Lindsay is the largest community in Kawartha Lakes and the only one with a real urban centre. The downtown is a four-block stretch of Kent Street between Cambridge and Lindsay Street, lined with red-brick Victorian shopfronts, a 1924 art-deco bank, and the restored 1893 Academy Theatre.
It is more workaday than picturesque — this is a working farm-belt town, not a cottage destination — but worth half a day. The Saturday farmer's market in summer is excellent, the Old Mill is a pleasant lunch spot on the Scugog River, and the Olde Gaol Museum tells the local history from a Victorian jail building.