Dreaming of lime gerbils in a cheese sauce

I spent a couple of weeks in Toronto for work a few summers back, and really enjoyed it. I was hanging around the university, which is pretty much downtown. There was lots of good food (especially Asian: authentic ramen, izakaya), and I had fun touring the Bata Shoe Museum. Not sure about other museum options, but in my experience Canadian museums have really neat Native American collections. It looks like the train between Toronto and Montreal is quite inexpensive, too. The downside would almost certainly be the cost of lodging-- I stayed in a campus dorm, which was cheap but noisy and bleak.

Based on random work trips, I can also tell you that Athens, Georgia has amazing food and lovely magnolias, as well as a pretty good music scene. I can't see actively planning a vacation there without a university-related reason to visit, but it does make me wonder whether there's someplace else in the southeast with an equally vibrant local food scene and a bit more going on in the vicinity.