Our car is getting old

When we arrived at the Distillery District parking lot, it seemed that ours was the oldest car in the lot. I guess time went by and we didn't notice how shabby our ride had become, until we compared it to all the nice Volkswagons and BMW's of the Distillery crowd.



Ron, you thought your truck was old? I'll show you old.



Perhaps San would like to add this to her list of Dilapidated Doors.



But in all seriousness, Ken took these photos, and I think he did a rather nice job of it.



This truck is slightly better off, in that it still has it's jaunty red coat of paint.



However, it's parked in a rather precarious position. Directly above it, at the top of a tall building, is a giant cheese grater. What appear to be shreds of cheese weighing up to one ton each are poised to topple down onto this truck and crush it, if the wind picks up. The fire escape, which runs from the red truck up to the cheese grater, shows you the true scale of the threatening cheese.



We had not brought our hard hats with us, so we beat a hasty retreat.

The Distillery District

In 1831, the Gooderham and Worts Distillery was established in Toronto.



Throughout the 1800's, the company expanded. Quoting the history section of the Distillery District's website, "its numerous facilities included flour mills, a wharf, the distillery, storehouses, an ice house, a cooper shop and a dairy."



Gooderham and Worts continued manufacturing booze all the way through to 1990. When the company finally shut its doors, the premises were taken over by the movie industry as the second-largest English movie location outside of Hollywood. You've probably seen several movies set within these buidlings.



In 2001, the site was converted into a "pedestrian-only village entirely dedicated to arts, culture and entertainment." And expensive retail outlets. And swanky condos. Multi-story glass towers loom over the 19th-century warehouses.



Yuppies happily sip coffee on the cobbled patio outside the Brick Street Bakery. You can see another condo tower in the background.



Ken and I were there on Saturday, poking around in the fancy-shmancy boutiques. Our main motivation was the presence of Soma, a gourmet chocolate shop that makes all their own chocolate onsite. The magic happens behind a clear, plexi-glass wall so that we can all press our noses to the window and salivate while we watch the chocolatiers dip truffles in imported cocoa. They offer a dairy-free, dark chocolate gelato that's to die for, which is what we desired, but it was still too early in the season. Instead, they were still vending Mayan hot chocolate spiced with a hint of hot pepper.

Next time we're there, I'll get some shots inside Soma. Their chocolate-making apparatus is reminiscent of Willy Wonka's factory. You can bet we'll be back soon, to get our gelato!