The entry of the big boys from Trump and Shangri-La and the new Four Seasons Hotel and the fairly new Ritz Carlton has garnered a lot of attention in Toronto hotel circles. So much so that we (meaning in this case, I), sometimes forget about a very sleek and very convenient hotel right downtown: One King West. The famous tower in the historic (almost 100 years!) bank building at King and Yonge has 330 hotel rooms; all suites with kitchens for the convenience of guests. They do a fair bit of leisure travel, as it’s very convenient to attractions like Read more
Canada
This is from a visit to the great city of Montreal a couple years ago… MONTREAL – I’d forgotten how much fun this town really is. I’d been a few times with my kids over the years, but last week’s brief sojourn was my first time to spend a few hours really looking around. I like the old city just fine, but I’d seen it before a number of times. I’ve also spent a bit of time on Crescent Street, attending a Jacques Villeneuve event at his Newtown restaurant when I worked in the sports department. So this time I Read more
ALONG THE FRENCH RIVER IN ONTARIO – “Alex is picking some people up at Five Fingers Rapids, you should take a boat ride with him.” I had just settled in for some serious note taking on the screened in porch of my fabulous cottage at the Lodge at Pine Cove, overlooking the French River west of North Bay, near the town of Noelville. I’d only been on the property an hour or so but when the owner of a lodge suggests I take a boat ride I usually find there’s a reason. And who doesn’t love riding a boat on Read more
Here are a couple of blog posts from British Columbia… VANCOUVER – Downtown Vancouver’s Art Gallery is a great spot, with a big patio out front and big steps and a feel, to me, anyway, of a public square in London. The best part? Food trucks. Food trucks all over the damned place. It’s not bad enough we don’t have a public square in Toronto as nice as the one in front of the Art Gallery of Vancouver (not in my mind, anyway). No, they have to lord it over us with trucks selling the most wonderful of foods; a Read more
WAWA, ONTARIO – My last night on the shores of Lake Superior, and it was quite something. The Rock Island Lodge is a small, cozy affair directly on the shores of the greatest of Great Lakes, a short drive down an easy to handle dirt road outside of Wawa. I stayed in a basic but perfectly fine room off the main dining room, with a nice bath and views out to the lake. It’s part of the Naturally Superior Adventures paddling centre, which offers everything from paddleboard lessons to short canoe rides on the next-door Michipicoten River to long kayak Read more
