Experience the best of Toledo

Toledo stands where the Maumee River reaches the western end of Lake Erie in north-western Ohio, and its port handles ships that sail in from the Great Lakes. It was long known as the Glass City, after the glassmakers who set up here in the late nineteenth century, and the Toledo Museum of Art, founded in 1901, holds a major collection of glass beside paintings from Europe and America. The Toledo War of 1835, a border dispute with Michigan, ended when Michigan took the Upper Peninsula instead.

The Toledo Zoo and Aquarium has a hippo pool with underwater windows, and the National Museum of the Great Lakes shows a retired freighter, the Schoonmaker, moored on the river. Wildwood Preserve Metropark has woods and trails, and Maumee Bay State Park on the lake shore has a boardwalk through wetlands. The Lake Erie islands are a short way east.

Hungarian-style hot dogs from the city's old Hungarian neighbourhood, Lake Erie perch and walleye, and pierogi from its Polish community are local favourites. Winters are cold, with lake-effect snow, and summers are warm and humid.