I'll be interested in seeing what Marty (from Australia) has to say on this subject. To be frank, backpacking during the dead of winter would have no appeal whatsoever for me. How did you plan to get to Florida from Toronto?

I would seize the opportunity to grab a winter seat sale ticket on Air Canada and high tail it out of here without leaving the airport (thereby eliminating the need for a *very* warm jacket required that time of year).

http://www.aircanada.ca/promo/2001sale/toronto.html (Prices are in Canadian funds.)

In fact, you've picked a time for your trip when we'll be in Italy so we won't even be here for a get-together, unless we can arrange it for the end of March.

You would need a warm jacket, a polar fleece vest, sweater, hat, scarf, gloves - and snow boots!

The Comfort Inn is reasonable and 1 km from the airport. http://www.hotelguide.net/toronto/data/h100037.htm or another page with the same hotel http://www.choicehotels.ca/servlet/displayHotelPageInformation2?hotelid=CN10 0&language=english But you wouldn't need a hotel if you were connecting to another flight.

At the very least, I would fly to Washington, D.C. and go south from there. We finally made it to Washington a year ago and there's so much to see and do and all the museums we went to are free. http://www.thetravelzine.com/washington.htm

No, your mobile phone probably won't work here and would be very expensive. I'm guessing that the cheapest way might be to purchase telephone cards at convenience stores.

Happy planning, Linda in Toronto