Balzac and the National Ballet

Joy is easy to find in Toronto.

Spent a wonderful day exploring off-the-beaten path Toronto in search of 'cool' coffee shops, eclectic used book stores, and black squirrels.

• Great Coffee Shop #1:  Balzac's, corner of Liberty E and Hannah- robust espresso drinks, with nice work on the foam art.
• Eclectic used book store #1:  Monkey's Paw - home to many quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore including a 1950  Esperanto dictionary that I thought was mandatory for my linguistics major daughter.
• Great Coffee Shop #2:  Dark Horse on Queen.  Excellent pour-overs made with appropriate attention to detail.
• Eclectic book store #2:  Also on Queen, but we don't remember the name.  Eric thinks the primary criterion for inclusion in this shop is excellence in cover design.  Every book was absolutely beautiful.
• Eclectic book store #3:  Sanko on Queen.  This is actually a Japanese store and carries sushi and sake sets, a wide range of Japanese culinary supplies and best of all, a selection of books in Japanese.
• Black squirrels- ubiquitous  

And to end the day, the girls saw the Canadian National Ballet perform "Romeo and Juliet" while the men went to see "The Artist formerly known as the "artist formerly known as Prince.""  As I write this, the men are still out, but Ellen and I loved "R&J!"