We went to the Toronto Tea Festival during the last Saturday of January (which was also coincidentally Chinese New Year). Also coincidentally, the Uniqlo location downtown was giving away free tops & bottoms from their Heat Tech line but we didn't bother lining up in the cold for them lol.
This event popped up on my Facebook feed and it seemed interesting. Being tea lovers, we went to go check it out since it was at the Toronto Reference Library downtown, where TCAF was. Judging from previous years, the $15 entrance fee seemed worth it. There were a lot of well known sponsors and the weekend event seemed packed with a lot of info about tea.
It was well organized, however later on it got really crowded since unlike TCAF, it didn't take over the entire library but just a conference room on the second floor.
We each got a re-usable bag that had a small sample of tea and a tasting cup so we could sample all the teas at the event.
Some teas apparently won awards. I don't think I tried any of them though... don't remember.
There were quite a few vendors. A whole TON of tea for you to chose from, with different styles and origins. Some stalls even sold things like tea biscuits, tumblers and bath salts (???). It's a nice event for all ages, but not really small children friendly because the aisles between booths aren't that big for the amount of people. And also hot liquids being put on display for tasting. The best part would be the tea tasting - I was strictly told not to buy any more tea since I have too much at home so it was fun to sample everything for free. I tasted a mushroom tea, among many others!
There was also a small stage near the back of the room that they did performances on. The seating area was really small so I had to stand and it was hard to get a clear photo without someone in the way... :( We missed the Korean tea ceremony presentation but saw the Japanese & Chinese tea ceremonies. Overall, this was a nice event but I only wish the stage was kept in a separate area because at times it was distracting having all the noise of the vendor marketplace in the background, plus not having anywhere to sit.
We had taken what the tea festival had to offer after a few hours so we went to grab a late lunch.
We'd been wanting to check out Blaze Pizza downtown for a while so since we were in the area we decided to go. The concept is really neat, and the crust was very thin but definitely not the best pizza I've had (that goes to a place in Markham that I definitely need to blog about some time) Probably because we both messed up and realized later that we should've went for the build-your-own option. I didn't know there was no charge for extra toppings, so you could technically add as much as you wanted. We were pushed along so fast, I felt kinda rushed to complete my order when I wanted to ask for more cheese or sauce... in the end I ended up with a rather bland pizza. It made sense in hindsight why most people went for the build-your-own option, because the person behind the glass putting on the toppings for you didn't put very much of each topping for the amount of surface area... It was still cooked well, though so maybe we'll come back in the future.
That's all for this post... Until next time!
No comments:
Post a Comment