You simply cannot visit Toronto without seeing the famous Falls, at least on a first visit. Alan, being the administrator he is, looked up all the train times and travel options before the trip and found that it was a bit expensive to come here by train. Our Parisian friend, Antony, was with us and it worked out cheaper to hire a car than paying for 3 return tickets. Besides there weren't many trains during the winter season. The hotel arranged it all for us, so it was nice and easy.
The Falls are about 130 km/80 miles from Downtown Toronto
. Local friends told us the route and it was an easy drive along the Queen Elizabeth Way. It’s about the size of the M25 but you can only drive at maximum 100 km/h which is just over 60 mph. Well, I think I (Alan) was the only one obeying the limit. We were overtaken by countless enormous X-number of axels juggernauts. Good job we had a 4-wheel drive and felt safely cocooned inside.
Before you arrived at the natural wonder, you had to drive through Clifton Hill "entertainment district". Well, if I hadn’t made a wrong turning, we would have driven along the rather more impressive River Road, with the Falls to our left. All right, all right !! I didn’t see the sign early enough!! But we found the right path eventually.
Oscar Wild said that the Falls were “the second major disappointment of American married life”. But then Dickens thought that he had been “lifted from the earth and was looking into the Heavens.” So take you pick
. The roar of the water was amazing. The American Falls and Bridal Veils Falls are on the US side but the view from the Canadian side, looking at them directly opposite was better. The same was true for the Canadian Horseshoe. In a way it was good to visit in the off season as it wasn’t packed and there was plenty of space to take lots of photos and videos. We all agreed that the Falls were all incredibly impressive. 700,000 gallons (US presumably) per second (how did they measure that??) (=2649.78 l3/sec – thank you Android app!) of choppy turquoise water thundering over the edge down 200 ft (61m) was very mesmerising. The noise was tremendous. But the commercialised and Blackpoolesque setting with lots of fast food restaurants, arcades, tacky souvenir shops, horror/haunted house rides and more wax work museums than you can shake a stick at was a surprise. All this is largely the result of the Monroe film Niagara in the mid-50’s.
Nine miles/16 km north of Niagara Falls is Niagara-on-the-Lake
. It’s a pretty little town of Victorian houses. Alas, it had started raining and by the time we got there, it was pouring and we didn’t fancy getting wetter. The route in between the two places was full of vineyards, which was a surprise. We didn’t know that Ontario was a wine-producing region. Well, we did after we had read it in the guide book. But it was a surprise nonetheless. It appears that it is big business and the wine produced is highly regarded. The only way to verify is to buy some.
There isn’t much for the food correspondent to report on today. I’m sure there are good restaurants there but they weren’t on the main stretch of the town. We managed to find somewhere decent looking serving North American fares. It was all right, although the nacho was enormous – more than enough for 3 to share as a starter.
Niagara Falls
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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