New York to Toronto:


Toronto and the 905s Part Three


Summer


Watch the Blue Jays play at the Rogers Centre. Take a roller coaster ride at the Canadian Nation Exhibition (CNE). Take a street car to the beaches and eat ice cream on the sand. Relax at the African Music Festival in Queens Park.


Autumn/Fall Take the ferry to Toronto Island and have a picnic. Get into costume and celebrate Halloween. Get a ticket to the Toronto Film Festival and rub shoulders with the rich and famous. Visit the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto


Winter


Eat spicy chicken wings in a bar playing the hockey on the big screen. Ice skate outdoors at City Hall. Sip a Double Double at Tim Horton’s. Visit the Egyptian exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum.


Spring


Walk on the Glass floor at the CN Tower and see the city from above. Spend some money shopping in up market Yorkville. Buy tickets to a stadium concert at the Air Canada Centre. Visit Kensington Markets.


If nothing else you should, at least once, stop off at the street vendor on the corner of Simcoe and Queen Streets and get yourself a hotdog, or ‘street meat’ as it’s locally known. It’s part of every healthy Toronto experience. Bon voyage! Gabrielle Affleck For further information more about this great city http://totonto.ca


T R A V E L Goodyer Travel, 46 Main Road, Duston, Northampton. NN5 6JF 54 Dedicated to finding the right holiday for you! Telephone: 01604 757262 55


The drive from Niagara toToronto should only take about an hour and a half, but it almost never does. Traffic can back up so far that I’ve spent four hours on this journey. The QEW is one of Ontario’s busiest highways and sees up to 200,000 trips a day. Never the less, the pay off is worth the wait as we arrive in Toronto, my favourite city in the world.


For me, the perfect city has to have a soul, a heartbeat that resonates through the chime of passing street cars and the hum of five million voices. Toronto has that soul and it shows itself in so many ways. From the highbrow art in the galleries and the street art in the alleys, to the perfect acoustics of Roy Thompson Hall and the buskers on Queen Street West. There’s a sense of vibrant life, of action, of people not just living in but loving their city.


In the summer time the market stalls are out in force along Queen West. The entertainment district is full of patios, all packed to capacity with Torontonians and their neighbours from the 905 area code. Police patrol the streets on horseback and the subway lines bellow air through street vents on which homeless people sleep to keep warm.


There’s something strange that happens when you cross Spadina (Spa- dine-ah) on Queen Street. It’s as though the street marks the gateway into another world. All of a sudden people who, on the other side of the street seemed perfectly normal, start conversing with the heavens, waving their arms around and eating out of garbage cans. This part of the city has a decidedly punk attitude, a kind of grisly and yet somehow endearing edge.


Right there, just up from the corner is a late night laundry mat, the kind of place that reminds me of Toronto’s famous author, Margaret Atwood and her story of a laundry mat romance in The Edible Woman.


Across the street the Cameron House has large scale ant sculptures crawling over the edifice, facial piercings gleam under the streetlights and the laundry turns rhythmically. Beautiful Toronto.


Thanks to Toronto I had occasion to see the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I was working at the CN Tower, which at the time was the world's tallest building. I'd ride the glass elevators to and from the 114th building storey, ferrying passengers up and down, seeing the city in the beautiful summer sunshine and in the grips of an icy winter.


Most people avoid the tower on cloudy days as it is notoriously disappointing, however, as the elevator descends through the clouds there is a moment when raindrops hover at eye level, suspended in their downward trajectory. It is the most stunning, beautiful thing to see. More beautiful than all of the sunny days and the starlit nights put together.


Toronto has as many hotels as any other big city and for those of you with a budget that can accommodate a few nights at the Hilton or Four Seasons then so be it. For the rest of us there are a few options.


Hostelling International has a location on Church Street and offer a number of Room/Sightseeing packages for all budgets. For something a little more private I suggest The Rex. The Rex is a Jazz club in the heart of the city with quiet little rooms above. What you sacrifice in complimentary soaps and towel robes you get back threefold in price, location and atmosphere. Situated on Queen Street, the Rex attracts some of the most famous Jazz bands in the world and can always be relied on for a good night out.


For anyone looking for an apartment the Annex is a nice little university hotspot. The tree lined streets are full of vintage book stores and pavement cafes. The terrace style apartments aren't always well maintained but they aren't too expensive either.


It would be almost impossible to list the number of great things to see and do in Toronto, but here are some worth thinking about.


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