Toronto Hop-On Hop-Off Sightseeing Bus Tour

Sankofa Square and Yonge Street

The loop starts at Sankofa Square, formerly Yonge-Dundas Square, the open plaza with giant screens at the busiest intersection in the country, opposite the city's biggest downtown shopping centre. This is the main stop and the easiest place to board; from here Yonge Street, Toronto's central spine, runs north past the shops and theatres to the Yonge and Wellesley stop near the Church-Wellesley neighbourhood and south to the financial district and the lake.

Starting a Toronto city tour here puts you a few minutes' walk from City Hall with its curved towers and Nathan Phillips Square, where the skating rink and the illuminated sign are the city's favourite photo spots. The first buses leave in the morning and the full loop takes about two hours to two hours and a quarter, so one circuit before lunch is a good way to decide where to spend the afternoon.

Yorkville and the Royal Ontario Museum

North of downtown, the bus climbs to Yorkville, once a village and now the most polished neighbourhood in Toronto, with boutiques, galleries, cafés on Cumberland and Yorkville Avenues and a small park with a huge slab of Canadian Shield rock as its centrepiece. The next stop is the Royal Ontario Museum on Bloor Street, the largest museum in Canada, recognisable by the crystal-shaped glass and aluminium extension that bursts out of its historic stone façade.

Inside, the dinosaur galleries, the Egyptian mummies, the bat cave and the collections of Chinese, African and Indigenous art fill a comfortable half day; Royal Ontario Museum tickets are bought at the door or online, and the museum is open daily with late hours on some evenings. Families searching for things to do in Toronto with children usually put this stop first.

Casa Loma

Casa Loma is a Gothic Revival castle completed in 1914 on the hill above the city, built for a wealthy financier who lost his fortune shortly afterwards. Its 98 rooms include a great hall with a hammer-beam roof, a library, a conservatory with a stained-glass dome, secret passages, towers to climb and an underground tunnel to the stables and the vintage car collection. The gardens on the slope are at their best from May to October.

A Casa Loma visit takes about two hours with the audio guide, and it is one of the stops that justifies the 48-hour pass, since it lies away from the lakefront attractions. Admission is paid at the castle. The bus stop is at the foot of the drive; the castle is reached by a short walk up the hill, and the view from the towers takes in the CN Tower and the lake.

Chinatown and the Art Gallery of Ontario

Coming back down Spadina Avenue, the bus passes through Chinatown, a district of markets, dumpling houses, bakeries and herbalists that is lively from morning to late evening, and stops beside the Art Gallery of Ontario on Dundas Street West. The gallery holds a large Canadian collection, including the landscape painters known as the Group of Seven, European masters, Indigenous art and a photography collection, in a building famous for its sculpted wooden spiral staircase and glass gallery facing the street.

Kensington Market, a bohemian grid of vintage shops, cafés and murals, is a few minutes' walk west of the stop and makes a good lunch destination with halal and vegetarian options. The AGO is open from Tuesday to Sunday, and the hop-off here combines well with the Casa Loma stop before it or the CN Tower stop after.

CN Tower, the aquarium and Harbourfront

The CN Tower is the symbol of Toronto, a concrete tower of 553 metres completed in 1976 that remained the tallest free-standing structure in the world for more than three decades. The bus stops on both its north and south sides; the LookOut level at 346 metres has a glass floor, and the SkyPod higher still looks out over Lake Ontario to Niagara on a clear day. CN Tower tickets are timed and worth booking in advance for sunset. Next door, Ripley's Aquarium of Canada has a moving walkway through a tunnel of sharks that children adore.

From the south stop the bus continues to Harbourfront on Queens Quay, where the lakefront promenade, the ferry terminal for the Toronto Islands and the cultural centre line the water. The islands, a short ferry ride away, offer beaches and the best skyline view of the city; the ferry is paid separately and a visit takes half a day.

Hockey Hall of Fame, St. Lawrence Market and the Distillery District

The eastern side of the loop begins at the Hockey Hall of Fame, housed in a domed former bank building at Yonge and Front Streets, where the trophies of Canada's national sport are displayed and visitors can test themselves against a simulated goaltender. Two stops on, St. Lawrence Market has fed the city since 1803; the South Market building is packed with stalls of cheeses, breads, spices, produce and ready-to-eat food, and the Saturday farmers' market fills the North building.

The loop's last stop is the Distillery District, a pedestrian-only quarter of red-brick Victorian industrial buildings from 1832, restored in 2003 as galleries, boutiques, theatres, cafés and chocolate shops, with a Christmas market in December. The cobbled lanes are the most photographed streets in the city. From here the bus returns along Front Street to Sankofa Square; a Toronto bus tour that ends here at dusk, when the lanes are lit, is a fine finish to the day.