Attention adulterers, teens who live with their parents, and Kensington lovers who occasionally find themselves in sudden fits of passion. There is a hotel in Toronto that will rent you a standard, temporary room for $50. Because sleeping over is for losers.

Cottage rentals near Toronto this summer are quickly getting snapped up as we get closer to the Victoria Day long weekend. With popular weekend water destinations within a 2-4 hour drive of the city, renting a cottage for a few days or a week each year is more feasible than you'd think, especially with web sites like Cottage Country that make finding a suitable getaway that much easier.

The latest web site to get into the cottage rentals game just launched on March 30th at the Spring Cottage Life Show in Toronto. I caught up with co-founder Adam Brind who gave me the lowdown how his site, TwoHoursNorth.com, differentiates itself from the rest.

The strip mall at Lawrence and Pharmacy in Scarborough is not exactly what you'd call "visually appealing." Officially called "Dixie Land Plaza," the spot at 1801 Lawrence Avenue East is more the land of graffiti and crumble, enough so that it surely merits a nickname or two. Perhaps most of the blame can be assigned to the central structure sitting in the middle of the lot, which seems perpetually vacant and in serious need of some TLC.

Hotel Tonight launched in Toronto today. The popular mobile app (available for the iPhone and Android) offers last minute one-night deals to hotels in various cities across North America. Canada marks the first country outside the US to be included in the app with deals being offered today in both Toronto and Vancouver. Participating hotels in Toronto so far are slim pickings with only The Thompson and the Cosmopolitan currently represented in the app.

Strip malls are fundamental to the suburbs. They act as community hubs, bringing together what people need most: groceries, cigarettes, magazines, tools, electronics, video rentals, laundry facilities and so on. The strip mall at Hove and Sheppard (just west of Bathurst) features over 18 local businesses. Unlike its flashy, well-kept neighbor to the East, it has always been free of chain stores. Most would say the entire complex revolves around Wolfie's Deli, and they'd be right.

Wolfie's has been around since 1975, under the same owner, offering the same menu. It's a delicatessen in the most classic sense, loved and revered by the community to this day. Whatever you order is about six times as much food as you expect or need. Do yourself a favour and just get the brisket.

At 7 a.m., on a brisk morning in November, the ferry ride to the Toronto Islands bears little resemblance to the hurried clatter just a few months prior. Gone are the hordes of families and day-trippers, the lineups and, well, the the ferries themselves. At this time of year, just the Ongiara makes its lone voyage back and forth between the mainland. My co-passengers, the half dozen or so of them, are mostly members of the Toronto Parks department crossing over to prepare the area for winter.

My plan for the island is slightly more sinister though; I'm making the voyage in search of ghosts. Halloween may have passed, but a trip to the Lighthouse has been on my to-do list for some time. And while I'm approaching my trip with a heafty dose of journalistic skepticism, I should admit that — should I be successful — this won't be the first time I've seen one.