The Drake Hotel

This place has glam rock and lush style. It’s nonchalant, sophisticated, artfully retro and an air of cheeky naughtiness. It is, in short, where the party’s at.

A one-stop venue for great dining, stylish bars, cafe culture, music and contemporary art, The Drake is a nobody-does-it-better, upmarket microcosm of its hip and lively (if fascinatingly seedy) environs, Queen Street West.

A full-time music curator ensures they’re ahead of the curve with live performances from the best in town in the intimate Underground venue, also used for cocktail parties and discos, while DJs add late night ambiance in the Lounge. And a full-time art curator not only brings in temporary exhibitions, but is largely responsible for the fact the hotel as a whole is a visual treat, full of fabulous, witty artwork and installations from the likes of Even Penny and Bruce LaBruce, positioned to catch you by surprise or to set the mood, like Joe Becker’s take on Dutch baroque murals by the grand copper-topped bar.

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Owner Jeff Stober travelled the world drawing inspiration from grand hotels and returned to channel the best of his findings into The Drake. It’s a heavy emotional investment, he says, the result: part 30s (like an art salon with red velvet), part 50s (booths and banquettes) part au courant (sashimi and indie bands). Despite its undoubted cool, it invites a demographic clash ‘like a British pub’. They’ve primed the canvas he says, and they benefit from whatever guests, artists and creative staff bring to it.

After all that, the rooms are almost a bonus. While there are larger suites, the bright, light, clean-lined Crashpads are a lesson in ergonomics and proof that small(ish) is beautiful. In keeping with the general air of innovation and playfulness, there’s a Pleasure Menu as well as the usual array of nice soaps, arty magazines and in-room paraphernalia offering order-to-own sensual toys courtesy of local suppliers Come as You Are.

Plenty on the doorstep – not only supermarts, pawn shops and another fine bar and live music a few doors away at the Gladstone (see below), but several galleries including the Stephen Bulger Gallery, Clint Roenisch, Fly and Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (952 Queen St W), boutiques and vintage emporiums stuffed with clothing and 50s furnishings.

1150 Queen St West, www.thedrakehotel.ca, tel +1416 531 5042. Rooms $189-$299 (£100-£160)

Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel

Central, solid and one block big, this briskly, bustling navigational landmark makes for a handy first night hotel, not least because it’s a scheduled stop for the Airport Express. It’s a vertical slice of Toronto life. The lobby, dominated by a mesmeric hi-tech motion wall and reminiscent of a re-designed station concourse is packed with suited workers from the surrounding law and finance districts, while, surprisingly, up the escalators there’s a veritable oasis of calm: a waterfall garden complete with fir and birch trees and, seasonally, nesting ducks.

A pool, part indoor, part outdoor and boldly used by native visitors all year round, is thrillingly anachronistic in this thickly urban setting, overlooked by a thousand office workers in the vertical cliffs of office blocks that rising up and enclose it.

And a lengthy elevator hoist past dozens of floors of soberly stylish rooms and suites equipped with a lot of leather stuff, desks and bowls of fruit, summits at the 43rd floor Club Room which, with its walls of glass gives an aerial view of the abstract curves of Toronto City Hall, the flashing spire of the Canada Life Building, and Nathan Phillips Square, Bruegelesque with circling ice-skaters in winter, thick with farmers’ markets, street performers and all sorts of Canadian wholesomeness in summer.

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