For fashion and art aficionados, no experience of “the 6ix” is complete without the Bloor-Yorkville neighbourhood. Toronto’s hub to high-end fashion stores, it’s nestled next to the city’s most iconic art institutions.

Last weekend, my family and I decided to play tourist, and went out to explore the neighbourhood on our own mini walking tour! It was so much fun that we ended up spending half a day there, taking many photos along the way. Here is what our fashion meets art experience looked like.

Part 1 – hello, fashion

The tour kicked off at the Yonge and Bloor intersection, one of only two parts of the city where you can cross the street diagonally. I’ve lived in Toronto since 2010 and this never, ever gets old.

We walked over to Holt Renfrew to have lunch at the fashion-industry-favourite Holts Café, grabbed a coffee in its sister café downstairs and purchased a couple of beauty products on the main floor. We also noticed that the displays for the upcoming fall collections were officially up, so we got a chance to briefly check them out.

Up next was the walk through the heart of Yorkville. With our coffees in hand, we popped over to Cumberland street and stopped in the little square (the Village of Yorkville Park) on the south end, where other people were enjoying a performance by street artists.

While standing there, we noticed a beautiful boutique across the street, called Red Letter, where we dropped by afterwards and purchased some exquisite greeting cards.

Heading several doors west, we walked into Serpentine, so my husband could do some avant-garde fashion browsing, before heading back south to Bloor Street. Most stores had already put up their fall window displays, so it was fun to explore them.

Part 2 – all the art!

My mother is a huge fan of the ROM, so we couldn’t do the walking tour without going there. The museum currently has the Chihuly exhibit on display, which is open to the public until January 2017. My husband and I have wanted to check it out for a while, so it was a unanimous decision to go there.

We spent two hours browsing and photographing the show, followed by shopping at the ROM boutique. As we were leaving, we snapped obligatory pictures of the dinosaur (part of the permanent exhibit) that proudly stood across from the entrance.

It was a memorable afternoon, and we now have hundreds of photos to remember it by. A repeat session is in the works for when my sister comes to visit with her family!

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Disclosure: This post was brought to you by Tourism Toronto via Mode Media Canada. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of Tourism Toronto.