Toronto Essentials Tour: Old Town & Downtown Highlights (PWYC)

Our meeting point is inside. Not outside. Inside the Great Hall which is a big room accessible off of Front Street. It's above ground. It's got a high ceiling with huge windows on either side. There are flags on the wall on one side and an info booth under a clock in the centre of the room. The names of cities the trains stopped at when the station was built encircle the interior of the Great Hall. The reason for the detailed description is because there's a large tourist info centre in another part of the station that's not the Great Hall, there's a big food court that people might think is the Great Hall, and there's a big clock outside the station on the sidewalk. None of those places combine the magic trio of clock + info booth + big room with a high ceiling. Look for your guide near that booth!

Look over there! It's the tall tower everyone has heard of! When it comes to impressing people, there isn't a much better way than making something ridiculously tall. The CN Tower was the tallest free-standing structure in the world until the Burj Khalifa was constructed in Dubai, but Torontonians are still proud of it (don't worry, CN Tower, we still think you're awesome). Thanks to its generous height we were able to improve TV and radio reception in the area back in the 1970s and have a skyline that is one of the most recognizable on the planet!

Building the railroad across Canada was expensive and took a long time. In order to make money off this project the railroad companies built luxury hotels near their train stations in every major city and town the tracks ran past and convinced rich people to take the long journey across Canada by rail. The grand railway hotel in Toronto was The Royal York Hotel, opened in 1929, just in time to see the global economy collapse. Despite the Great Depression and the construction of competing hotels, the (Fairmont) Royal York Hotel continues to be a beloved landmark and symbol of Toronto's prosperity. Tour groups are no longer welcome in the lobby of the hotel, but there's plenty to marvel at from the outside!

Designed by Santiago Calatrava, this is a structure that makes even architects whip out their cameras to snap a photo. High vaulted ceilings made of white steel and glass create an otherworldly public space that is both inviting and inspiring. Check the pics! Here, your guide will talk a bit about private public space in Toronto and give you a glimpse into the PATH, the underground network of food courts and corridors that link the basements of buildings in the downtown core to the nearby subway stations.

We don't visit it (this tour is only 90 minutes) but guests interested in returning on their own to learn more about hockey will know exactly how to find this most difficult-to-locate attraction entrance without having to ask for directions. Here, your guide will share a little bit about Canada's official national winter sport and maybe even reveal why the Toronto Maple Leafs likely won't win another Stanley Cup.

Learn the history of the underground network and walk part of it. Stay close to your guide, the PATH is not easy to navigate. You don't want to suffer the same fate as some others and lose all hope of escaping and just open a Cinnabon franchise in one of the food courts.

Walk between the biggest skyscrapers in Canada and learn about the big Canadian banks, the Great Fire of 1904 (which wasn't great at all if your name was John Croft) and get a sense of what it's like to commute to a job where the goal is to "buy low and sell high". Can you smell the money? You might. In Canada, this is where most of it is.

Since this is covered in detail during the Old Town History Tour, your guide isn't supposed to tell you everything about this building, but they probably won't be able to help themselves and will give you a few juicy bits of info. You'll want to know more, but that's covered on another tour!

The final stop on this Downtown Toronto Tour is the iconic City Hall (it's literally an icon and featured in our city's logo) with the less iconic, but equally well photographed "Toronto sign" out front. Group photo time? At least get a selfie... Completed in 1965, this futuristic building was a symbol of not only Toronto's aspirations of greatness as a modern metropolis, and its status as a provincial capital and national hub of culture and finance, but also our love of concrete. A grand public space with public art where the public gathers to celebrate public holidays and moments of public pride... Nathan Philips Square in front of City Hall is where the city comes together for New Years Eve, farmers markets, and protests of all kinds. A truly democratic space like this is a great place to end your downtown tour. There are public washrooms nearby too.