Travel Facebook groups can be incredibly helpful. People share great restaurants, hidden attractions, scenic drives, and places most visitors would never discover on their own.
But every now and then a question appears that is so broad it becomes unintentionally hilarious.
It usually goes something like this: “Looking for a good hotel in the GTA.” That’s the entire statement. No neighborhood. No price range. No reason for the visit. Just the GTA.
For anyone unfamiliar with southern Ontario geography, the Greater Toronto Area is not a small place.
It stretches across several major cities, dozens of towns, and roughly seven million people across 7,125 square kilometers (2,750 square miles). There are hundreds of hotels and motels of every kind, from ultra-luxurious to the Marriott and Hilton chains to budget hotels and motels that have seen much better days.
And yet the question hangs there in the Facebook group like a mystery. “Looking for a good hotel in the GTA.”
Within minutes, the suggestions begin. Someone recommends a hotel near Pearson Airport. Another suggests a boutique hotel downtown.
Someone else recommends a place in Markham (to the northeast), some 20 miles from downtown. Then someone from Mississauga in the west end weighs in. And before long, the list includes places that are an hour or more apart, depending on traffic. Which, in Toronto, given the regular slew of traffic accidents and never-ending construction, could mean three hours apart.
Eventually, someone asks the obvious question. “Where in the GTA?”
But by then, the comment thread has already taken on a life of its own. Twenty suggestions. Thirty suggestions. A handful of disagreements. And someone is inevitably recommending a place that closed last year.
Meanwhile, the original poster quietly disappears. Perhaps overwhelmed by the sudden list of hotels stretching from Oshawa to Oakville.
Or perhaps realizing that the GTA may be just slightly too large to summarize in a single question.
johnberkovich.com 