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My friend Heidi and I drove from New York City to Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada a few weeks ago. It was something we both mentioned wanting to do the first time I met her, so we made sure to make it happen during my short time in NYC. There isn’t a ton to do in the town, so we stayed one night and then last minute decided to drive to Toronto. It’s about an hour and a half drive without traffic. This is how we spent our 24 hours in the city.

Side note: The only complaint I had about Canada overall was the parking situation. You had to pay to park everywhere we went. And I mean everywhere. Just be sure to budget that into your expenses if you do a trip like this. I will try to give estimates of what we paid at each stop. Keep in mind, it’s Canadian dollars which always seems like more compared to American dollars. Be sure to bring a credit card that has no foreign transaction fees like this one.

Accommodations

We stayed at One King West Hotel right in Downtown. This hotel was very impressive. Gorgeous interior if you like that aesthetic. If you’ve read other blog posts by me, you know I’m not one to spend much on hotels. However, this hotel was reasonable for what it is and I was sharing the cost with my friend, so it felt more worth it.

The view from our room was incredible! Honestly that was one of my favorite parts of the stay. The beds were great, the bathroom was huge. And of course there is a bar in the lobby, which we visited before heading out for the night to explore. I had a margarita which was decent – and on happy hour. Parking was either valet or self park with a discount from the hotel. We paid about $50 Canadian for overnight. Overall I’d definitely recommend a stay here.

Kensington Market

The Kensington Market district is filled with restaurants and vintage shops. The streets are super colorful and walls are covered in amazing graffiti art. Basically any type of food you might want to eat is available here. It wasn’t super busy when we were there, but I can imagine it gets really crowded. We found street parking really easily, but of course we had to pay a few dollars for the meter.

I was going to get empanadas and an alfajore at “Latin Taste”, but the restaurant only took cash, or a Canadian debit card. Keep in mind, it might be beneficial to have some Canadian money on your trip. Although we never ran into that issue again while in Toronto. We ended up going to a Mexican restaurant called Tacos 101. The tacos were really good here – I got the carnitas tacos.

Distillery District

When trying to figure out where to go for night life, most things mentioned the Distillery District in downtown. With a little bit of research, we found out there is a Christmas market called Winter Village, so we went. Tickets to get in were $15 CAN. The market was filled with vendors of all kinds. Food, outerwear, boutiques, even matching outfits for humans and their dogs! You could take a picture with Santa, and of course, there were booths with boozy hot cocoa.

We had a great time wandering around here and doing a little bit of shopping. Instead of eating at one of the booths, we went to Mill St. Brewpub, which was still inside the Winter Village. It was indoors with tables to sit at, and since it was pretty cold outside, we welcomed the chance to get into the warmth. I ordered the fish and chips (which were delicious!) and we got a pitcher of basic Canadian light lager, which was also good.

Queens Quay

The next morning, we got up early to make the most of our time left in Toronto. We started off driving down to the quay to grab a coffee and get some fresh air. It was a gorgeous day, though we had our coats and hats on. We walked for a few miles and could’ve kept going. If you are in Toronto, I recommend going down there just to enjoy the water and views. Since it was mid-week and chilly, it wasn’t super busy, but I can imagine it draws a lot of people down there in the warmer months.

Casa Loma

This is one of the most common tourist attractions that pop up when you search for things to do in Toronto. It is really beautiful from the outside, but because of limited time and the cost, we decided to just drive by to see it and not go inside. It’s $40 CAN per person to enter, and parking is not included in that cost.

If you decide to do this, I highly recommend going to their website, booking in advance, and making sure when you go will give you enough time to see everything.

Bata Shoe Museum

This may seem random, but it was one of the coolest things and I would highly recommend a stop here if you have time for it! We managed to find free street parking (limited to 2 hours)! Tickets to enter the museum are $14 CAN per person. There are 3 floors to the museum and it basically walks you through the history of shoes, which is incredibly fascinating in my opinion. Not only does it contain some of the fun shoes you may recognize from the last century, it goes way back in history to when shoes were first discovered at being used!

They have thousands of shoes from all over the world, and each pair has a background story. Some of my favorite were the metal platform shoes with only a small piece of metal to hold the shoe on a woman’s foot. I felt it was well worth the money and the time spent – about 2 hours.

After all of our Canadian adventures, it was time to head back to New York. Unfortunately, when we left Toronto it was rush hour. It took us about 9 hours to get home. Luckily we made our car reservation for later because we worried about getting in late.

I already want to go back to Toronto! I think it was one of those really incredible cities you could spend weeks or months exploring. Of course, I prefer to return in the summer months so I don’t freeze to death in the winter! However, November was fairly mild for being so far north.

Have you visited Toronto? What are some of your favorite things to do there? Want to read about more quick trips from NYC? Click here for my 3 day trip to Boston!