What should I avoid in Toronto?

The single most expensive mistake first-timers make at Toronto Pearson is walking past the UP Express signs and into a taxi queue. A cab from Terminal 1 to a downtown hotel near King Street runs C$60-75 with tip. The UP Express covers the same 25 km in 25 minutes for C$12.35. It drops you at Union Station, where every subway line and the PATH underground network connect. If you land after the last UP Express run at 1am, a rideshare still beats the taxi queue by C$15-20. Mind you, the PRESTO card you'll need for the TTC subway costs C$6 for the card itself plus whatever you load onto it. Buy it at the airport, not at a downtown station where the machines tend to have longer lines on weekday mornings.

Yonge-Dundas Square is Toronto's Times Square, and that comparison is not a compliment. The restaurants facing the square charge C$22-28 for burgers you'd send back in any other neighborhood. Walk 10 minutes west to Kensington Market instead, where Jumbo Empanadas on Augusta Avenue sells beef empanadas for C$4.50 and the smell of roasting peppers hangs over the narrow sidewalks. The other trap is the cluster of restaurants on Front Street near the Rogers Centre before a Blue Jays game. A plate of nachos there runs C$24, and the food tends to sit under heat lamps until someone orders it. If you're headed to a game, eat first at St. Lawrence Market, which closes Sundays and Mondays. Carousel Bakery's peameal bacon sandwich there has been the go-to order for decades, and at about C$9.50 it costs less than half the nachos on Front Street.

The CN Tower is worth seeing once, but the 360 Restaurant on its revolving level is not. The prix fixe menu starts at C$85 per person for food that would embarrass a C$40 bistro at street level. Go to the LookOut level instead for C$43, arrive 30 minutes before sunset, and you'll see the city shift from grey concrete to warm orange light across Lake Ontario. That said, skip the EdgeWalk at C$225 unless you actually want the adrenaline. Ripley's Aquarium next door is fine on a Tuesday morning but a sweaty, stroller-clogged corridor on a Saturday. Toronto Zoo sits 40 km northeast in Scarborough, and in winter half the outdoor exhibits close. The Royal Ontario Museum, open since 1912, is the better rainy-afternoon pick, but avoid the ground-floor dinosaur gallery on weekends when school groups fill the halls shoulder to shoulder.

Toronto's weather catches visitors off guard because the city sits right on Lake Ontario. The wind off the water drops the feels-like temperature 5-8°C below what your phone reports from November through March. A January afternoon might read -10°C but feel like -20°C at the Harbourfront, where the cold cuts through wool and hits bare skin in seconds. Summer has the opposite problem. July and August push past 30°C with humidity that turns the subway platforms at Bloor-Yonge into a steam room. The sweet spot for visiting is May or October, but pack layers. A 15°C morning in May can become a 6°C evening with lake-effect wind by 7pm.