The children and I recently made a trip across the country from Ottawa, Ontario to the island of Victoria, in British Columbia, which is off of the Canadian west coast. We made a similar trip last year to visit my parents who winter out there. Isn’t it fun and funny to use ‘winter’ as a verb?!

On our trip out west last year, my youngest child, Sen, found the travel pretty long. The fact that he won’t watch shows or distract himself with screens doesn’t help the situation…but, overall that’s not something a parent should complain about.

When planning our trip this year, I decided to try dividing up the travel to make the journey more fun for Sen and to add a little extra arts and adventure to our trip. We decided to ride the train from Ottawa to Toronto, spend a day and a half in Toronto, exploring the downtown, and then catch a direct flight from Toronto to Victoria. And I can say, it worked out really well!

Toronto is Canada’s biggest city. And, to many people’s surprise it is not the capital of Canada. As far as big cities go, Toronto has all the great things that big cities offer: art galleries, performing arts shows, museums, zoos and an aquarium, parks, waterfront, old architecture and astonishing modern buildings, theme parks as well as lots of unique shops and delicious local food.

Those readers who are more familiar with our family’s beat know that I have a strong preference for travel by foot (either walking or pedalling), and I love a good city adventure. So, that was our plan for Toronto: explore the downtown area around our hotel by foot and see what discoveries we could make. My children love this sort of itinerary where all we know for sure is that we are walking out the front door and we will see where our curiosity leads us. They feel like they have more input in our day and look at the city with an inquisitive lens, seeing if they might spot something, a street, an alley, a shop, a park, that we should venture to. They feel more part of the decision making and enjoy the surprises that come with an unplanned day, and they absorb a lot more about the city because they are actively looking for fun things to do. It’s a fun, healthy competition to see who can find the next city clue to pursue.

That being said, I did have one destination in mind: the Art Gallery of Ontario. Not only is the AGO a fantastic gallery, especially for families, but a new show had just opened for an artist I have been fascinated with for a few years: Yayoi Kusama. So, when our exploration brought us pretty close to the AGO (we ended up in Kensington Market a few blocks away), I steered the adventure toward the AGO, where we spent about 4 hours viewing the exhibits and participating in pop-up art activities.

This is not a sponsored post, but I do want to share the places we stayed, visited and ate, because, well, I found them to be great! People often ask me for travel recommendations, so now, when it comes to Toronto I can point them toward this post.

Here are the highlights and some details of our day in Toronto:

Accommodations

• Our hotel was the Strathcona: We picked it because it was inexpensive and across the street from the train station and subway lines. The staff were very polite and helpful. The room was clean, but tiny. The beds were tiny. But the size didn’t matter, we slept well and spent most of our time outdoors.

Food

• Breakfast was smoothies from Freshly Squeezed. These are pure fruit smoothies, no additive like sugar, whey, etc. Not organic, but no one’s perfect. Don’t forget to bring a travel cup (like this!) and straw (like this!), so you don’t have to take single-use plastic!
• Lunch was at Fresh. Fresh is a delicious local restaurant mini-chain — I think there are 3 locations. This mainly vegan restaurant has delicious, nutritious foods, like Buddha bowls, salads, burgers, tacos, smoothies, soups and lots more. The menu is massive. And true to its name the food is fresh! It’s definitely child-friendly and my children loved the food, my littlest said “Take a picture of this place, so we can tell people all about it”. Just in case the word ‘vegan’ scares you off, the restaurant is known to be popular with people who aren’t vegan, so try it out!
• Afternoon treat: We discovered a delicious vegan bakery in the basement of the Hudson’s Bay at the Eaton Centre called Sorelle & Co. The bakery was so fancy and had such beautiful presentation I didn’t even think there was a chance they had anything without butter in it. The kids and I gazed at the beautiful pastries simply for the artistry of their construction…then I noticed a sign that said all their goods were vegan…so we got a few things!

Attractions

• Walking city streets, stopping at pop up markets, enjoying buskers performing, exploring alleys was a main attraction. We like to do this to get the pulse of a city. And thanks to our wandering nature, while we were near Kensington Market, we got to see a peaceful protest against Chinese oppression of Tibet.
• The AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario) is amazing, it has a great permanent collection. The temporary shows that we’ve seen have been excellent and really gave us a good gallery experience. For example, the Mitchell Riopelle show was spacious, the rooms didn’t feel cramped, there were sofas to sit on to enjoy the artworks for longer. The AGO has done a good job of leaving breathing room in its galleries. A big draw for families that enjoy visiting art galleries is that the AGO has done a standout job of developing activities for children to enjoy throughout the gallery, rather than off in one room or a corner space. At the AGO there are activities and art projects to engage in throughout the building and fitting all ages. This allowed me, as a slower observer, to enjoy the art work longer, because my busier child, Sen, was easily able to occupy his excess energy and creativity with the activities on offer.
• Kensington Market is a district in downtown Toronto, it is eclectic and lots of fun to wander through, it almost feels like you’ve stepped into another city! There is a mix of independent shops for clothing and food, international food and cuisines, boutiques, street art, decorated alleys and always something completely unexpected.

Transportation

• We mainly got around town on foot. If you are downtown in Toronto in the area of the train station or the Eaton Centre, there is an extensive network of underground tunnels that connect the buildings. These can be useful for getting around in bad weather. The tunnels are filled with shops and are full of people, so don’t be nervous about using them.
• To get to the airport for our flight we took the new express train, called the UP (Union-Pearson), that takes people from Union Station to Pearson Airport. The tickets are about $12 and children are free. The trip is supposed to take about 25 minutes, but ours was faster than that. I don’t know why anyone would fight traffic in a car or taxi for 45 minutes or longer and at a much higher cost. The UP train is the way to go!
• To travel to Toronto we took VIA Rail, which is Canada’s national train line, and to fly to Victoria we flew direct via Air Canada on points. Overall the travel was pretty easy and inexpensive.

Toronto is a great city with much more to offer than I can cover in this one post and just one day spent there, so explore and see what you find, and let me know what cool stuff you discover!