Sights in Kingston II : Ontario Street

okay this is supposed to be Sights in Kingston I but i got so excited over Curry Village and the sans culotte Marie Antoinette that i had to put that as Sights in Kingston I. no matter, this long overdue but probably not much awaited entry would provide some introduction to the colourful sights of Ontario St in downtown Kingston.

Ontario St houses the admin functions of Kingston as well as some of its best sights, restaurants and nightlife. the picture above is the front view of City Hall, the same building as the very first photo you see on this blog on Kingston. scroll down if you need to; i am too lazy to provide a link that cultivates laziness in blog surfers who find it too tedious to scroll down.

and below, right behind City Hall itself is this colourful and bustling Ontario Street Market Square, home to push cart vendors who set up stall every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturdays selling all sorts of things from flowers to freshly plucked berries and fruits, and even clothings and maple syrup products. pretty touristified. in variety as well as in price.

City Hall and the Market Square

the Kingstonian Bazaar

a little house in a corner of Wolfe Island.

really comfy looking little cottage. looks like a good place to retire =)

still along Ontario St. the street is actually bordering and parallel to Lake Ontario which is freakin big. and the street is home as well to the Confederation Basin. Kingston, once the capital of the Confederation of Canada under the Prime Ministership of Sir John A. MacDonald, is keen to celebrate this little piece of heritage. Confederation Basin is one such example.

A nice place to chill out in the chilly wind beside the lake.

the Park at Confederation Basin

further down the Basin there is among the very first Railway Station in Canada, now the Kingston Tourist Centre.

parked aptly beside it is the first locomotive train to arrive in Kingston, seen in picture below.

and when in Kingston, do as the Kingstonians do. apparently a very cool thing to do is to get some White Mountain Ice Cream and slurp the unbelievably humongous cone of ice cream sitting by the Lake at Confederation Basin in the summer. very Kingstonian.

White Mountain Ice Cream Shop counter

they have ice creams and yoghurts in three sizes: regular, large, and "Mountain". those huge home-made cones you see at the back of the counter are, you guessed it, regular. "Mountain" lives up to its name indeed.

beside the ice cream parlour is the most Canadian building you can find in Kingston, constructed as residence by one of the first merchants in Kingston in the early 1800s. converted to the Prince George Hotel (the first hotel in Kingston in any case), it now houses an Irish Pub called Tir Nan Og, as well as two other pubs.

The Prince George Hotel

urban legend has it that the building was so wonderfully well-preserved in its "originally Ontario" style in spite of a fire that broke out because once the alert was sounded, firemen from the Fire Station across the street dashed to the mission in order to save the three pubs. so it pays to house booze in lieu de memoire. singapore could take a page out of this book in their innovation to reuse heritage buildings.

this is the abovementioned City Fire Department, the first Fire Station in Kingston from which firemen triumphantly emerged to save their fave haunt across the road and prevent the apocalyptic halt of easily accessible booze supply.

now housing the premium Texan-Mexican restaurant Lonestar. excellent food, great ambience and noisy birthday celebrations on weekends. birthday boys and girls are to stand on their seats with a huge green mexican hat on their heads and the staff would sing one of a variety of special cowboyish birthday songs for him or her.

also along this street is Curry Original, a rival to Curry Village which laobeng recommended me. apparently both are quite good and similar, because they are owned by bickering brothers from the same north indian family. Curry Village is the breakaway, but both offer excellent indian fare with spicy, fragrant curry. oh man i miss sankar venkateswaran and little india. more on makan in Kingston in a later post.

that's all for now... back to my essays!