700. Vacation Plans, Chotto Matte & the new Royal York Hotel

Last week we went to the brand new Chotto Matte here in Toronto. They specialize in Nikkei cuisine; a fusion of Japanese dishes with Peruvian influences. Everything from the service to the drinks and food (taste and presentation) were all really good. I loved the yucca and sweet potato chips (even though they are super spicy), ceviche, corn and the sushi above the most. The owner of the chain happened to be there when we were, sitting at a table across from us. He very generously gave us a discount off our bill at the end. Probably because he saw us taking photos of everything lol.

Vacation Plans!
Since this is a Japanese-Peruvian restaurant I guess now is a good time to announce our next trip..we will be going to Peru!! I don't remember when exactly it was decided upon but it seems like a long time of planning already. We will be leaving next weekend and I'm super excited. I've never been to South America before and I'll be able to cross one thing off my bucket list - to visit the Amazon! We will be staying in a lodge in the rainforest for 6 days. Before that we will visit Lima, Paracas, Huacachina, Cusco, & Iquitos.

I've never planned a trip as extensively as this one so far. There is a lot of preparation and research involved like getting certain vaccinations, pills, how to dress in the Amazon, etc. After the trip I will make a series of (informative) blog posts of everything you need to know before visiting Peru. In the past my travel posts consisted mostly of photos but I'll try to do some guides this time. & eventually if I have time I will go back and do them all for the previous cities I've visited as well. I will try to do regular posts while there. Hopefully the internet connection is fast and reliable.

Anyways, here are some more photos from Chotto Matte and other random ones from the past weeks:














Dinner at Miku. I feel I've posted this place so many times already lol.

The Royal York Hotel recently had a major transformation. They completely renovated the lobby, bar and dining area. If you've been following my blog for a long time you may know I used to come here a LOT before they closed for renos. Now they finally re-opened so I went to check it out. I think the lobby in the past was nicer (it was more historic and traditional style). Now it is more modern but it's still very beautiful.

The lobby bar is called CLOCKWORK and the main restaurant is called Reign. That night we had dinner at the restaurant then drinks and dessert at the lobby bar.




I love the colours of Reign - dark green, gold with lots of velvets. It's hard to see in my photos though.







This is supposed to say "We the North".

Dinner at Buca - the Yorkville location. Their Yorkville location has mostly seafood while the King West one has mostly meat. It was really good. I loved the nodini and my lobster pasta was pretty heavy but delicious.



Dinner at Cru.




Lastly, to end an already food-filled post with a final one..here was dinner at Kiin.




FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | BLOGLOVIN'

615. Blogmas Day 7 & 8 | More than you could ever know

I didn't really do anything special yesterday, so I will combine it with today's post. Tonight my friend and I went to Ontario Place for the Festival of Lights (which we were pretty disappointed by to be honest..we felt way more festive in the Uber ride back hahah), then City Hall, Royal York, Kelly's Landing before heading back home. I am slowly getting into the Christmas spirit. I've actually been pretty stressed lately so hopefully everything is sorted out soon so that I can enjoy the rest of the holiday season.




I tend to take more baths (almost everyday) during stressful times hahah


I'm aware all my elevator selfies tend to look the same








FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | BLOGLOVIN'

570. Quick Update

I went for dinner with a friend tonight and we were talking about how the key to happiness is to keep progressing and making at least one improvement per day. Or something like that. I completely agree with this. In my "professional life" I'm actually a pretty hard worker and work all hours of the day. But then I sacrifice time for personal interests and hobbies and things I don't "have" to get to yet.. For example I'm very behind on reading all my magazine subscriptions (I subscribe to like 10 different magazines and every time the new issues come I get stressed about having to read it lol), putting up my aurora lights, doing yoga, ordering my last pieces of furniture, planning my summer vacation, keeping up with my blog and other blogs, finishing with my Asia trip blog posts, setting up some appointments etc. I can't believe I've been so stressed about all this recently..all good problems to have I guess. I'm aware there are bigger problems I could be having but I still think I should keep a healthy balance of work and personal life. But recently I've had quite a busy social life and my actual work has been extremely busy so I haven't had much time for anything else. My renovations are still not done yet..hopefully by the END of next week, my kitchen will be complete. After that is all taken care of I can focus on putting together my place again and re-organizing my life..and better manage my time.

I didn't mean to ramble on so much in the paragraph above..the only point I wanted to make was: when my friend and I had that conversation earlier about doing at least one thing per day to progress, I thought it was finally time to make a new blog post, no matter how short. Because the more I put it off, the more stressed I get because I don't like to go so long without making a new post..even though I do this as a hobby and don't "have" to keep regular updates, I actually want to keep it fairly active. Blogging is also a nice form of stress relief for me. I don't have time at the moment to edit all the other photos for a full post so here is one of my favourite shots from my birthday week last week!! This was from the afternoon my friend and I went for an afternoon tea at the Royal York Hotel. We then had a tour around the hotel and we took the time to take photos instead. I really like this shot because it was semi-candid and only taken with my cell phone camera but I think it turned out pretty nice.

As some of you may know, my birthday was a few days ago (March 26). I never celebrate my birthday but this year I did quite a lot for it! I will post all about it in my next post..but it was a lot of fun and made me very grateful to have the people in my life that I do now. Even with all the current "stress" I have, I'm actually at a very good and happy place in my life right now. I don't know if it's because of my birthday just passing but I have been thinking a lot about this recently. I feel I've grown and learned a lot these past few months especially and I became more self aware.

My other goal this week is to put up my aurora lights by following the rule of doing at least one step per day. Again, the longer I procrastinate putting them up the more unnecessarily stressed I get. I did step 1 yesterday which was setting up the ladder at the correct spot hahah. It was pretty hard work believe it or not. After I finish this post I will do step 2 which is to open up a box of the lights and figure out how to mount them. Then tomorrow onwards I'll put at least one up a day (there are 18 panels total). I hope I will get them done by the end of the week..well I'd have to, since my contractor comes back next week and will be taking his ladder back. ----- if you don't know what my aurora lights are you're probably very confused by this paragraph.

Anyways, I will end this post here. It's 2:30am and I know late at night I tend to write too much. I do feel more productive now that I finally got around to doing an update here.


FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | BLOGLOVIN'

458. Recent Life

Hello everyone! This post is long overdue. I thought of separating it into 2 since I have a lot of photos..but then decided on having it altogether in one big catch-up post. I think my new year's resolution will be to update my blog more often. Sometimes when I want to blog, I don't have enough photos or content to blog about but then I suddenly have way too much..

I really love all the Christmas decorations around the city, especially in hotels. A couple weeks ago I went by the Royal York Hotel to see if their decorations were up yet as I wanted to get some photos. It turns out they were filming something in there that day (hence the American flag & palm trees in this photo above).



They seem to have these carvings every year. I forgot what it's made of. This year they have these characters from "A Christmas Carol". I used to have that book and read it every Christmas.




My mom came downtown a couple weeks ago. I met her for dim sum at Dynasty. Then dinner at Nami:





Getting my hair done at Dean Delmonte Salon + my new favourite pink nailpolish (OPI's "My Chihuahua Bites")




Dynasty for dim sum again, when my bf came for a surprise visit last weekend


Some photos from my company's holiday party at CC Lounge.
I took this photo pretty early and it was a Monday night so it wasn't that busy in there lol






Random late (4pm) breakfast I had by myself at O&B Canteen one day.




FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | BLOGLOVIN'