Take a tip from me and put Canada on your holiday agenda. I just spent twelve days in Toronto and it was great. 

The shopping is out of this world, seventeen kilometres of under ground shops and restaurants, no pound shops like we have in the UK, many of them were designer clothes and shoes although there were the huge department stores like every city. If you want a winter shopping holiday you won't even have to venture outside and be out in the cold the hotel we stayed at led straight out into shopping area.

 Even though the centre of Toronto is a mass of high rise buildings similar to New York there are parks everywhere, many with large ponds and fountains. Black squirrels run freely amongst the trees fearless of people and they don't bat an eyelid as you pass by. In the winter the large ponds are frozen over and the small buildings advertise skates for hire for those brave enough to give it a try.

The  CN Tower is one of tallest in the world, it stands 1,815 ft., 5 inches, we rode up on a glass fronted lift that took just fifty eight seconds to reach the top. It boasts a glass floor for those brave enough to stand on it, I put one foot on it and immediately began to feel dizzy and I couldn't get away fast enough.

We heard a lot about the castle in Toronto so we took a trip to see it. It was called Castleoma, on the outside it looks like a castle newly built, but inside it was like a large old manor house, it was built around one hundred years ago. 

 We also went for a boat trip on Lake Ontaria, the captain told us that due to all the factories that used to surround it, the water became contaminated, this was many years ago but any fish that are caught in the lake are never eaten as it is still not completely cleared.

A holiday in Canada would not be complete without a visit to the Niagara Falls, we went on a boat called Maid of the Mist and sailed almost below it. It was an awesome experience and although they provided waterproof capes  we were soaked through at the end of it.  It was something I wouldn't have missed.

Getting about in Toronto is simple, trams are passing by every five minutes, and there are lots of open air touring buses. Museums seem hugely popular there as well even to a shoe museum which I am sorry to say we didn't get to visit. We passed it by and the front of the building had a huge shoe sticking out of it.

Toronto is a strange mix of old and new, some of their oldest buildings are surrounded by sky scrapers. Many clocks chime through out the day and night, striking the quarter hour as well as the hour, I expected to be kept awake as there was one quite close to the hotel but after days of shopping and sight seeing I slept like a log.

Where ever you went in the city something was always going on from markets, to parades of some kind, and the day before we left the film festival was just starting with stars from all over the world I was told.

We were taken past the millionaires sector with all the posh houses but as you are not allowed to even go down their streets we didn't see much.

One thing we noticed is that every one seems fit and healthy, In the whole twelve days we were there at the most I saw about ten to twelve overweight people.

 It is also one of the cleanest cities I have seen. As smoking is not allowed indoors like most countries now, Toronto went one step further, most large stores and restaurants had  notices up. NO Smoking within six metres of the entrance, so if you smoked out doors you didn't dare drop a cigarette stub, there were no notices saying this but you felt obliged to find a bin.

If the rest of Canada is like the City of Toronto then I would say its a great country to live in and bring up your children.