Toronto, Canada, top 10 things to do (Wimup travel guide)

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Top 10North AmericaCanada

Top 10 Things To Do in Toronto

Country

Canada

Best months

May · Jun · Sep · Oct

Population

2.79

Language

English

Budget / day

C$180–320

Quick answer

Start at the water. The CN Tower, Ripley's Aquarium and the island ferry sit within ten minutes of each other, and the islands give you the skyline view every photograph of Toronto is taken from. Give the second day to the museums and the markets, the ROM and the AGO in the morning, St. Lawrence Market or Kensington for lunch. Keep the third for the neighbourhoods, which is where the city actually lives: College Street, Ossington, the Danforth, Roncesvalles. Niagara Falls is a day trip, not an afternoon.

Toronto on Foot

▶ Video guide

Toronto is the most immigrant city in North America and it tastes like it. Nearly half its residents were born somewhere else, and the result is a food map that runs from Hakka Chinese in Scarborough to Portuguese charcoal chicken on Dundas West to Trinidadian doubles in the east end, all of it ordinary weeknight eating rather than a festival. The skyline is glass and the grid is flat, so the city rewards walking short stretches and taking the streetcar between them. Come between May and October if you can. Winter here is real, and the PATH tunnels exist for a reason.

The 10 best things to do in Toronto

Go up the CN Tower

Landmark· 290 Bremner Blvd, Downtown

At 553.3 metres it was the tallest free-standing structure in the world from 1975 to 2007, and it is still the thing that orients you: the lake on one side, the grid running north on the other, the islands laid out below. The LookOut level has a glass floor, and the SkyPod above it is the higher of the two decks. EdgeWalk straps you to a rail and sends you around the outside of the pod, which is a separate booking and a separate nerve.

Time1 to 2 hours

CostTicketed, timed entry

Best atThe hour before sunset

TipBook the time slot online. The queue at the base is the real price of admission.

Map ↗ Website

Spend a morning at the Royal Ontario Museum

Museum· 100 Queens Park, Yorkville

The largest museum in Canada, opened in 1914 and famously interrupted in 2007 by Daniel Libeskind's Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, a set of aluminium and glass prisms driven into the original stone building. Inside it is world cultures downstairs and natural history upstairs: a serious dinosaur hall, Chinese temple sculpture, an Egyptian collection and a bat cave the city grew up walking through. Two hours covers the highlights and half a day does not exhaust it.

Time2 to 3 hours

CostTicketed

Best atWeekday morning

TipEnter from Queens Park rather than Bloor Street to arrive in the 1914 rotunda instead of the atrium.

Map ↗ Website

Eat your way through St. Lawrence Market

Market· 93 Front St E, Old Town

The South Market is the city's oldest food hall and its most reliable lunch: cheesemongers, fishmongers, Portuguese bakeries and the peameal bacon sandwich that Toronto counts as its own. The Saturday farmers' market, which has run since 1803, moved back into the rebuilt North Market building in 2026 after a decade in a temporary structure across the road. Go early on a Saturday for the farmers, any weekday for the stalls.

Time1 to 2 hours

CostFree to walk in

Best atSaturday before 9am

TipThe market is closed Mondays. Plan lunch elsewhere that day.

Map ↗ Website

Take the ferry to the Toronto Islands

Islands· Jack Layton Ferry Terminal, 9 Queens Quay W

Fifteen minutes of water buys you a car-free archipelago with the best view of the skyline there is. Three ferry routes run in summer: Ward's Island at the quiet eastern end, with a boardwalk and cottages, Centre Island for the beaches and the Centreville amusement park, and Hanlan's Point for the clothing-optional beach and the airport side. Rent a bike on the island and ride the length of it in an hour.

TimeHalf a day

CostFerry ticketed

Best atLate afternoon

TipBuy the ferry ticket online before you reach the terminal

Map ↗ Website

See the Canadian collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario

Gallery· 317 Dundas St W, Grange Park

Frank Gehry grew up a few streets away and came back in 2008 to rebuild the gallery he first visited as a child, wrapping the Dundas Street front in a curved glass and Douglas fir gallery and dropping a blue titanium wing over the south side. The collection is the reason to stay: the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson, the Thomson collection of ship models and European painting, and one of the strongest Indigenous and Canadian holdings in the country.

Time2 to 3 hours

CostTicketed

Best atWednesday evening

TipThe spiral staircase in the Galleria Italia is worth climbing even if you skip the floor it lands on.

Map ↗ Website

Walk the Distillery Historic District

Historic district· 55 Mill St, Corktown

Gooderham and Worts was the largest distillery in the British Empire in the 1860s, and the Victorian industrial buildings it left behind are the best-preserved set of their kind in North America. Cars are banned, the streets are cobbled, and the tenants are galleries, coffee roasters, a chocolate maker and a theatre. From mid-November the whole thing turns into the Winter Village, which is the busiest it gets all year.

Time2 hours

CostFree to walk in

Best atWeekday afternoon

TipCome by streetcar. Parking here is a fee for the privilege of circling.

Map ↗ Website

Browse Kensington Market

Neighbourhood· Augusta Ave & Baldwin St, Kensington

A National Historic Site since 2006, and the least polished part of central Toronto by choice. Four narrow streets of Victorian houses turned into fruit stalls, Latin American grocers, vintage shops, cheese counters and taco windows, with Chinatown starting where the market ends. On Pedestrian Sundays in the warm months the cars are cleared out and the street becomes the room.

Time2 hours

CostFree to walk in

Best atSaturday late morning

TipEat standing up. The good things here come in paper, not on plates.

Map ↗ Website

Tour Casa Loma

Historic house· 1 Austin Terrace, Casa Loma

Sir Henry Pellatt made a fortune electrifying Ontario and spent it between 1911 and 1914 on a 98-room Gothic Revival castle above the escarpment, designed by E.J. Lennox. He lost it inside a decade. What remains is an oak room, a conservatory, two towers with a view down the length of the city, and a tunnel running under the road to the stables, which is the part children remember.

Time2 hours

CostTicketed

Best atOpening hour

TipWalk down the Baldwin Steps afterwards and carry on to Spadina Museum next door.

Map ↗ Website

Stand over the Stanley Cup at the Hockey Hall of Fame

Museum· 30 Yonge St, Financial District

The trophy sits in the Great Hall, under the stained glass dome of the 1885 Bank of Montreal building at Front and Yonge, and you are allowed to touch it. Around it are the sticks, masks and sweaters of the sport's history, a replica NHL dressing room, and shooting and goaltending simulators that are more fun than they have any right to be. Non-believers get through it in an hour. Believers do not.

Time1 to 2 hours

CostTicketed

Best atWeekday afternoon

TipIt is inside a shopping concourse below street level

Map ↗ Website

Walk the shark tunnel at Ripley's Aquarium of Canada

Aquarium· 288 Bremner Blvd, Downtown

Opened in 2013 at the foot of the CN Tower, and built around Dangerous Lagoon, a moving walkway that carries you through a tunnel with sand tiger sharks and a sawfish overhead. The Canadian Waters galleries at the start are the quieter half and the better one, with lobsters, wolf eels and a Pacific kelp forest. It pairs naturally with the tower next door, which is also why it is busy.

Time2 hours

CostTicketed

Best atFirst slot of the day

TipWeekends fill with school-holiday crowds. A weekday evening is a different building.

Map ↗ Website

9 of the 10, mapped

Toronto · 9 spots

AllLandmarksMuseumsFoodFree

Toronto travel FAQ

How many days do you need in Toronto?+

Three. One for the waterfront, the CN Tower and the islands, one for the ROM, the AGO and the markets, and one for the neighbourhoods and a long dinner. A fourth day buys you Niagara Falls or Hamilton without rushing either.

What is the best way to get around Toronto?+

The TTC. Three subway lines cover the spine of the city and the streetcars handle everything east to west, and one fare covers two hours of transfers. Tap a contactless card or buy a PRESTO card. Driving downtown is slower than the streetcar and parking is priced accordingly.

When is the best time to visit Toronto?+

May, June, September and October. The patios are open, the humidity of high summer has not arrived or has passed, and the festival calendar is at its densest in September. January and February are genuinely cold, which is what the underground PATH network is for.

Can you visit Niagara Falls as a day trip from Toronto?+

Yes. The falls are about 130 km southwest, and GO Transit runs a train and bus connection from Union Station that takes roughly two hours each way. Leave early, see the Canadian Horseshoe Falls and the boat below it, and add Niagara-on-the-Lake if you have a car.

Where should you stay in Toronto?+

Downtown between Queen and Front streets puts you inside walking distance of the tower, the market and the ferry. Queen West and Ossington are better if you are here for the eating and drinking, and Yorkville is the expensive, quiet option near the museums.

Where Toronto eats out

Best restaurants in Toronto

Ten kitchens worth planning a night around, from two Michelin stars on Avenue Road to a Thai counter under Duncan Street.

All 10 restaurants →

Tasting menu

Queen West

Alo

Restaurant · 163 Spadina Ave

Patrick Kriss's French tasting menu on the third floor of a Spadina Avenue building, open since 2015 and top of the Canada's 100 Best list for five straight years. It has held a Michelin star since the Toronto guide began. Reservations open in a batch and go quickly.

Map ↗ Website

One star

Niagara

Edulis

Restaurant · 169 Niagara St

Tobey Nemeth and Michael Caballo cook a menu that changes every week around whatever is in season, which in autumn means mushrooms and truffles and in spring means the coast. A Michelin star every year from 2022 to 2025. Small room, long dinners.

Map ↗ Website

Two stars

Yorkville

Sushi Masaki Saito

Sushi · 88 Avenue Rd

The only two-star restaurant in the Toronto guide. Masaki Saito runs a six-seat edomae counter with fish flown in from Japan, and the format is fixed: one long omakase, one sitting, no substitutions.

Map ↗ Website

One star

Old Town

Restaurant 20 Victoria

Restaurant · 20 Victoria St

Twenty seats behind a coffee bar off Yonge Street, where Rafa Covarrubias cooks a set tasting menu of Ontario produce with Mexican influences running through it. One Michelin star, and the least formal room to hold one in the city.

Map ↗ Website

One star

Harbourfront

Don Alfonso 1890

Italian · 1 Harbour Sq

The Iaccarino family's Amalfi Coast cooking, transplanted from Sant'Agata sui Due Golfi to the 38th floor of the Westin Harbour Castle. One Michelin star, and the view is doing none of the work.

Map ↗ Website

Skyline view

Financial District

Canoe

Canadian · 66 Wellington St W

On the 54th floor of the TD Bank Tower, with the lake and the islands filling the window and a menu built on Canadian ingredients: Nova Scotia lobster, Yukon caribou, Ontario game. Lunch here is a business institution and the easier reservation.

Map ↗ Website

Open late

Little Italy

Bar Isabel

Spanish · 797 College St

Grant van Gameren's Spanish room, open late, dark, tiled, and known for a whole grilled octopus that has been on the menu since 2013. The bar seats are the ones to want.

Map ↗ Website

Chef Nick Liu

Little Italy

DaiLo

Chinese · 503 College St

Nick Liu cooks what he calls new Asian: Chinese technique and Cantonese memory pushed through French training, in a room that has anchored this stretch of College Street for a decade.

Map ↗ Website

Bistro

Financial District

Richmond Station

Bistro · 1 Richmond St W

A basement dining room under Yonge Street from Carl Heinrich, doing the thing Toronto is short of: a proper mid-price bistro that runs at volume without dropping standards. The Stn. Burger is the lunch order.

Map ↗ Website

Northern Thai

Entertainment District

Pai Northern Thai Kitchen

Thai · 18 Duncan St

Down a staircase off Adelaide, and the reason a queue forms on Duncan Street most evenings. Nuit Regular cooks Chiang Mai food, which means khao soi, sai oua sausage and jungle curry rather than the central Thai standards.

Map ↗ Website

After dark

Best bars in Toronto

Ten rooms for a drink, from a Basque pintxos bar on College Street to a brewery taproom in Leslieville.

All 10 bars →

No reservations

Little Italy

Bar Raval

Cocktail & pintxos bar · 505 College St

All standing room, all mahogany, a Gaudí-inspired interior carved by Partisans, and a counter of Basque pintxos from open to close. Its bar team took the 2025 Michelin Toronto award for exceptional cocktails.

Map ↗ Website

Bartender's choice

Bloorcourt

Civil Liberties

Cocktail bar · 878 Bloor St W

There is no menu. You describe what you like and the bartender builds it, which is a gimmick everywhere else and a discipline here. It reopened after a flood shut it for half of 2025 and went straight back into the top ten of Canada's 50 Best Bars.

Map ↗ Website

Long-form cocktails

Queen West

BarChef

Cocktail bar · 472 Queen St W

Candlelight, apothecary bottles and drinks that arrive under cloches of smoke. It is the most theatrical bar in the city and it has been doing it since long enough that the theatre reads as craft.

Map ↗ Website

Wild ales

Little Italy

Birreria Volo

Beer bar · 612 College St

An Italian beer hall in a laneway off College, pouring wild ales, natural wine and cider you will not find on another list. The patio at the back is the summer version of the room.

Map ↗ Website

Patio

Ossington

Bellwoods Brewery

Brewpub · 124 Ossington Ave

The brewery that set the tone for Toronto beer, in a converted garage across from Trinity Bellwoods park. Fruited sours and hazy IPAs, a bottle shop at the front and a patio that fills the moment the weather turns.

Map ↗ Website

Bocce

Little Italy

Track and Field

Bar · 582 College St

A basement bar with indoor bocce courts and lawn bowling lanes, which sounds like a novelty until you have booked one and lost three hours to it. Book the lanes ahead on a weekend.

Map ↗ Website

Agave list

Ossington

Reposado

Tequila bar · Ossington Ave

The bar that opened Ossington Avenue as a drinking street, and still the best tequila and mezcal list on it. Live jazz some nights, a long back patio in summer.

Map ↗ Website

Late

Parkdale

Pretty Ugly

Cocktail bar · 1237 Queen St W

A Parkdale room that takes drinks seriously and itself lightly: classics done properly, a frozen something on the board, and a crowd that arrives after eleven.

Map ↗ Website

Classics

Dundas West

Cocktail Bar

Cocktail bar · Dundas St W

Small, brass-topped and named with no ambition whatsoever. It is a Grant van Gameren room, which means the classics are exact and the seats at the counter go first.

Map

Taproom

Leslieville

Left Field Brewery

Brewery · Wagstaff Dr

A baseball-obsessed brewery in a former dye factory in the east end, with a taproom that is one of the few genuinely family-friendly drinking rooms in the city. Walkable from the Danforth.

Map ↗ Website

Beyond the ROM and the AGO

Best museums & galleries in Toronto

Ten collections past the two big ones, from Islamic art in Don Mills to a garrison that predates the city.

All 10 museums & galleries →

Islamic art

Don Mills

Aga Khan Museum

Museum · 77 Wynford Dr

Fumihiko Maki's white granite building sits in a formal garden off the Don Valley Parkway and holds the best collection of Islamic art in North America: Persian manuscripts, astrolabes, ceramics and a concert programme that is worth checking before you go.

Map ↗ Website

Ceramics

Yorkville

Gardiner Museum

Museum · 111 Queens Park

Ceramics only, directly across the road from the ROM, and small enough to see properly in an hour. Ancient American pottery on the ground floor, Italian maiolica and English porcelain above, and a clay studio running drop-in classes.

Map ↗ Website

One subject

The Annex

Bata Shoe Museum

Museum · 327 Bloor St W

Raymond Moriyama designed the building to look like a shoebox with the lid ajar, and the collection inside runs from 4,500-year-old sandals to Elton John's platforms. It is a far better museum than the premise suggests.

Map ↗ Website

Contemporary

Junction Triangle

Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto

Gallery · 158 Sterling Rd

Five floors of a 1919 aluminium factory in the Junction Triangle, now the city's main contemporary art space. The building alone justifies the trip, and the neighbourhood around it has turned into coffee roasters and studios.

Map ↗ Website

Waterfront

Harbourfront

The Power Plant

Gallery · 231 Queens Quay W

A former power station on the waterfront showing contemporary art with no permanent collection, so every visit is a different building. Fifteen minutes from the ferry terminal, which makes it an easy pairing with the islands.

Map ↗ Website

Textiles

Downtown

Textile Museum of Canada

Museum · 55 Centre Ave

Twelve thousand objects from more than two hundred regions, shown a few hundred at a time: Indonesian batik, Andean weaving, quilts, and contemporary fibre art that treats the material as sculpture.

Map ↗ Website

1793

Fort York

Fort York National Historic Site

Historic site · 250 Fort York Blvd

The garrison the town of York was built to protect, founded in 1793 and burned in the War of 1812. Eight original buildings survive under the Gardiner Expressway, which is the most Toronto sentence in this guide.

Map

1920s

Casa Loma

Spadina Museum

Historic house · 285 Spadina Rd

The 1866 house next door to Casa Loma, restored to the 1920s and furnished as the Austin family left it. Quieter, cheaper and more convincing as a home than the castle over the fence.

Map

Roundhouse

Roundhouse Park

Toronto Railway Museum

Museum · 255 Bremner Blvd

A 32-bay roundhouse from 1929 in the shadow of the CN Tower, with steam locomotives, a working turntable and the story of the rail lands the whole waterfront was built on.

Map ↗ Website

On campus

University

Art Museum at the University of Toronto

Gallery · 7 Hart House Cir

Two spaces, the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery in Hart House and the University of Toronto Art Centre, programmed together and free to walk into. Strong on Canadian and Indigenous contemporary work.

Map ↗ Website

Where the city lives

Best neighbourhoods in Toronto

Ten neighbourhoods worth an afternoon each, and the streetcar lines that connect them.

All 10 neighbourhoods →

Galleries

Queen West

West Queen West

Neighbourhood · Queen St W

The stretch from Bathurst west to Gladstone: galleries, independent shops, Trinity Bellwoods on one side and Graffiti Alley running behind it. Walk it, do not ride through it.

Map

Eat and drink

Ossington

Ossington Avenue

Neighbourhood · Ossington Ave

Six blocks between Queen and Dundas that hold more bars and restaurants per metre than anywhere else in Toronto. It changes tenants often and rarely drops in quality.

Map

College Street

Little Italy

Neighbourhood · College St

College Street between Bathurst and Ossington, still Italian in its cafes and now Spanish, Chinese and Portuguese in its kitchens. The 506 streetcar runs the length of it.

Map

Spadina

Chinatown

Neighbourhood · Spadina Ave & Dundas St W

One of several Chinatowns in the region and the oldest downtown: herbalists, barbecue windows, produce spilling onto Spadina, and a dense Vietnamese layer along Dundas.

Map

Bloor Street

Yorkville

Neighbourhood · Bloor St W

A hippie village in the 1960s and the luxury end of the city ever since, with the ROM and the Gardiner at one end and the September film-festival crowd filling it every autumn.

Map

Greektown

The Danforth

Neighbourhood · Danforth Ave

Greektown east of the viaduct, where the souvlaki shops and Greek bakeries share the street with wine bars and the Danforth Music Hall. August brings the Taste of the Danforth crowds.

Map

East end

Leslieville

Neighbourhood · Queen St E

Queen Street East past the Don River: brunch rooms, antique shops, breweries and a residential calm that the west end lost. Ten minutes on the 501 from downtown.

Map

Polish

Roncesvalles

Neighbourhood · Roncesvalles Ave

The Polish street, still selling pierogi and sausage alongside third-wave coffee, running south from High Park to the lake. The most walkable single avenue in the city.

Map

West end

The Junction

Neighbourhood · Dundas St W

Dry until 1998, and consequently late to gentrify. Now furniture makers, breweries and a strong restaurant row along Dundas West, with the rail crossing that named it still in use.

Map

Lakefront

The Beaches

Neighbourhood · Queen St E

Sand, a boardwalk and a three-kilometre lakefront at the eastern end of the 501 streetcar line. It feels like a lake town that the city grew around, which is exactly what it is.

Map

Tickets worth buying

Best live music & sport in Toronto

Six venues that run most nights of the year, from an 1894 concert hall to the stadium that hosted the World Cup.

All 6 live music & sport →

1894

Downtown

Massey Hall

Concert hall · 178 Victoria St

Opened in 1894, acoustically the best room in the country, and reopened in 2021 after a seven-year restoration that uncovered stained glass windows bricked over for decades. Everyone from Gould to Mitchell has recorded here.

Map ↗ Website

Since 1947

Queen West

The Horseshoe Tavern

Live music · 370 Queen St W

A country bar since 1947 that turned punk in the 1970s and never looked back. The Rolling Stones played it under a false name. Cover charge, cash bar, no seats worth having.

Map ↗ Website

Nightly jazz

Queen West

The Rex Hotel Jazz and Blues Bar

Live music · 194 Queen St W

Live jazz every night of the week, often twice, in a room that has resisted every attempt to smarten it up. The early sets are the ones to catch if you have dinner plans.

Map ↗ Website

Leafs & Raptors

Financial District

Scotiabank Arena

Arena · 40 Bay St

The Maple Leafs and the Raptors share it, which means something is on most nights between October and April, and the building is attached to Union Station so you can arrive by train.

Map ↗ Website

Blue Jays

Downtown

Rogers Centre

Stadium · 1 Blue Jays Way

The first stadium in the world with a fully retractable roof, opened in 1989 and rebuilt from the field up in recent seasons. The Blue Jays play here from April to September, and the CN Tower is the view over the outfield.

Map ↗ Website

World Cup venue

Exhibition Place

BMO Field

Stadium · 170 Princes' Blvd

Home of Toronto FC, and expanded to host six matches at the 2026 World Cup, including Canada's opening game on 12 June. Reached by the 509 streetcar or a GO train to Exhibition.

Map ↗ Website

Green space

Best parks & islands in Toronto

Six places to walk off a museum, including a quarry turned park and a headland made entirely of construction rubble.

All 6 parks & islands →

Cherry blossoms

High Park

Park · 1873 Bloor St W

Four hundred acres with a lake, a small free zoo, oak savannah that is genuinely rare, and the cherry trees that draw the whole city for about ten days each spring. Cars are kept out on weekends.

Map

Picnics

Queen West

Trinity Bellwoods Park

Park · 790 Queen St W

The west end's back garden: a former estate on a buried creek, with a dog bowl in the old ravine and the busiest picnic lawn in Toronto on any warm Saturday.

Map

Farmers market

Don Valley

Evergreen Brick Works

Park · 550 Bayview Ave

The quarry and brickworks that built much of Victorian Toronto, closed in 1989 and now a park, a Saturday farmers market and a set of trails through the Don Valley. A free shuttle runs from Broadview station.

Map ↗ Website

Lake view

Scarborough

Scarborough Bluffs

Cliffs · Brimley Rd S

Sixty-five metres of layered clay cliff running for kilometres along the lake, with a marina and a beach at Bluffer's Park below. The view from the top at Bluffers looks like a coastline, not a lake.

Map

Birding

Port Lands

Tommy Thompson Park

Park · 1 Leslie St

A five-kilometre headland built out of construction rubble since the 1950s, colonised by cormorants and terns, and now one of the best urban birding sites in North America. Walk or cycle it, there are no cars.

Map ↗ Website

Parks Canada

Scarborough

Rouge National Urban Park

National park · Scarborough

The first national urban park in Canada, on the eastern edge of the city: 79 square kilometres of river valley, working farms, forest and a Lake Ontario beach, reachable on a GO train.

Map ↗ Website

Out of the city

Best day trips in Toronto

Six trips inside two hours of Union Station, from the falls to a Shakespeare festival town.

All 6 day trips →

By GO train

Niagara

Niagara Falls

Day trip · 130 km southwest

The falls are the obvious trip and they earn it: Horseshoe Falls is the wide one on the Canadian side, and the boat below it is the point of going. GO Transit runs a train and bus combination from Union Station, about two hours each way.

Map ↗ Website

Wine country

Niagara

Niagara-on-the-Lake

Day trip · 130 km southeast

A preserved 19th-century main street at the mouth of the Niagara River, surrounded by the vineyards that make Ontario icewine. The Shaw Festival runs from spring to December.

Map ↗ Website

Waterfalls

Hamilton

Day trip · 70 km southwest

More than a hundred waterfalls fall off the Niagara Escarpment inside the city limits, and Dundurn Castle, the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Royal Botanical Gardens fill the rest of a day. An hour on the GO train.

Map ↗ Website

Theatre

Stratford

Day trip · 150 km west

A rail town on the Avon River that has run a Shakespeare festival since 1953, in four theatres, from April to October. Book the play first and build the day around it.

Map ↗ Website

Gorge

Elora

Day trip · 120 km northwest

A limestone village on a gorge, with a 22-metre-deep canyon cut by the Grand River, a restored 1832 mill and a swimming quarry ten minutes away. Best in early autumn.

Map ↗ Website

Wineries

The County

Prince Edward County

Day trip · 200 km east

Ontario wine country on a peninsula in Lake Ontario: forty-odd wineries, sand dunes at Sandbanks Provincial Park and a food scene that pulled chefs out of Toronto. Two and a half hours by car, and it is a car trip.

Map ↗ Website

What's on

Festivals & annual events in Toronto (2026)

Time your trip around the city's biggest dates.

January

Winterlicious

Two weeks of prix-fixe menus at around 200 restaurants across the city, run by the City of Toronto in the deadest stretch of the year. It runs from late January into early February.

April

Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival

The largest documentary festival in North America, centred on the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema on Bloor Street. The 2026 edition ran from 23 April to 3 May.

June

Pride Toronto

One of the largest Pride festivals in the world. The 2026 festival weekend ran from 25 to 28 June, with the parade down Yonge Street on the Sunday afternoon.

August

Toronto Caribbean Carnival

Six weeks of mas camps, calypso and steelpan, ending in the Grand Parade along Lake Shore Boulevard. The 2026 parade was on Saturday 1 August.

August

Canadian National Exhibition

The CNE has closed the summer at Exhibition Place since 1879: midway rides, an air show over the lake and the food building. The 2026 edition runs from 21 August to 7 September.

September

Toronto International Film Festival

Eleven days that fill King Street West with premieres and the Yorkville hotels with juries. The 2026 festival runs from 10 to 20 September, its 51st edition.

October

Nuit Blanche Toronto

Contemporary art installed across the city from sunset to sunrise, free to walk through. The 2026 edition, its twentieth, runs overnight from 3 to 4 October.

November

Distillery Winter Village

The Distillery District turns into a Christmas market with a tree lit in the central courtyard. The 2026 season runs from 12 November to 3 January.

Getting around

Toronto transport & airports

How to arrive and move around the city.

YYZ

Toronto Pearson (YYZ)

The busiest airport in Canada, 22 km northwest of downtown, with two terminals. The UP Express train leaves Terminal 1 every 15 minutes for Union Station, stopping at Weston and Bloor, and takes under half an hour. The TTC 900 bus runs to Kipling subway station for the price of a standard fare.

↗ Website ↗ Website

YTZ

Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport (YTZ)

On the Toronto Islands at the foot of Bathurst Street, handling regional flights within Canada and to the northeastern United States. You reach it by a pedestrian tunnel under the harbour or a ferry crossing that takes about 90 seconds, and the terminal is a 15-minute walk from the Financial District.

↗ Website

TTC

TTC subway and streetcars

Three subway lines and a streetcar network that carries the downtown east to west. Pay with a PRESTO card or by tapping a contactless credit or debit card at the gate, and one fare covers two hours of transfers in any direction. Streetcars are slower than the subway and show you more of the city.

↗ Website

GO Transit and Union Station

Regional trains and coaches radiating from Union Station, which is also the VIA Rail terminus and the UP Express arrival platform. GO is how you reach Hamilton, Niagara Falls, the Rouge park and the airport-adjacent suburbs, and it takes the same PRESTO card as the TTC.

↗ Website

Traditional food

Must-try dishes in Toronto, Canada

The classics to order before you leave.

Peameal bacon sandwich

Cured pork loin rolled in cornmeal, griddled and stacked on a soft bun with mustard. It is the one dish Toronto claims outright, and St. Lawrence Market is where to eat it.

Jamaican beef patty

A turmeric-yellow pastry filled with spiced beef, sold from bakeries, subway kiosks and school cafeterias. Order it inside a folded coco bread if you want the full local version.

Sushi pizza

A crisp fried rice patty topped with salmon or tuna, avocado and spicy mayo. It was invented in Toronto in the 1990s and it barely exists anywhere else.

Hakka chilli chicken

Chinese-Indian cooking brought by the Hakka community who moved from Kolkata to Scarborough: battered chicken in a chilli, ginger and soy sauce, hot enough to notice.

Doubles

Trinidadian street food, two soft bara flatbreads around curried chickpeas with tamarind and pepper sauce. Eaten standing, before noon, from a takeaway window.

Portuguese charcoal chicken

Frango no churrasco, split and grilled over coals with piri-piri, from the churrasqueiras along Dundas West and College. Sold by the half bird with rice and salad.

Butter tart

Ontario's own pastry: a shell of shortcrust filled with butter, sugar and egg, baked until the centre stays liquid. The raisin question divides families.

Poutine

Fries, cheese curds and gravy. It is a Quebec dish and Toronto knows it, but the city serves it everywhere from diners to late-night windows, and the curds should squeak.

Toronto fact sheet

Toronto at a glance

The essentials worth knowing before you go.

Country

Canada

Region

Ontario · Greater Toronto Area

Population

2.79M in the city, 6.20M in the metro area (2021 census)

Founded

1793 as the Town of York · renamed and incorporated as Toronto in 1834

Nickname

The Six · Hogtown

Language

English

Currency

Canadian dollar (CAD)

Time zone

UTC-5 · UTC-4 from March to November

Calling code

+1 416 · 647 · 437

Airports

YYZ · YTZ

Power

120V · Type A & B

Emergency

911 police, ambulance and fire

Ideal length

3 days

Getting around

Subway, streetcars & walking

Tourism board

Official site

Interesting facts

The CN Tower stands 553.3 metres tall and was the tallest free-standing structure in the world from 1975 until 2007.
The 2021 census counted 1,286,145 Toronto residents born outside Canada, 46.6 percent of the city, which is among the highest shares of any large city in the world.
The PATH is a Guinness-certified record holder: just over 30 kilometres of underground walkway linking more than 70 buildings and roughly 1,200 shops, built to get office workers through February.
The Toronto Islands were a peninsula until a storm in 1858 cut a channel through the sandbar, and they have been car-free islands ever since.
Kensington Market was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 2006, recognised for the layers of immigrant communities that have run its stalls since the 1920s.

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