We had not been to an RV park in Canada and we wanted to have a break before going to Toronto. We knew that with a big city like Toronto we would likely be spending the nights on the street or on a parking lot. We found the Pine Valley RV resort on Google which was pretty pricey at CAD$65 a night plus tax but it had a 4.5 star rating and was billed as a family resort so we thought we would give it a try.
The Pine Valley RV resort did have a pool and had plenty of families with kids but a few little things made the park a disappointment. The sites were just gravel and only had grey water dumps. The electricity voltage was low so I was getting alarms on my electrical protection system. Worst of all they had coin fed showers, which in my opinion was simply petty. After paying almost $70 a night we had to scrounge up a quarter for 5 minutes of shower time. I can’t imagine that the money they make on the showers could compensate for the annoyance of the guests. The Pine Valley was not nearly as nice as the RV parks we stayed at in Houston and cost much more. Regardless, Olivia did have a good time swimming with the other kids.
The next morning we drove into Toronto and went directly to Chinatown. We could immediately tell that this was a real, legit Chinatown.
It was lunchtime by the time we arrived so we went to House of Gourmet Restaurant which had a Beijing Duck combo meal for CAD$83. For that price we would get Beijing Duck served in two plates and three other dishes of our choice from a set selection. Holly had been wanting to eat Beijing Duck for a while, ever since Mexico city so this was a good chance to indulge her. For those that don’t know Beijing Duck is a Chinese roast duck. The crispy skin is sliced off and served with Plum sauce, green onions and sliced cucumber. The meat is served as a separate dish, usually wok fried or made into a soup. In addition, we ordered a seafood clay pot, cashew chicken and a stir fried pea sprout dish. It was all quite good and the portions were generous so we ended up taking leftovers back to Rover.
After dropping off the leftovers with Rover we walked around Chinatown a bit. There Chinatown was all regular buildings but the plethora of Chinese restaurants, Bubble Tea places and Chinese stores proved that this was indeed an authentic, working Chinatown. Next, we walked to the Kensington Market neighborhood, which was right next door to Chinatown. This is a more ethnic neighborhood with a mix of Jamaican, Indian and Asian restaurants and stores. It was hot and we had parked on the street with 3:30 pm expiration time so we did not spend too much time in the area before heading off.
Not too far away we found a parking lot by the water that had up to 24 hour parking for CAD$20 and that seemed like a good deal for us so we settled in, turned on our air conditioner and had a rest before having a light dinner and taking an evening stroll along the waterfront. We came upon a band playing music on a small docked pirate ship that was pretty cool.
Further along we passed some parks and gardens before finding a spot with a good unobstructed view of CN Tower. It was quite late by the time we returned from our stroll.
When we got back we found a road crew was preparing to do road construction on the street right in front of our parking spot. They were going to be there all night. The construction noise was really annoying. It was also quite hot, still almost 80 degrees at midnight. Sometimes though when you have two problems at once they can solve each other. We turned on our generator and air conditioner to cool off and we could barely hear the construction anymore. We would normally never use our generator in a parking lot in the middle of city but the road construction was so loud our generator noise would not matter.
