With a population of just over 5,000,000, Toronto is the largest city in Canada and one of its most southernmost. Toronto’s multi-cultural base, funky ethnic neighborhoods and equally diverse range of experiences makes for a fabulous city escape, for a weekend or a week. The provincial capital, it boasts regal Victorian architecture around the government seat at Queen’s Park, the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum, mixed with a stunning blend of ultra-modern design, such as the remarkable Toronto City Hall, a stylized oyster designed by the late Finnish architect, Viljo Revel.
Toronto has it all and none of it. Fine dining, superb hotels, world-class shopping, grand-scale theater, operas and ballet, one of the best public art galleries in North America (the Art Gallery of Ontario), and yet it is very low in crime levels compared to other major urban centers throughout the world. It is still safe to walk at night in most of downtown Toronto.
Toronto is the seat of corporate culture, from telecommunications to banking, for Canada; it pulses with the beat of business. Bay Street is the Canadian version of New York’s Wall Street, and is always vibrant.
A vacation or getaway in Toronto can be as relaxing as you want, like touring Lake Ontario and Toronto’s harbor and islands, or as charged-up as you need, seeing shows, visiting Casa Loma, or taking a high-speed elevator up the CN Tower, the 2nd tallest free-standing structure in the world.
Kids love Toronto, too. The Metro Toronto Zoo in the city’s eastern suburbs is highly regarded and huge, resplendent with animals from all over the planet. And there’s the Ontario Science Centre, a play to play, learn and discover, for kids of all ages. Black Creek Pioneer Village in the city’s northwest is a collection of buildings from Canada’s earliest years, before it even became an official country. With blacksmith sheds, homes, schools, churches, farms and shops, this village engages visitors by having its staff dressed in period costume and demonstrating horse-shoeing, candle-making, baking and other daily functions of society in the early 1800s.
In the last three weeks of August, the Canadian National Exhibition hosts millions of visitors who make it a tradition of “going to the Ex” every year. Midway rides and games, places to sample all sorts of foods, learn the newest technology, listen to live music concerts and much more comprise The Ex; there is something for everyone and a day here is like being a kid all over again, right down to the cotton candy. On the lakeshore, adjacent to the Exhibition grounds is Ontario Place, open year round with displays, restaurants, an amphitheater, an IMAX theater, a kids’ world and it’s home to events from sailing regattas to dragon boat races.
Toronto is about sports, too. Participating in watersports, skiing (there are cross-country trails in the city’s many parks, such as Wilkett Creek Park and High Park) and downhill slopes nearby. Toronto is dotted with golf courses and tennis clubs, and has a wide range of fitness facilities. Woodbine Racetrack in the city’s northwest features thoroughbred horse racing in season and hosts the annual Queen’s Plate; this is where the famed Secretariat ran his last race. It is home to the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team, the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey club and the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts; there is a major-league sporting event going on in Toronto every week of the year, sometimes daily. Many of these events occur in the Rogers Centre, a stadium seating about 50,000 and boasting a retractable roof; it’s worth the admission just to see the roof in operation!
Not only is Toronto a safe place to walk, especially around the upscale boutiques on Bloor Street between Yonge Street and Avenue Road, is has an excellent transportation network of streetcars, subway lines and buses. If you fly in and take a cab to downtown, you can get anywhere you want in about half an hour.
Toronto is a mix of old and new, of cultures and foods, of glittering elegance and down-to-earth comforts. It literally has something for every taste. It’s the best of a big, bustling city without the worry of big-city problems.
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