Riverside rocks!

Shortbread! Welcome to Mary McLeods: once you step in, you are hooked! It smells fantastic, the cookies are delicious and did I mention the neat decoration? My english is not good enough to describe it. This little shop is a cookie wonderland (639 Queen St. East)
Riverside is the area where I am staying right now, I will show you some of my favourite places (yet, there are more to come for sure)




There are a lot of cool shops: furniture, vintage stuff, food, cafes, restaurants like a lot really. And arts! Ricky (my host) showed me this yesterday, the colored bikes are all over Toronto, it's an art project. Looks cute, doesn't it? Something you could easily do in Berlin as well, with all the rusty bicycles no one cares about. Why not spray them in shiny colors and get plants in/on them? Should be half-hardy plants, I guess. But even with "Erika/Erica", it would look prettier than those stupid buddy bears. No one likes them anyway.



Just a car parked in the neighbourhood, I actually liked the CS 3.0 thing :)



I have told you about "merchants of green coffee", Ricky is here often (I am actually sitting there typing right now). He got some of the coffee bags they get their beans in and turned them into awesome decoration at his house. I will not show you what he did, because you will steal the idea immediately (yes, you would) and I want to be the first one in Berlin to have it. So, just a picture of the bag that he gave to me.

There is actually just one store of "merchants of green coffee" in Toronto and this wasn't planned to be one either. The owners were trading coffee for years (fair trade) and people loved the tastings and tours so much, they opened a little coffee-shop. There is no advertising, just word of mouth. Once you tasted a hand-brewed cup of coffee here, you simply can't go to Starbucks any more. They don't sell food, just some cookies and muffins the get from a local bakery. They actually tell people where to get food and then come back to have coffee here. They don't mind you eating it here. As Ricky said "I don't get their business plan, but it works". People are so nice, they will explain what they do and how they do the roastings etc. to every single person who steps into the shop. I could live in this place. Actually I kind of do.



I don't plan on getting married at all, the only thing that could actually change my mind is this shop. Too bad it was closed today, I will go back there for a better picture when its open, because it is simply adorable. The wooden floors, the hand painted ceiling, I haven't seen a place like this in my whole life.


That's it for now. I gotta run, literally. There is the "waterfront marathon" going on today and I want to see some of the participants at KM 35 (I am meeeaaaaaaan and I have a camera, harharhar) See ya!