CASTLE FRANK CARRIAGE DRIVE
Rosedale Valley Drive is a not-so-secret but beautiful downtown escape route for motorists, but people moving slower can see the remains of the old Castle Frank carriage drive carved into the slopes of the ravine if they look closely. Castle Frank was the summer home of Upper Canada’s first lieutenant governor John Graves Simcoe — more a wooden country lodge than a castle — and named after his son Francis. It was located on the ridge of land south of what is now Castle Frank station but burnt down in 1829. Whatever archaeological traces exist are likely in the garden of one of the homes on Castle Frank Crescent, but down in the valley the carriage drive they used to get from York to their lodge can be seen at the back of St. James Cemetery sloping east towards Bayview where it once turned north and went up the other side to the erstwhile castle.

THE GUILD INN (AND BEACH WALK BELOW)
The city-owned Guild Inn (191 Guildwood Pkwy.) is located in deepest Scarborough high atop the bluffs and its park-like grounds are the final resting place for fragments of demolished Toronto buildings preserved as strange urban sculptures. If you go, find the trail on the east side of the property that leads to an old paved road running down to Lake Ontario. Kilometres of nearly empty beaches stretch in either direction, with little sign that 4.5 million people live nearby. The walk west leads to Passage, a metal sculpture honouring Scarborough artist Doris McCarthy. Take the path named after her up the ravine and you’ll be at Kingston and Bellamy roads.

CITY COTTAGING
Hints that Toronto was not designed by grand plan but rather by beautiful accident can be found down various narrow laneways where collections of cute bucolic cottages lie hidden in the urban mix. The least “secret” of these cottages are found along Kensington Place and Fitzroy Terrace off Kensington Ave. and were originally workers’ housing when the Market was part of the Denison Estate. Poke around the north part of Cabbagetown and you’ll stumble across “The Wellesley Cottages” and in Parkdale, on Trenton Terrace off of Cowan, there are 10 little homes that only take up one and a half standard properties.

LAKE IROQUOIS SHORELINE
During the ice age much of Toronto was covered by an expanded version of Lake Ontario known as Lake Iroquois. The escarpment that runs across the city above Davenport Rd. today was its shoreline, and a walk along it affords some wonderful “inspiration point” views of the city below. Start at Davenport and Dufferin and walk up to Regal Road Public School, whose students have the best playground view in the city. A little further east is a sidewalk staircase resembling the one in The Exorcist and, at Spadina, the Baldwin Steps have landings complete with benches where you can either contemplate Toronto or, better yet, make out with somebody.

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE ROOM
Tucked into a cozy room on the fifth floor of the space age Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge) is The Arthur Conan Doyle Room. Designed to evoke Sherlock Holmes’ 221B Baker Street pad, it’s a little bit of Victorian London hidden in Toronto. Here, Toronto has one of the best collections of Conan Doyle material in the world and attracts both his fans and researchers interested in the sensibilities of this era. The collection includes various editions of his work, secondary sources and, most interesting, examples of the ephemera — today we call it “merch” — produced around his characters.

CASA MENDOZA
Etobicoke’s fabled and infamous “Motel Strip” along Lakeshore Drive has nearly disappeared, making way for new condos, but the Casa Mendoza (2161 Lakeshore Blvd.) endures. Walking down the long driveway towards the motel feels like you’re part of The Eagles’ Hotel California album cover. The piano bar inside is one of those special places where time stopped somewhere around 1973. The piano man plays standards like… “Piano Man,” along with assorted Neil Diamond and Engelbert Humperdinck troubadour tales. The food is surf and turf, the cocktails are fancy, the atmosphere is refreshingly irony-free and the patio is the best in Etobicoke.

CITY OF TORONTO MUSEUMS
If the high prices at the ROM have you down, check out the city’s 10 historic museums scattered across the city. They’re inexpensive, run various programs for kids and adults, and have recreated various times in Toronto’s history. Try Fort York (100 Garrison) for the birthplace of the city, the Scarborough Historical Museum (1007 Brimley) for a bit of pioneering suburbia or the Mackenzie House (82 Bond, pictured) downtown, home of Toronto’s first rebel mayor. The biggest secret is found on Atlantic Ave. in Liberty Village, where a nondescript warehouse stores a massive collection of artifacts, but we’ll have to wait until a City of Toronto museum is built to house these treasures to see them.

HIDDEN NEIGHBOURHOOD STRIPS
Toronto is celebrated for being a city of neighbourhoods but the usual suspects — Little Italy, The Annex, Cabbagetown, et al. — get all the glory. Toronto also has hidden neighbourhood strips that only locals mostly know about, like Forest Hill Village on Spadina Rd., which seems like a too-­perfect small town. Over in deep Rosedale, along Summerhill Ave., a collection of small stores and apartment buildings are an unexpected urban experience in the middle of patrician mansion-land. And though they aren’t always pretty and have an antiquated car-oriented design, Toronto’s strip malls — like those in Scarborough along Lawrence and Eglinton or the Jewish strips along Bathurst north of Lawrence — are full of mom-and-pop stores and are traditional “main streets” for the neighbourhoods they serve.

ROOFTOP BARS
We might not think of Toronto as a city of skyscrapers but we have a vertical metropolitan spine running up our middle that’s rife with roof top bars. When you get over their novelty and sometimes excessive drink prices (though not much more than the average hipster bar), observing the city from the top can help fit it together in our heads. Panorama, on the 51st floor of the Manulife Centre (55 Bloor W.), has magnificent north and south midtown views with patios, Barcelona Chairs, awkward first dates to overhear and likely more Eurobeat than you can handle. The Roof Lounge at the Park Hyatt (pictured) nearby at 4 Avenue is more reserved and is a storied literary haunt with aerial views of the ROM crystal. Other fine views can be had at Canoe in the TD Centre (66 Wellington) and of course the venerable CN Tower. The Westin Harbour Castle’s Toulà (1 Harbour Sq.) no longer revolves but has a wonderful anonymous hotel-bar feel and a view of the Islands.