The "Best Places to Bed and Breakfast in Ontario" Canada website is based on Janette Higgins popular Canadian travel guide to Ontario bed and breakfast inns and homes of the same name. Higgins pays where she stays, selects the top 3-5% of hundreds of Ontario bed & breakfast accommodations she considers and writes honest and credible reviews of the bed and breakfasts. Beyond being clean and neat and offering good value, Higgins' Ontario bed and breakfast picks offer exceptional ambiance and more privacy than usual. No B&B ads are accepted. Many of the bed and breakfasts are in or close to big cities in Canada like Toronto, Ottawa, London, Windsor, Stratford, Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake. Others are in smaller towns and rural settings in places like Sudbury, Midland, Georgian Bay, Niagara region, the Bruce Peninsula, Prince Edward County,  Sauble Beach (or Falls), Gananoque in The Thousand Islands and Muskoka. Welcome to a bed & breakfasts website with a difference and enjoy your tour.

Click on My Holiday Reports to read Janette Higgins' reviews of Spanish Language Schools in Cuernavaca, Mexico, San Jose (Heredia-San Joaquin de Flores), Costa Rica and Antigua, Guatemala.  She's also written about a terrific bed and breakfast in Cuernavaca, a gem of a small hotel (or inn) on Lake Atitlan not far from Antigua in Guatemala and a delightful bed and breakfast inn in Puebla, Mexico.  And since Puebla is one of her favourite colonial cities in Mexico, you'll find a useful review of it as well.

Note:  See the links section below for my comments on finding a bed and breakfast in Niagara-on-the-Lake.  

 In putting together this accommodation directory of Ontario, Canada's best bed and breakfast homes and inns, Janette Higgins has made countless trips to every nook and cranny of Ontario from Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake to Ottawa to Thunder Bay.  She's inspected thousands of bed & breakfasts in dozens of communities and tourist destinations like Kingston, Brantford Six Nations, Point Pelee, Port Hope, Wiarton and Lion's Head on the Bruce Peninsula, Midland and Sault Ste. Marie. The bed and breakfasts she's selected  (top 5%) can be found in big cities like Toronto, Ottawa, London, Niagara Falls, Windsor and Kingston; in theatre towns like Stratford and Niagara-on-the-Lake; and in tourist regions like the Bruce Peninsula, Wiarton, Muskoka, Prince Edward County, Niagara Falls and Region, Haliburton Highlands, Algonquin Park and Manitoulin Island.

The quality of your accommodations is a critical factor in the enjoyment of your stay in Canada whether on business or vacation. Writer Janette hopes she can make a difference to the quality of your travel experience in Ontario.

Following is a list of the Ontario, Canada communities with b&bs recommended on this website: Southwestern Ontario: Bayfield, Brantford Six Nations, Chatham, Clinton, Elora, Goderich, Kingsville, Kitchener-Waterloo, Leamington, London, Port, Elgin, Sarnia (Sombra), Sauble Beach, Sauble Falls, Wheatley, Port Dover, Port Stanley, Southampton, St Jacobs, Stratford, Tavistock, Windsor, Walkerton. Near Toronto, Ontario: Burlington, Crystal Beach, Dunnville, Fort Erie, Grimsby, Guelph, Hamilton, Morrisburg (near Upper Canada Village), Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Orangeville, Ridgeway, St Catharines, Seeley's Bay (near Kingston), Toronto, Whitby. Eastern Ontario along Hwy 401 including Prince Edward County: Bloomfield, Ameliasburgh, Amherst Island, Bloomfield, Brighton, Gananoque, Kingston, Picton, Port Hope, Prescott, Waupoos, Wellington, Williamstown. Eastern Ontario: Delta, Fenelon Falls, Lakefield, Merrickville, Ottawa, Peterborough, Sharbot Lake, Westport on the Rideau Waterway. Near North and Northern Ontario: Barrie, Bracebridge, Bruce Peninsula, Collingwood, Gore Bay (Manitoulin Island), Huntsville,  Kenora, Keewatin (Lake of the Woods), Manitoulin Island, Massey, Meaford, Midland and Penetang on Georgian Bay, Minett near Port Carling, Minden, Orillia, Owen Sound, Parry Sound, Port Carling, Port Sydney, Rossport, Sault Ste Marie (the Soo), St Joseph Island, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Wiarton and Lion's Head on the Bruce Peninsula, Washago.

Also, be sure to read Janette's reviews of spanish language schools in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Antigua Guatemala, San Jose and Monteverde in Costa Rica.  Discover a great bed and breakfast in Cuernavaca, Mexico, a gem of an inn in Puebla, Mexico and another on Lake Atitlan near Antigua in Guatemala.  Plus charming budget cabinas in Puerto Viejo and Puerto Jimenez Costa Rica.  Her adventures with Costa Rica Expeditions include Tortuga Lodge on the Caribbean side and Corcovado Tent Lodge on the Pacific.  Read all the reviews in "My Travel Reports".

My favourite links

TripAdvisor offers consumer reviews of everything related to travel, including bed and breakfasts Click Here.  Women (even men) travellers will find tons of good information on www.journeywoman.com including a new section on bed and breakfasts.

The best strictly advertising website and the most comprehensive website of Canadian bed and breakfast places is www.bbcanada.com

FOBBA is an association of Ontario bed and breakfast homes committed to a code of ethics and service. They have an optional association-administered star ranking system.  Should you happen to have a complaint about any of their members the association will follow up. They also represent the political interests of the group to the provincial government.  For a list and description of member B&Bs go to  www.fobba.com

Niagara-on-the-Lake deserves special mention.  From a consumer point of view it's become an overwhelming task to sort out the B&Bs there.  I  became bleary-eyed reviewing all the Niagara-on-the-Lake B&B ads in preparation for my extensive on-site research to round out the B&Bs I already recommended.  I estimate there are circa 300 bed and breakfasts in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Since good value figures strongly in my selections I looked for the best  in different price categories. Link through from the "Reviews" button above and read about my Niagara-on-the-lake bed and breakfast finds.  I keep my list relatively short; you'll find I've chosen fewer than ten bed and breakfasts.  That means you need to book well in advance.  If everything you want is booked then ask the hosts for their recommendations.    I also suggest (having considered the many different advertising sites) that you go to the Chamber of Commerce listing which ranks its members (a goodly number of  bed and breakfasts) by price category -- a big help when there are so many. Here's the link:  http://www.niagaraonthelake.com/ShowActiveMerchant.jsp.  Of course http://www.bbcanada.com    is a good place to check as well and their listings are slightly different.  As well, there's a group of 120 or so B&Bs which is self-policed in that they don't acept any B&B where there have been complaints or problems.  The link is www.stayniagaraonthelake.com . And by the way I found a great bed and breakfast in Niagara Falls as well -- Lion's Head bed and breakfast.  Make sure you check out my review.

The Karen Brown organization offers a selection of travel guides for Europe which includes write-ups of bed and breakfasts by assorted reviewers.  Some/portions of the reviews are online but for full info they will sell you a book for whichever country you're interested in.   www.karenbrown.com 

Before I left for Costa Rica in 2006 I met artist Jan Yatsko in cyberspace. She lives in a small town near San Jose and runs an interesting tour.  If you're creative yourself you may well enjoy her insider's introduction to Costa Rica,  For more information see her website www.janyatsko.com  

 Watercolour by Elizabeth Berry (http://www.elizabethberry.com).
Illustrations by Barbara McGee, Audrey Caryi, Jane James and Mark Pettes
Website designed by DAS Software (http://www.das.ca)
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Note:  Janette Higgins also does landscape design consultations for hands-on gardeners in Peterborough, Port Hope, Cobourg, Bowmanville, Oshawa, Ajax, Pickering and Toronto. Check out her website at http://www.gardendesigncoach.com