Haunted Toronto and High Park Weekend

We had another busy weekend with Elizabeth's family, scavenging for clues around U of T after dark and exploring the beauty that is High Park!

Looking for clues during our Haunted Toronto scavenger hunt

Elizabeth's sister, Rebecca, arrived in Toronto last Tuesday night to join in on the fun we'd been having with Elizabeth's parents the weekend before, biking around the Toronto Islands and visiting the Aga Khan Museum. While Rebecca's side mission this Canada Day long weekend involved wedding dress shopping, we still had lots of time for ~10 games of 7 Wonders... among other things.

To kick off the long weekend, we went to a Blue Jays game on Thursday night. While the game itself wasn't the most exciting - the Blue Jays hit the ball 3 times - we still enjoyed the atmosphere and the hot dogs. 

Our main activity on Friday, other than enjoying the annual homemade Canada Day pizza, was the Haunted Toronto scavenger hunt from Urban Capers. We had completed another Urban Caper, Murder at the ROM, back in February but it was great to try another one out as they were both so different; Haunted Toronto is an outdoor scavenger hunt primarily around Yorkville and the University of Toronto campus. Surprisingly, all of the spooky stories on the hunt are true! 

While our team of 6 was focused on finding the answers to the clues, we took the bonus points awarded for best team photo very seriously...

Guys, I think this chapel is haunted...

23 questions, 2 hours, and 8000 steps later, we returned to the starting point and claimed our victory! While we didn't get every question right (some of them were quite tricky), our quirky team photos put us over the top. And we're proud of it.

​Then on Saturday, after some morning dress shopping, we hopped on the subway to visit High Park. At 399 acres, High Park is Toronto's largest public park and is located in the west of the city. We spent a few hours wandering around High Park, starting with a wander through the unbelievably large and nice off-leash dog area. We then walked through the High Park Zoo where we didn't see the (formerly) missing capybaras, but did see some llamas, emus, bison, and goats.

After buying 5 bottles of water from a food truck, we meandered through the forest on one of the nature trails. Wandering around the park, it was easy to forget that we were in the midst of Canada's largest city.

Our visit to High Park ended as we made our way through some of their gardens, although we did leave quite a lot of the park to explore another time - it is 399 acres after all! We spent that evening at The One Eighty, a restaurant with some picturesque views which has become a favourite of ours for visitors to Toronto.

Then on Sunday we said farewell to our guests, although it won't be long before we are all reunited again in Newfoundland (for 3 days) for a family wedding. Looking forward to it.

​Here are some more photos from our weekend:

(SLIDESHOW)

Curious what we were up to this time last year? Well we took a road trip to explore Central Newfoundland and learn about the Beothuk people. Two years ago, we tasted some Afghani food and three years ago we showed Luke's parents around Newfoundland and they witnessed first-hand the (crazy) annual rolling of the capelin!