Toronto

Toronto is the continent's most optimistic urban experiment: more than half the city was born in another country, and the result is not a decorative mosaic but a set table — you lunch in Canton, snack in Athens and dine in Bombay without changing streetcars. All of it facing a lake so large the horizon gives up, a freshwater sea with moods.

The sensible traveller goes down to St. Lawrence Market for a breakfast with a century and a half of practice; gets lost in Kensington and Chinatown at noon; goes up the CN Tower if the sky is clean — or better, takes the ferry to the Islands, where the skyline postcard is served with beach and without cars. The night divides itself: West Queen West for the art, the Distillery for the cobblestones.

The Guide's honesty: winter is no anecdote — from December to March the city is lived in layers and through the PATH, its underground labyrinth —; restaurant prices have grown serious: the ethnic lunch is the great local trick; and the lake invites sailing more than swimming — it stays cold well into July.