Festival Fever in Toronto

Since the day I arrived, its pretty much been a socialising "meet and greet" experience. I've found it very easy here in TO as there's so many events to go to in the summer time. Every weekend there's something going on, normally too much choice that you can't decide what to actually do! 
Downtown south at the harbour front, I found out about the weekend free festivals that happened every weekend. Whether it was Music, Dance, Visual Arts, Food, Caribbean Tales - the list goes on... whatever your flavour, they have it all. Myself, I'm a music and dance girl! In total I think I attended about 5 different music festivals, all of which enjoyable and all very unique. 
My top 5 favourites are listed below... 
BuskerFest had many performing artists from rappers, to jazz bands, and performing fire artists. All very entertaining, especially when I heard the Lemon Bucket Orkestra for the first time. What an amazing band with such great energy - the audience's attention was captured, as was mine! The event was to raise money for Epilepsy, I found that there were many fund-raising events in the city. 

Fire on the Water was a fun all day event. During the day many people were swimming in the Lake Ontario, whilst at night time we were dancing at the dance floor. Various DJs played through the night, showing off their mixes - I managed to speak to one of the DJs who was Brazilian. Throughout the evening there were a few performing arts shows, installations (including an ice room and a feather room), and live performances - all at Sunnyside Beach. 

The Beaches International Jazz Festival was the perfect festival for a Couch Surfing meeting... 25 of us in total met at "The Beaches" which is an area of shops, cafes, and bars of TO down by (to state the obvious) the beaches :o) Here we listened to the various jazz music artist's stands. Around 11pm when the street festival was over (yes, many events close early in Canada), we all headed to the pub and then onto the beach for some group games; football, slap tennis, and frisbee. All in all, it was a fun day with excellent music and a variety of cultured company. This festival was also raising money for a good cause - Ontario's Fire Service (hence my picture of 3 strapping fireman)! The other photo below shows about 1/2 the group of Couch surfers for the day's event. 

Hispanic Fiesta Festival was an interesting festival to see the different cultures of Latin America, perfect taste for my Central America trip... I went to this festive with Jasmine and friends Nikos & Garo. Here they showed a variety of dances from all Hispanic countries (my favourite was the Peruvian). Each country was competing for gold, I'm not sure what they won - but it was a competition! We didn't stay for long as there were other festivals that day to see and dance to!

Last but not least, The Ashkenaz Festival. I really wanted to go to this festival as I heard that the Lemon Bucket Orkestra were playing again. I really do think that they are such an awesome band that has great music and character. They really know how to get the audience involved, and from what I could see - they also get involved with the audience ;o) They're a gypsy band with approx. 13-15 members, all members are from different country descendants and play different instruments, the perfect ingredients for an interesting collaboration. Oh and here I got to dance my first ever Hora!!! Shalom :o)