East Canada trip, Post 6: Niagara Falls

On Thursday, October 7th, we left London, ON, and headed to Niagara Falls. This was our last day with David and Kela, and seeing Niagara Falls together was a pretty awesome way to end the trip!

Niagara Falls are on the Niagara River on the border of Canada (Ontario) and the USA (New York). More than 6 million cubic feet (168,000 m³) of water falls over the crest line every minute in high flow, and almost 4 million cubic feet (110,000 m³) on average. That is an absolutely stupendous amount of water!!

We went to the Horseshoe Falls viewpoint on the Canadian side first. There are really no words to convey how awesome Niagara Falls are, so let's get straight to the photos!

A panorama showing the view from the Canadian side...

Falls and spray...

The Maid of the Mist...





Water, water and more water...











Enjoying the Falls...









And just so you can feel like you're really there, I made a video compilation for you (click the "four arrows" button in the bottom right corner to view it full screen)...

Were you expecting the Falls to be so loud?! That much water makes a lot of noise!

For lunch, we met up with one of David's uni friends, Rupee, who lives in Buffalo, NY, but ducked across the border to meet us as there are more restaurants to choose from on the Canadian side.

When we left the Falls and drove up the hill into downtown Niagara Falls, ON, we were absolutely astounded by the tacky touristy-ness of it all. There was Madame Tussaud's, Ripley's Believe It Or Not, Hard Rock Cafe, haunted houses, theatres, museums, amusement rides, restaurants, hotels, casinos, etc etc etc, all lined up one after the other. It was like Dreamworld, the Las Vegas strip, and Times Square combined. Completely overwhelming after the natural beauty of the falls, yet just metres away!

Here we are enjoying lunch and great conversation at an Indian restaurant with Rupee and her gorgeous daughter, Nor...





Walking back to the cars...





Then, we crossed into the USA in convoy with Rupee (a surprisingly quick border crossing), stopped briefly at her husband's office in Buffalo so he could see David and Kela, and headed to the American side of the Falls (the park with green grass that you can see in the above photos and video).

Here are a few photos (the tall buildings across the river are near where we were for lunch)...















So, to answer the question of which side was better, Canadian or American... I think the front-on view of the Falls made the Canadian side incredible, but getting to stand really close to the edge of the Falls on the American side was amazing. So, go to both!

Here's a Niagara Falls fact for you: 15 people have intentionally gone over the Falls in or on a device (eg. a barrel), and not all have survived. The first person to do it, in 1901, was a schoolteacher... a female one... on her 63rd birthday!!! She survived but said:

"If it was with my dying breath, I would caution anyone against attempting the feat... I would sooner walk up to the mouth of a cannon, knowing it was going to blow me to pieces, than make another trip over the Fall."

After we left the Falls, we farewelled David and Kela at Buffalo Airport and then checked into our B&B in the pretty Elmwood Village area of Buffalo, NY.



The next day, Friday, our flight back to Seattle (via Chicago) left around 4:30pm, so until then we spent a relaxing day reading in a bookstore, driving around Buffalo admiring the city's beautiful old architecture, and finishing up our road trip snacks in a riverside park.

And that was our excellent 2-week road trip through east Canada! David and Kela, thanks for joining us - we loved travelling with you!

PS. More photos in our East Canada road trip Picasa album.

East Canada trip, Post 5: Ontario

We didn't take very many photos during our 4 nights in Ontario, but here's what we got up to...

After driving 6 hours from Montreal on Sunday afternoon, we dropped David and Kela at David's friend's apartment in a suburb of Toronto (David studied in Ontario, so he had lots of contacts for this part of the trip!), and then drove another hour to Hamilton. There we stayed with Aaron and Michelle and their gorgeous sons, Bentley and Ethan. They had moved away from Vancouver last October, so it was great to see them again!







On Monday we headed into Toronto for some sightseeing. But first, we picked up a friend from Guyana, whose month-long visit to her many Ontario relatives happened to coincide with our trip. Long-time blog readers may remember Theresa from some 2007 blog posts - yes, we met when we all lived in England! Getting to see her was yet another wonderful coincidence on this trip!

After leaving the car at the apartment where David and Kela were staying, the five of us walked to a bus stop and took a bus and then a train into downtown Toronto.

Here's a sign I noticed at the bus stop...



After lots of walking once we were downtown, we eventually made it to Kensington Market, a historic multicultural neighbourhood full of quirky shops.

We had a yummy lunch at a Thai/Hungarian (!) restaurant - that's Theresa next to me...





Had a look through some of the shops...





And spent the rest of the afternoon shopping in downtown Toronto (where I found my dress for the upcoming wedding).

For dinner we went to David's choice (a favourite from his uni days): Marché Restaurant, where we met up with Garth and Becca (on the left in the photo below). Garth is the son of Bayfield and Roma, whom we stayed with on PEI earlier in the trip. We had met Garth when he was travelling in Australia 5 years ago, so it was great to see him again and meet his wife. They live in the nearby city of Guelph, and Ben and I had a thoroughly enjoyable time staying with them for the next two nights!



Marché is a fantastic European restaurant chain that is like a big fancy foodcourt. The food you order is tracked via swipe card that you pay the total of upon exit. I decided on a strawberry, raspberry, kiwifruit, maple syrup and lemon sorbet crepe (Ben had German sausages), and had another fantastic "small world" experience with the girl who made my crepe...

I could tell she was an Aussie, so I asked where she was from, and she said: "the Sunshine Coast; do you know it?" I said: "yeah, I lived in Bundaberg for 4 years". She said: "Bundaberg?! I lived there for the last 2 years and I worked at the local paper!!"

The next day, Tuesday, David and Kela decided on a quiet morning in, so Ben and I drove into Toronto and checked out St Lawrence Market. This is a big indoor food market that sells everything from souvenirs to scarves (I got one) to cheese to wine to meat to imported sauces to hot meals. We enjoyed a three-course lunch: perogies; crackers with Wensleydale and Cranberry cheese (our favourite cheese from England - that we can also get in Vancouver); and Turkish delight and Jelly Bellies!





When we left the market, it was raining, so we spent the next few hours reading books in a nearby branch of the Toronto Public Library. We have been known to do this before on rainy travel days!

In the late afternoon, we met up with David and Kela again, and spent a while sipping hot chocolate in a café in the historic Distillery District. This is an area of former distilleries that are now home to cafés, galleries, theatres etc - popular with locals and tourists. The café we were in was once a pumproom!

That night we met up with Garth and Becca for some improv comedy in Toronto. Unfortunately it wasn't as good as the two other times we have been to improv, but it's a bit of a hit and miss activity when you're not familiar with the company!

The next morning, Wednesday, the four of us headed on to our next destination: London, ON. This is the city where David studied, and we had lunch with some of his friends from those days, sitting around a farmhouse kitchen table that he had sat at many times before...





Then we headed into London to the home of our hosts for the night: David's old roommate Steve and his wife Rebecca. They have a Wednesday night tradition of taking it in turns to host dinner with some of the other young couples in the area, so we went with them to dinner at the home of their friends Sarah and Brandon. There were about 10 of us there - it was a really delicious dinner and a tradition we rather enjoyed getting a taste (hehe) of!

After that we headed back to Steve and Rebecca's place for the meeting, and afterwards we sat around looking at all three couples' wedding photos and just chatting. Here we are with our hosts...



The next morning saw us headed for Niagara Falls. And since we definitely took lots of photos there, that will need a new post!

PS. More photos in our East Canada road trip photo album.

Off to east Canada...

From September 24th to October 8th, we'll be driving this >3000km route through some of Canada's eastern provinces:

Our travelling companions on this road trip are David and Raquela, whom we met in Barbados in May (see this blog entry). We're looking forward to a great holiday!

Check back here in mid-October to read all about it. :)