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 Hello everyone! Today I’m going to be talking about my visit to High Park for the cherry blossoms.

Every year, High Park has a bunch of cherry blossom trees that bloom throughout the month of May. They even have a live tracker on their website so you can check the status of the blossoms. When I went to visit, the trees were at about 75% bloom. That’s around the time when a lot of people start showing up, and since I went on the weekend, the place was absolutely packed.

Also, during cherry blossom season, no motor vehicles are allowed inside High Park, so we had to walk through the park to find the trees. We had a hard time using the map, which made it a bit tricky. Parking was tough too—because of the popularity of the cherry blossoms and the vehicle ban inside the park. (By “vehicles,” I mean motor vehicles—there were lots of bikes, scooters, and even a hoverboard!)

When we first entered the park, we spotted some pink trees in the distance and walked toward them. However, there weren’t nearly as many cherry blossoms as we expected. We later realized we had only found a small patch. It took us another half hour to find the main grove, but it was worth it!

While there, I saw something extraordinary—a group of people cosplaying as One Piece characters! Specifically, I spotted the Straw Hats, Trafalgar Law, Kozuki, and even Yamato. The cosplay was super impressive and definitely added an extra spark of joy to my day, especially since I’m a huge One Piece fan. But that’s a story for another blog.

For this excursion, I borrowed one of my dad’s cameras—he’s a photography enthusiast, so he has a whole collection. The one I used had a neck strap and everything. He reminded me to keep the lens cap on when I wasn’t using it, or else it could get damaged. I almost forgot to put it back on until we were in the car—but thankfully I remembered just in time.

Since we couldn’t find any parking, we ended up taking an Uber to the park. Honestly, that was probably the best decision because the parking fees would’ve cost us a lot more.

On our way back, we passed by a massive pond in the park called Grenadier Pond, surrounded by even more trees and flowers. It was a peaceful way to wrap up a very busy (but beautiful) day.