Two years in Toronto

Is there a more exciting city? Founded as New Amsterdam in the 1620s, captured by the British in 1664 and briefly the capital of the United States in the 1780s, today New York is America’s largest metropolis and the most photographed city in the world. It’s not in Canada of course, but since it’s much closer to Toronto than many Canadian cities, for Family Day weekend we hopped in a small plane at the island airport and within an hour were touching down south of the border. On a previous trip we’d visited the top tourist sites – from the United Nations to the Metropolitan Museum of Art – so this time we wanted to explore a gentler side of New York. We stayed in the West Village neighbourhood, with its elegant townhouses and children’s parks. The apartment block from Friends was just around the corner, and the Hudson River just a stone’s throw away. Nearby we found the High Line – an extraordinary elevated walkway that weaves its way through the cityscape for nearly a