for otherwise!

Toronto Day 5: Art Things

Since I first entred this room Saturday afternoon and gazed up at the hideously-painted cloth stretchers covering them, I've been imagining what it would be like to listen to raindrops drumming on the skylights. I no longer need to rely on my imagination.

Our timing was flawless: upon getting in, we immediately brought our things up to the room, brought down the sambuca, and unpacked the buns from Caldense Bakery. monshu barely had time to wet the ice in our glasses when the heavens opened and the rain pouring on the fibreglass roof of the back porch nearly drowned out our conversation.

I do hope gasterea was as lucky. Last we saw her, she was pushing her pram down Dundas after strolling back with us from the wonder that was Porchetta & Co. If pigs are really really good, then their shoulders get taken there to be smoked, wrapped with their bellies, and roasted to perfection. The soup was a wonder as well--who knew cream and lentils could marry so well?

Leaving the b&b this morning, I confessed to the GWO that I was still fighting off my no-more-tolerable-for-being-completely-predictable Mid-Vacation Crisis. This one came with an extra dose of guilt for focusing overmuch on what I wanted to do--see people and eat--at the expense of what he wanted to do--look at art and relax.

Ho boy, did we make up for that today! The Art Gallery of Ontario is phenomenal, a beautiful building filled with beautiful things. We got a crash course in Canadian art with galleries devoted to modernist Patterson Ewen, master etcher David Blackwood, and a retrospective of Inuit drawing, painting, and sculpture. Then it was on to the Galleria Italia, one of the most singularly spectacular features I've seen in any museum anywhere.

At this point, we began to get peckish, so we decided to cross the street to the Art Gallery Cafe, which I described as being "a far better value than a cafe in this location has any need to be". Without hot drinks, it would've been too cool in the shade, but as it was it was perfect for sitting on the terrace, splitting a crepe, and watching the passing scene.

After that, we made a tour of three galleries sharing the same side of the street: Bau-Xi, Lausberg, and Bau-Xi Photo. Unfortunately half of the first was given over to an exhibition of a fairly terrible Catalan artist (em sap greu dir-ho, Xavi!) named Lluís Barba who "reworks iconic artworks to comment on contemporary society". Because every knows what the Old Masters need to make them more relevant is Lady Gaga.

But there were some gems upstairs; I particularly liked the worked-over photographs of Steven Nederveen, which appealingly blur the lines between various media. monshu was more taken with a non-Boreal Collective photographer at Bau-Xi Photo and his retouched seascapes. All in all, and hour or so well spent, but it left me well spent and begging to be taken home for a nap.

As a result, our lunch ended up being the crepe and some cheese and crackers in the kitchen before setting out again to rendezvous with gasterea in the permanent Canadian galleries. I didn't mind; it meant more room for pork later on. So it was the great kind of day where everyone got what they wanted, and we got back without a drop on us.

Tomorrow: MOCCA, the galleries of Queen Street West, and Soma.