We Went to Canada! Pt. 2: Toronto

This article is the second in a series about our spring trip to Canada. You can read Part 1 here.

Want to take an international trip without the stress of flying or learning another language? If you’ve managed a longer family road trip before and you live in the Midwest or East Coast of the U.S., Canada is the perfect opportunity to discover another country without complete culture shock!

We spent four days checking out Toronto in late May of this year. It was an awesome experience for our family. My husband and kids had never been to Canada, and I hadn’t been since I was a teenager. Here’s a breakdown of what we did in Toronto, what I recommend, and what we’d never do again!

Getting There

Toronto is less than nine hours by car from the Chicago area. We left early on Saturday morning before Memorial Day, which meant we encountered some holiday traffic, especially when approaching the border patrol. At first our map app showed we’d be crossing the border in Detroit, Michigan, but then it redirected us to Port Huron, north of the city. I appreciated the change because we got to see a new Great Lake—Lake Huron!

Tip: If you ask nicely for the border guard to stamp your passport, they might! Ours did.

Where to Stay

Hotel rooms were hard to come by for the time we were looking, and not many options were great for families, unless we stayed outside of the city in a nearby suburb. When we travel, I try to walk as much as possible and be located near attractions I want to visit. My preference is to have a free breakfast option or a kitchen to keep breakfast items and snacks, free parking if possible, two queen beds (not doubles), and a suite with a door separating the bedroom from the living area. My husband and I don’t mind sharing a room with the kids while we’re all sleeping, but we want to stay up and relax after their bedtime.

That meant a vacation rental was the way to go. There were tons of options on Airbnb, and through research I determined that staying in the city centre was the best bet. Sometimes neighborhoods within the city limits can be a cool option, but in this case, we stayed right by all the major tourist stuff, in the Entertainment District of Toronto. Our place was in a high rise with two bedrooms, a balcony with a view of Lake Ontario and the CN Tower, and came with parking! With few exceptions, we walked everywhere we wanted to go.

Attractions Not to Miss

Casa Loma: This is a real castle a few miles from where we stayed, so we drove here. For convenience, we paid to park in the lot, so I’m not sure how available street parking would be in the pretty neighborhood it’s located in. We loved it here and explored for hours. The city skyline view from the castle is stunning, the gardens were gorgeous in springtime, and the rooms were neat to behold. So many photo opportunities! I love castles and it also had a huge library, where I would’ve pretended I was Belle for a minute, but a couple was taking wedding photos at the time.

Fun fact: The interior was used as Professor X’s mansion in the original X-Men movie, so the kids enjoyed watching the movie that night and recalling the location.

Tip: If you buy a City Pass, you will save money on the admission fees for Casa Loma and the CN Tower, both must-sees in my opinion! Plus then you can basically check out other neat attractions for free with the pass.

CN Tower: You know the drill. If you’re a tourist, you gotta go up in the tallest thing. While I consider myself a traveler, I wouldn’t look down my nose at this one. (Not that I could—it’s the tallest freestanding structure in the Western Hemisphere!) The whole family enjoyed it, even my heights-averse husband. We rode the super-fast elevator up, marveled at the 360° views of the city and Lake Huron, and drank tower-themed craft beer and local wine in the café area. It feels really sturdy and solid on the main observation deck. We all did a thing where you could tilt out an angled window, and we all stood on the glass floor where you could see all the way down below to the ground. Afterwards we browsed the gift shop and soaked up all the tourist-y moments.

Other Sites and Neighborhoods We Liked

Kensington Market: A cool, arty area of town with a hippie vibe and unique shops.

Chinatown: A requisite for me, since that’s where my parents took us back in the day. It’s much more sprawling and not as concentrated or well-defined as the Chicago Chinatown, however.

Graffiti Alley: Exactly what it sounds like; we strolled and discussed the art that seems to pop off the walls.

Nathan Phillip’s Square/City Hall: It was raining when we went here, so there were thankfully no crowds to contend with. There’s a fun TORONTO sculpture for photos.

CF Toronto Eaton Centre: A block or so away from the TORONTO sign, we dropped in here to show the kids a real indoor mall and warm up from the chilly, wet weather. The Indigo bookstore is two stories and has a whole Lego section upstairs.

Fairmont Royal York: I used to work at the Fairmont Chicago, which I called a “castle company” for its collection of elegant, world class hotels. I had to see this one which was an absolute gem. We took pics in the Library Bar but didn’t stay; it didn’t have a kid-friendly vibe.

Toronto-Dominion Centre: Designed by Mies van der Rohe, starchitect of Bauhaus and Chicago fame. I worked at the Farnsworth House for many years, so visiting Mies’ creations for me is akin to how other people seek out Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. If you are a modernist architecture buff, put this on your list. It’s multiple black steel/travertine-clad/glass skyscrapers surrounding you like midcentury giants.

St. Lawrence Market: A historic indoor market with tons of different cuisine stalls; fruit, cheese, and vegetable vendors; butchers; and other shops. I had to get a peameal bacon sandwich, a Toronto specialty from the Carousel Bakery, considered the original home of the humble working man’s grub. It’s a tasty, thin cut of pork in a soft roll. I got it with honey mustard, the standard condiment. I’d eat it for any meal, even breakfast.

Where We Ate

McDonald’s: Okay, bear with me here. One of my fondest childhood memories of our first trip to Canada was seeing that the golden arches have a red maple leaf smack in the middle of the M. I was an 80s kid, okay? McDonald’s was a thing. And when I travel, I find a certain child-like glee in ordering whatever unique items that country has on their menu. I’ve eaten McD’s on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, in the shadow of the Pantheon in Rome, blocks from Gaudí’s Casa Milà in Barcelona. What can I say? No matter how far I go, I never forget my roots! Anyways, our first stop was to the nearest McDonald’s over the border, and the fast food poutine hit the spot.

Koh Lipe: Delicious, fresh, authentic Thai cuisine with funky Thai décor. Make reservations in advance for this Michelin-recognized spot in an old house.

Mizzica Gelateria: This wasn’t on my radar when I planned our trip, but when we walked past the notable line around the block our curiosity was piqued. Worth the wait! Like being back in Sicily.

Otto’s Berlin Döner: Pretty close to a German/Turkish döner except for the higher cost. In the Kensington Market neighborhood.

Juicy Dumpling: A Chinatown viral sensation I found on YouTube or an Instagram Reel or something. Delicious take-away Chinese soup dumplings and other yummy bites for extremely reasonable prices. Thanks, social media!

Steam Whistle Brewing: Family friendly beer and bites place located in an old railway roundhouse, in the same park as a train museum, between the Entertainment District and the Harbourfront. The fish and chips was perfection washed down with a cold one.

Never Will I Ever

Traveling is a game of chance, and one excursion for us was a real flop—taking the ferry to Toronto Island Park.

I read so many articles saying Toronto Island Park was revered by locals. The weather that day was gross: chilly, spitty rain, grey. But we waited in line for the ferry in the hopes that the sun would come out and we’d witness a pretty sunset. The ferry on the way there was fine, crowded but fun to be on a boat on Lake Ontario, watching the skyline recede behind us. Toronto Island is a big, idyllic recreational park, but our plan was to eat dinner on the water. However, the map app on my phone was all turned around and we got bad info from the worldwide web on a place to eat. We wandered around getting hangrier and hangrier until we ate at some blah barbeque tourist trap. The bartender told me I was the first person ever to order a Blue Moon on tap (!?) The slushy machine was broken. At least the views were good.

Then, when we got in the ferry line to leave, hundreds, if not thousands—I swear—of people were already in line. We queued, shivering, until the next ferry docked, and then the crowd rushed to the front. To our horror, the ferry workers cut off the line right in front of us, literally pulling a  gate across a fenced-in, roof-topped enclosure with all of us shoulder-to-shoulder. The mass of people was so thick all around us, so far back behind us, that we couldn’t escape if we wanted to. We waited with the kids, standing, while people blasted music from humongous speakers, smoked pot and basically blew it in our faces, and pushed and shoved with nowhere to go. I about had a panic attack, and our oldest daughter did, too. It could have easily become a stampede situation, and I cannot believe that isn’t against the law to physically cage people like that on public land. To make matters worse, when the next ferry finally arrived after more than an hour, they opened the gate and some intoxicated person right in front vomited in a couple places, causing everyone to have to step around the pools of puke. We were furious on the way back and it ruined our night. Never again.

All-in-All

There was so much more we could’ve done. I wanted to see the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the Toronto Music Garden, but the timing wasn’t right. Toronto is a world-class city. We loved how diverse it is; in fact, more than half its population was born outside of Canada. That means it is rich in culture and dining. Honestly, on the mainland the food was top notch quality. The people were as friendly as Canada’s reputation proclaims them to be. It felt incredibly safe there (most of the time). It had impressive buildings. Would we go back? Probably. I’d go up in the CN Tower again for sure. And if there’s a next time, I hope I can stay at the Fairmont Royal York and actually have a drink in the Library Bar!