The BEST 3 Days in Toronto Itinerary: From a Local Expert

Looking for a jam-packed 3 days in Toronto itinerary? I’ve got some local insight for you 🤫.

I was born in Toronto and have spent the last 28 years of my life living about an hour outside the city. That means I have the kind of familiarity with Toronto that most tourists don’t get. 

I know which experiences are really worth the price (like the CN Tower 360 degree restaurant) and which parts of the city to cluster together (like the downtown core with Kensington Market).

In this Toronto travel itinerary, you’ll get a mix of the classics every visitor should do, like Nathan Phillips Square or the Lakeshore, and a few local insider picks you won’t find on every list, like Trillium Park and Kensington Market cafes.

Whether you’re planning a 3 day Toronto itinerary from abroad or a weekend getaway in Toronto from somewhere nearby, this guide will make sure you spend every dang minute soaking it in.

How to Spend an Epic 3 Days in Toronto, Canada?

Day 1: The Downtown Core, Vintage Shops, and MY FAVOURITE Dinner Spot with a View

Your first day in Toronto is all about soaking up the downtown core. This is my favourite part of the city for its towering glass skyscrapers, bustling streets, and absolute ENERGY. 

You can fit a lot into this walkable area without leaving the core. This is the MUST day for your 3 days in Toronto. 

Morning: Kensington Market and Chinatown

📍 Start Kensington Market Here

Before I visited the first time, I thought it was an actual physical market. Like a single indoor space with a bunch of vendors.

It’s actually more like a little area of the city. Just a few streets completely filled with vintage stores, cute cafes, and adorable little shops. My last birthday was spent here, doing a book crawl (we stopped at several cute cafes with our books) and bopping in and out of the many vintage stores .

The vintage stores vary from affordable everyday wears to more luxury vintage pieces, depending what you like. It’s also a completely different vibe from most Toronto neighbourhoods. Think bohemian, a little chaotic, and really fun to wander.

Chinatown sits right next to Kensington Market, so it’s worth a quick stroll through for the sights, sounds, and any dim sum or bubble tea you need to kick off your morning.

Midday: Nathan Phillips Square and the Eaton Centre

📍 24 minutes walk from Kensington Market

Head east toward the city centre and stop at Nathan Phillips Square. It sits right in front of Toronto City Hall, with its iconic curved twin towers forming the backdrop. 

Nathan Phillips Square is one of those touristy must-dos while you’re spending time in downtown Toronto. In the summer, there’s a natural water display. It’s also a really nice spot to see at night, all lit up.

From Nathan Phillips Square and City Hall, the Eaton Centre is an easy five-minute walk east along Queen Street. It’s one of Toronto’s biggest malls, really central in downtown, and it has all of the best stores you could possibly hope for. 

Even if you aren’t looking to shop, it’s worth popping into to feel Toronto’s energy. 

Optional Afternoon: Ripley’s Aquarium

📍 20 minute walk from Nathan Phillips Square

If you want to build in a dedicated activity before dinner, Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada is right next to the CN Tower. It’s probably on every single things to do in Toronto list and with good reason. 

It has sharks, stingrays, everything. It’s great if you’re travelling with kids but as an adult I found it really interesting too. 

The section where you stand on a slow-moving conveyor belt and it brings you through a tunnel is especially cool. Sharks and stingrays swim right overhead. There are also jellyfish in lit-up tanks that make them look like they’re glowing. Really cool. 

⭐ If you’re planning to visit Toronto on a weekend, book tickets in advance on their website here so they don’t reach capacity and you get to skip the line,

Evening: Dinner at the CN Tower 360 Restaurant

📍 1 minute walk from Ripley’s Acquarium

This is the highlight of Day 1 and in my opinion one of the best things to do in Toronto. 

The CN Tower 360 Restaurant is a revolving restaurant that slowly moves around the perimeter of the viewing glass as you dine. The revolving part alone blew my mind. 

Over the course of your meal, you get a true 360-degree view of the entire city. From the literal highest viewpoint available to you. 

You’ve got skyscrapers on one side and beautiful Lake Ontario and Billy Bishop Airport on the other side. It really feels like you can see the entire city.

⭐My biggest tip: Time your reservation so you’re there before, during, and after sunset. We had a 6:30 reservation with sunset around 7:30. Seeing everything in daylight first, then watching the sunset over the city, and then seeing everything lit up at night was really incredible.

The food was amazing, the service was lovely, and it didn’t feel like a touristy, crowded experience at all. It felt intimate. For the quality of the food and the experience, I thought it was quite reasonably priced for Toronto. 

Your reservation also includes access to the observation deck after dinner, where you can see the famous glass floor (looking 342 metres straight down).

Book your table at cntower.ca or OpenTable.

CN Tower Alternatives to be Aware of:

If you don’t make it to the 360 dinner, the CN Tower itself is still a must. You can pay for an observation deck ticket and access the glass floor on its own. And if you’re especially daring, I 150% recommend the CN Tower EdgeWalk.

It’s where you walk on the outside perimeter of the tower close to the top. I did this and I personally love heights, so it was really thrilling. But I didn’t find it too scary because you feel really secure in the harness. 

When I leaned back off the edge, I expected to feel like my feet could slip out, but I didn’t feel that at all. The view is insane. If you go in summer when the neighbouring Rogers Centre has the dome open, you can see the baseball stadium directly below you, which is especially cool.

Day 2: The Lakeshore, Toronto Islands, and the Distillery District

Day 2 moves you across the city from west to east, tracing Toronto’s waterfront. Start along the western lakeshore, move to the ferry terminal for the islands, and then head east to the Distillery District in the evening. 

Morning: The Lakeshore and Trillium Park

The Lakeshore has always been one of my favourite parts of Toronto because it has this high outdoor energy. Everybody is running, biking, or walking their dogs. 

The energy combined with the beautiful sparkling Lake Ontario and the modern architecture is really nice. On a sunny day, it’s especially gorgeous.

Start your morning at Trillium Park, which sits next to Ontario Place along the western lakeshore. You can sit and see all of the boats docked in the harbour.

I’ve spent time just sitting and reading there. Give yourself time to wander and soak up the lakeshore vibe before the rest of the day kicks off.

From Trillium Park, make your way east along the waterfront toward the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal near Union Station for your Toronto Islands departure.

Mid-day: Toronto Islands

📍 10 minute uber down the street

The Toronto Islands are about a 15-minute ferry ride from the harbourfront and have some of the best views of the Toronto city skyline you’ll find anywhere.

There’s a couple great options to explore them. You can grab a ferry ticket and walk around them yourself. Or you can join an activity-based tour like kayaking, touring around on a party boat or biking around the island. 

Evening: The Distillery Historic District

📍9 minute uber down the street from the Harbour Front

After the islands, head east to the Distillery Historic District. This 13-acre pedestrian-only village preserves 47 Victorian industrial buildings from what was once the largest distillery in the world. 

Today the cobblestone streets are filled with art galleries, boutique shops, and restaurants. The whole area has a really unique vibe, especially in the evening when the lighting hits the old brick buildings. 

After wandering and checking out the galleries, grab dinner.

• El Catrin does excellent tacos and has a gorgeous interior.
• Pure Spirits is one of Toronto’s top spots for seafood.
• Mill Street Brewpub has its own micro-brewery on-site if you want a craft beer to end the day.

Don’t miss the art installations scattered throughout, including the 40-foot spider sculpture “IT” and the “Love Locks” sign. 

💡 Tip: I recommend checking thedistillerydistrict.com website to see if there are any cool events going on while you’re there. 

Day 3: Musuems, Street Art, and Casa Loma

Day 3 takes you through two of Toronto’s most distinct cultural experiences before finishing with one of the most unique dinner settings in the city. 

This day clusters beautifully in the west and midtown area of Toronto.

Morning: The Art Gallery of Ontario or the Royal Ontario Museum

Start your day with either the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) or the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). Both are excellent. Here’s how to choose between them.

AGO:

The AGO is housed inside a stunningly redesigned building in the downtown west neighbourhood. It holds over 95,000 works of art, including masterpieces by the Group of Seven (Canada’s legendary landscape painters), European masters, and the world’s largest public collection of Henry Moore sculptures. 

See the AGO website for current exhibitions.

The ROM:

This is Canada’s largest museum and one of the most interesting in Toronto. It has rotating exhibits that change topics, plus a really great permanent historical collection. 

There are dinosaur bones, ancient Egyptian mummies, Chinese temple art, and galleries dedicated to First Peoples art. The range of history it covers is really extraordinary. 

I’ve been 3 times over my lifetime. 

The ROM is located at Bloor Street and Avenue Road in midtown, open 10am to 5:30pm daily.

Afternoon: Graffiti Alley

📍 15 minute walk from AGO, 15-20 minutes by street car or Uber from the ROM

After a morning museum, head to Graffiti Alley in the Fashion District. It’s an outdoor street art exhibition spanning a full city block on Rush Lane between Portland and Spadina, just off Queen Street West. 

The wall is packed with murals that are constantly evolving. 

⭐ I actually highly recommend taking a guided walking tour of the graffiti if you especially love street art. You’ll learn what all the graffiti slang means, the history of street art in the city, and get pointed to some of the coolest food spots in the area.

Evening: Dinner at Casa Loma

📍 20 ish minutes by Uber from Graffiti Alley

Casa Loma is a real 98-room Gothic Revival castle built in 1914 right in midtown Toronto. Most people know it as a tourist attraction you tour, and that’s a great option. 

BUTTTTT, the local insight here is that some of the experiences you can book at Casa Loma are even more interesting.

In the summers, they host Garden Nights: a beautiful dinner setup in the castle gardens with live music, typically a classical string quartet. Everyone’s dressed fancy, there are twinkle lights and flowers everywhere. 

Check the Casa Loma events calendar for current dates and to book.

If a Garden Nights dinner isn’t available during your visit, the Casa Loma escape rooms are an excellent alternative. I did this for one of my birthdays and the escape room is situated in one of the actual castle towers. 

You use real historical parts of the tower as props during the one-hour experience.

Optional Day Trip: Swap a Day for Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls is an iconic bucket list activity in Canada with two gigantic waterfalls (The Canadian side and the American side). It sits right on the border between Canada and the US, so it’ll be Americans you see on the other side.

There are tons of day trip tours to visit, so if this is on your list, swap out one of the three above days to do it. I recommend doing a guided tour for this because it’s a 2 hour drive each way from the city centre. However, if you’re with a group you can rent a car for cheaper.

If you do a tour, I really recommend doing one that includes the Maid of the Mist boat ride, where you get to go up really close to the falls. They give you these really cute touristy ponchos because the mist is going to spray you and soak you, but it’s really fun.

After the boat ride, explore Clifton Hills. It’s the name of the touristy area around Niagara Falls and it’s kitschy and cute. It has wax museums, a Rainforest Cafe, a Ferris wheel. I’ve been at least 5 times. 

If you swap Niagara Falls in for Day 3, I recommend still catching either the Distillery District in the evening (easy to visit on your way back into the city) or booking a Casa Loma Garden Nights dinner. You can still get both experiences, just shifted around.

⭐ This tour of Niagara Falls includes the boat ride AND a maple syrup tasting (us Canadians are serious about our maple syrup, that stereotype is true).

The Dinner and Night Life Spots to Add to Your Evenings:

The Hidden Speakeasies

• Bar 404 — hidden behind a faux candle shop, it has a gold circular bar, cocktail live performances.
• À Toi (Coffee Oysters Champagne) — French oyster bar on the surface, secret restaurant below accessed via the “Champagne Tour”
• Suite 115 — no sign, passcode entry, red glow at dusk, signature Hong Kong milk tea Old Fashioned, rotating secret menu
• Mahjong Bar — through a keyhole door behind a pink bodega, 36-ft jungle mural, Asian-inspired cocktails, open nightly until 2am

The Hippest Bars

• BarChef — molecular mixology with dry ice and truffle snow, part of Canada’s 100 Best Bars 2025
• Harriet’s Rooftop — 16th floor, Japanese small plates, live music and DJs, Wed–Sat from 5pm
• Bar Raval — It has a hand-carved Barcelona modernist interior, on the list of World’s 50 Best Bars and a Michelin Exceptional Cocktails Award winner. Walk-in only.
• Civil Works — It’s on a list of North America’s 50 Best Bars and is part of the upstairs mezzanine inside Waterworks Food Hall (my favourite food hall in Toronto).

Bucket-List Dinners

• Alo Restaurant — Michelin-starred, 6-course or 10-course options, reservations drop first Tuesday of each month at 10am and sell out fast
• and/ore — A tasting menu I’ve had on my bucket list, it has 2 distinct dining rooms, one of which is in a cave.

Travel Tips for Visiting Toronto:

A few practical things to know before you go on your Toronto weekend trip:

• Union Station is your transport hub if you’re coming in by train or GO transit. It’s walking distance from the CN Tower, Ripley’s Aquarium, and the Harbourfront Centre ferry terminal.

• Toronto has some decent public transit. The TTC runs subways, streetcars, and buses throughout the city. For most downtown sightseeing, you can walk or take one short TTC ride between stops.

• The best area to stay for this Toronto itinerary is downtown Toronto: King West, Front Street, or the Entertainment District put you walking distance from most of Day 1 and easy transit access for Days 2 and 3.
• The CN Tower 360 Restaurant, Toronto Islands ferry tickets, and any Casa Loma events should be booked in advance, especially in summer.
• Summer (June to August) is peak season. The lakeshore and islands are at their best but also most crowded. Book things ahead of time.
• Toronto is a very safe city by major international standards. The downtown core, Harbourfront Centre area, and tourist attractions are all low-concern. As with any large city, standard travel awareness applies.

FAQs About Visiting Toronto