Toronto proudly offers all the highlights of your favorite American cities in one infallibly polite package.
“Oh, we’re just here for the weekend,” the woman in the Toronto Blue Jays cap tells me, naming her city of residence – a wispy little town all the way over in Manitoba that rings nary a bell. She and her husband fly out from time to time, she explains, to catch a game and see their daughter.
So, they root for the Blue Jays, even though they live one province over?
“They’re our team… who else would we root for?” she says reasonably.
And that’s why the 49,000-seat Rogers Centre (mlb.com/bluejays/ballpark) is sold out on this balmy July evening, even with the Jays barely playing .500 ball and fading fast in the American League East. Since 2004, when the Montreal Expos rudely packed up and moved to Washington, D.C., to play as the Nationals, the Blue Jays have enjoyed exclusive status as Canada’s lone Major League Baseball franchise – a true national team, with fans stretching across the continent from Newfoundland to Vancouver.
Entrenched at the feet of Toronto’s iconic CN Tower, the baseball stadium is very much a “scene” tonight as the Jays battle the Texas Rangers. Both inside and outside, it’s all bustle and chatter and easygoing camaraderie – a legion of cold-weather folk basking in the long dusk of a fleeting summer, brought together by unquestionably the most Canadian baseball team on the planet.
But America’s pastime isn’t the only facet of Torontonian culture that is striking pleasantly familiar notes for this visiting Arizonan. From its restaurants to its landmarks to its diverse landscape of people and things, Toronto plays like a highlight reel of many of the individual qualities I love best about U.S. cities – edited together, of course, with an ineffable Canadian style all its own.
Not insignificantly, it’s also geographically closer to Phoenix than Boston or New York, with new nonstop airfare generously offered by a Canadian carrier – the final, compelling piece in its varied appeal as a sneaky-good summer escape.
The Other Emerald City
As Canada’s most populated city (2025 population: 3.03 million) and de facto financial capital, Toronto is sometimes called “the New York City of Canada,” but you’ll also find a strong analogy on the opposite U.S. coast.
To wit: Much like Seattle, Toronto is very proud of its corporate brands. Just as the former touts Microsoft, Starbucks and Boeing with all the vigor and municipal signage of Premier League soccer teams, so does the latter with companies like BMO, Bell Media and Colliers. Driving into the city on the Gardiner Expressway from Toronto Pearson International Airport, you see many of these brands depicted in large, lovingly tended topiary displays next to the freeway. Plant-based billboards, essentially.
Seattle’s green-minded city managers no doubt kicked themselves for not thinking of it first.
Another way, perhaps obvious, in which Toronto looks a little like Seattle when the light hits it right: the 1,815-foot CN Tower (cntower.ca), a signature piece of the Toronto skyline that, much like Seattle’s Space Needle, is the tallest structure in the country that serves no tangible purpose.
Still, the CN Tower does even that job in unparalleled fashion, dwarfing the Space Needle by 1,000 feet.
“It was the tallest freestanding structure in the world until the Burj Khalifa in Dubai was built in 2007,” a knowledgeable and patient guide named Mariana from Toronto Bicycle Tours (torontobicycletours.com) tells our group as we roll up under the behemoth.
Splayed on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario, directly across the water from the Niagara River and its famous waterfalls, Toronto does not have particularly congested or high-tempo streets for a city of its size. In a word, it’s bike-friendly – with the same kind of broad, protected, well-marked lanes you’ll find in Seattle or Denver.
The “Heart of Downtown” tour with Mariana proves an enjoyable and edifying way to experience a large sampling of downtown Toronto’s many districts and neighborhoods, all in one three-hour pleasure cruise. Convening in a parking garage near my room at the Omni King Edward Hotel in the tony Old Toronto district, the group of six sightseers glides north to 198-year-old King’s College (“They discovered penicillin there,” Mariana informs us); circles back through the fashionable Annex and Forest Hill South neighborhoods (“Average homes here are about $1.6 million Canadian… or $1.2 million U.S.”); gets an eyeful of the gentrified, brick-building Distillery District; and bikes west along the water in the scenic Harbourfront area to arrive at the CN Tower, which overlooks Lake Ontario and anchors a park-like space perfect for outdoor lunching or sunbathing.
Since we have bikes, climbing the thing is out of the question, but Mariana seems inclined to tempt us. “If someone really wanted to race up the tower, which has about 1,800 steps, a good time would be about 15 minutes.”
San Toroncisco
Before ending the tour, Mariana leads us to Kensington Market (kensingtonmarket.to), a multicultural enclave of shops and restaurants that began its life as a warren of tailor shops and bakeries run by Jewish immigrants in the 1920s; followed by postwar refugees from the Azores; then an influx immigrants from East Asia and the Caribbean, with a few Vietnam draft-dodgers thrown into the mix. And so on. Everybody has a tribe here. Or did.
Consequently, the city is rife with heritage festivals, including Caribana Toronto (caribanatoronto.com), the continent’s largest Caribbean festival, set for this July 31-August 4.
Since Chinatown is located one block over, Kensington has a strong Chinese presence and is certainly a good bet if you want to score Cantonese or Schezwan food that competes with San Francisco’s best-in-North-America specimens. Admittedly, it’s hard to imagine shrimp dumplings more supple and roundly satisfying than those ordered by the half-dozen at local legend Mother’s Dumplings (mothersdumplings.com), laced with soft-cooked scrambled egg and chives, and served slick and steamy.
Indeed, fans of Asian cuisine in all its permutations will be feeling their oats in hyper-diverse Toronto. Love Thai food? Pai Northern Thai Kitchen (paitoronto.com) in Old Toronto serves some of the most delicious Burmese-influenced food I’ve ever tasted, including crispy, curry-drenched khao soi noodles and tender, slow-cooked oxtail in a vividly flavored garlic-ginger braise, served in a traditional but upbeat setting. Favor the food of the subcontinent? Head over to the Leslieville neighborhood, where waves of immigrants from South Asia founded the Little India district.
Spectacular sushi is also not scarce in Toronto. You can find it in casual settings like Waterworks Food Hall (waterworksfoodhall.com), where itamae chefs cut it quick and fresh for lunch crowds on the clock, or with world-class pomp at Minami Toronto (minamitoronto.com) in the lively King West neighborhood. Part of a California-based family of elite sushi restaurants, the Toronto outpost specializes in aburi – a direct-flame cooking style. What this means for your palate: some of the most dastardly feats of umami flavor design that will ever hit your tongue, including chu-toro tataki (i.e. seared tuna belly), and sizzling Wagyu cutlets served on Yogan stone.
Mexican restaurants? Eh, I didn’t see any, but that’s not to say Latin America is unrepresented in the Toronto dining genome. At Leña Restaurante (lenarestaurante.com) star chef Anthony Walsh pays homage to his Argentinian mother-in-law with flaky, sausage- and pea-filled empanadas, truffle-kissed roasted mushrooms and other tapas delights served in an exultant, high-ceilinged space filled with framed art that once served as the lobby of a department store. For my entrée: rustic rabbit confit, its flavor intensified to pulse-quickening degrees by its own emulsified fat, served with Swiss chard and buttered carrots to bring it down.
And it’s not yet Day Three.
On Film and Beaches
With its robust Theatre District (the third-largest English-speaking theater district in the world, they say, calculated by number of stages and seats, toronto-theatre.com), Toronto once again invites a NYC comparison, but it arguably has higher stature in the world of cinema. Each September, Hollywood alights on the city for the Toronto International Film Festival (tiff.net) – considered one of the world’s “Big Five” film festivals alongside Venice, Cannes, Berlin and Sundance. TIFF happens to be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2025 (September 4-14), so the celebrities and showbiz glitz should be out in force.
If your ideal city vacation also includes some sailing or boating and perhaps a little time on a beach, Toronto has some solutions. A 10-minute ferry or skiff voyage from the Harbourfront area will take you to Centre Island (torontoisland.com/ferry.php), a scenic, car-free archipelago on the lake that boasts a few modest sand beaches to go with its wide, open parks and stands of Japanese cherry trees. It’s sort of like Miami Beach minus the bars, waves and bikinis. Be warned: The place is absolutely clogged with tourists from June to August.
Like Camden, New Jersey; Cooperstown, New York; and Springfield, Massachusetts; Toronto is also hallowed ground for sports fans, as the location of the Hockey Hall of Fame (hhof.com), a memorabilia-packed museum and living shrine to the 120-year professional history of Canada’s national winter sport. (Its national summer sport is lacrosse, and you’ll have to go to British Columbia to find the hall of fame for that one.)
Highlights include the original Stanley Cup, jerseys from seemingly every NHL star who slapped a puck and photo ops with the current, more impressive-looking Stanley Cup.
Between the sports, the food, the biking, the arts and the Midwestern courtesy – Canadians are basically Wisconsinites with better health coverage, after all – this clean, unpresuming metropolis doesn’t leave much to be desired for city-loving Americans.
Thinking about it now, the one major U.S. city with which it appears to have almost nothing in common is Phoenix, given its utter lack of hikable terrain and anything we Arizonans might define as a “carne asada taco.”
But you’re on vacation, and it’s summer, so no worries, eh?
Where to Stay
Omni King Edward Hotel
A bona fide landmark with a 122-year history, the “King Eddy” was purportedly the first true luxury hotel in Toronto – and its reputation has slipped not a whit. Located in genteel Old Toronto, the hotel is optimally positioned for nightlife and walkable city exploration, close to both the Harbourfront and CN Tower, and steps from Leña Restaurante and other celebrated restaurants. Premium touch: afternoon tea service in the stately lobby under the framed portrait of the 19th-century monarch himself. omnihotels.com/hotels/toronto-king-edward
3 Toronto Side Trips
Niagara Falls
Canada’s national rail line, VIA Rail, operates a once-daily departure from Toronto to the splendid water feature on the New York border. Trip duration: 2 hours. viarail.ca
Algonquin Provincial Park
Really jonesing for that hike? Canada’s oldest provincial park (its equivalent to a state park) has them in spades, along with hiking, swimming and cliff diving. Trip duration: 3 hours. ontarioparks.ca
London
No, not the Big Ben one… the Canadian one, accessible via an easy VIA Rail train ride. See a minor league baseball game in North America’s oldest continuously operated ballpark as a Blue Jays chaser. Trip duration: 1 hour. viarail.ca
How to Get There
Last October, Canadian budget carrier Porter Airlines launched daily, nonstop flights from Phoenix to Toronto. “Budget” might be a misnomer: the flight has no middle seats and boasts complimentary drinks, snacks and Wi-Fi. Starting at $285 round trip. flyporter.com
When to Go
It’s not complicated: Summer is high season in Canada’s signature city. Average daily high temperatures hum along in the high- to mid-70s until late September, when they fall off a cliff. Avg. high in October: 58 degrees F. flyporter.com
