September 11th & 12th
On Friday we hired a car to go and explore Niagara falls. On the way we stopped off in the picturesque village of Niagara on the Lake where we had some delicious cakes to tide us over until lunch. This is a historic little town, full of independant stores and which is famous for its annual celebration of the work of the Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw.
We enjoyed our lunch at a veiw point overlooking the river Niagara with the USA on one bank and Canada on the other before moving onto the falls themselves passing the hydro-electric station on the way.
On arriving at the spectacular falls I was a little shocked at how touristy and commercialised it was (don’t know why though, they did the same sort of thing at Lands End although on a much smaller scale!). We were also surprised at how close you could get to the falls and how close the cars passed (although this is North America where car is king).
We took the Maid of the Mist tour from the Canadian side, past the American falls and right into the middle of the mist of the Horseshoe or Canadian falls. We got very wet and the power and noise of the water flowing over the falls was awesome, you certainly get a better perspective of the strength of the currents from down below. It’s a wonder that people have fallen in and survived, but they have.
After our trip on the Maid of the Mist we mooched around downtown Niagara and checked out the Fallsview Casino Resort (no gambling though!). There’s nothing much to do in the city unless you’re into things like Ripley’s Believe it or Not and the Guiness World Records museums, which are quite expensive for what they are. There are however some nice landscaped gardens on the walk alongside the falls.
We waited until 8.30pm when the falls were illuminated with coloured lights. This was quite spectacular and definately worth hanging around for. All in all, Niagara falls were well worth the day trip, it’s just a pity about all the other stuff that’s been dreamt up to part tourists from their money.
Saturday was quite a relaxed day spent wandering around the city. We started by going up to the Parliament Buildings where we sat for a while in the park just enjoying the sunshine.
Then we went onto Queens park, behind the Parliament Buildings and on up to the Royal Ontario Museum. The Yorkville area is star spotting central at the moment with the Toronto International Film Festival going on, so it was very busy. I spotted Angelina Jolie, but unfortunately it was just a photograph in the hotel! Couldn’t be bothered to stand around on the off chance, so we continued on to the university area, which is massive, the university campus just goes on and on.
Saturday evening and we took a stroll along a buzzing Lakeshore, enjoying the street performers with their patter, and even taking a quick look around the vegetarian food fair which is taking place, a free taste of yummy chocolate was followed by tasting a really vile hemp paste which I had thought was green pesto (that’ll teach me to check what I’m tasting before diving in!).
The CN tower is lit up a different colour each night, but tonight it really couldn’t decide what colour was best and started with red, going through every colour of the rainbow and back to red, quite stunning!
In all we worked out we walked about 7 miles today and our feet are a little tired tonight, but since we’re on a bus for 13 hours tomorrow evening I think they’ll have time to recover!