Lonely Planet Best of Canada

Canada is more than its hulking-mountain, craggy-coast good looks: it also cooks extraordinary meals, rocks cool culture and unfurls wild, moose-spotting road trips.

The globe's second-biggest country has an endless variety of landscapes, from sky-high mountains and glinting glaciers to spectral rain-forests and remote beaches, along with a big cast of local characters including grizzly bears, whales and moose. The terrain makes for a fantastic playground whether it's snowboarding, surfing, kayaking, strolling Vancouver's Stanley Park or swimming off Prince Edward Island's pink-sand beaches.

Culturally, Canada is a mixed bag. You'll hear it in the wild-fiddling Celtic music, see it in the rain-forest-cloaked Aboriginal villages on Haida Gwaii, and taste it in Vancouver's Asian dining scene.

Indeed, Canadian cuisine is another landscape to explore. If you grazed from west to east, you'd fill your plate with wild salmon, velvety scallops, and a bounty of cherries and peaches in British Columbia; poutine (golden fries topped with gravy and cheese curds) in Qubec; and lobster with a dab of melted butter in the Atlantic provinces all washed down with award-winning crisp whites and bold reds produced from the country's vine-striped valleys.

With all of this, you might be surprised to hear that Canada has world-class museums, too. Cultural hubs such as the new National Music Centre or Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 will leave you wowed, while the National Gallery of Canada gives you a taste of just how artistic these Canucks really are. It's true. Canada's got it all going on.

A hyperactive stew of cultures and neighborhoods

Far and away Canada's largest city, as well as its most diverse about half of its residents were born in another country at every turn, Toronto strikes you with sheer urban awe. This fascinating metropolis mixes five-star fusion meals with peameal bacon sandwiches, designer shoes from Bloor-Yorkville with tattoos from Queen West, and then, for good measure, throws in rockin' band rooms, hockey mania, mod-art galleries and theater par excellence.