Who knew I could write so much about just 4 days in a Canadian city? Ha, I guess that’s why my overseas journals are sometimes 100 pages or more long. I like to write.
So it’s Saturday morning and the weather is still hot and muggy and my hair is still as wild as ever. I’ve given up on it. We had our hotel breakfast and walked down the hill to the Wego and decided to take it to the end, or, as far as we could. There was only us and another couple on the bus and the driver was very chatty and told us lots of interesting little touristy tidbits, like the police station is the second oldest in Canada. I couldn’t find any info on that anywhere, but the building is beautiful in any case.
We decided to get off at the end of the line and take a picture of the floral clock. It contains over 20,000 plants that are changed up twice yearly. The clock works and has Westminster Chimes that ring every 1/4 hour. I was a bit discouraged that we would have to wait 20 minutes for the next bus as there is nothing else to do there but gaze at the clock, but the bus driver said that since there were only the 4 of us on the bus, and she hadn’t had to make any stops, she was about 4-5 minutes ahead of schedule, so if we wanted to hop off, take a photo and hop on again within that time frame, we could continue ‘home” on the same bus! Bonus! And as I took the picture, the chimes chimed, so bonus for that too.
On the return trip we decided to “do” the White Water Walk. To get to the elevator you have to walk through (“surprise!”) the gift shop and then you get on an elevator that takes you down approximately 7 stories, and then follow a 75 metre tunnel (man, this place is riddled with tunnels….one strong earthquake and I’m sure everything would collapse) and you exit onto a boardwalk that is about 1/4 miles long and has incredible views of the Niagara River and their Class 6 rapids. It was amazing!
Class 6 rapids are considered “unsurvivable”, which I didn’t know, but you can certainly see why. The waves must have been 8-10 feet high in places. I don’t think a short distance would be unsurvivable, but these went on for what seemed like a mile or more.
Branching off from the boardwalk are a couple viewing platforms that allow you to get even closer to the breathtaking water flowing by at a speed of 48 km/hr. These platforms provide some of the best photo opportunities that I have seen yet.
I wonder if anyone else ever gets the urge to fling themselves off of cliffs or ledges or edges of things? When I am up high, I seriously want to leap off of things. Balconies on boats are the worst, but these viewing platforms were a close second. I think I was a bird in my prior Buddhist life. Really.
It was mesmerizing; the spray, the sound, and the lack of people. The colour of the water was such a perfect blue. The other side of the gorge (that you see in the pictures) is the USA. The border is down the centre of the river.
After we finished wandering here we went back through the tunnel, up the elevator, through the gift shop and decided to go to Clifton Hill for something 100% different.
It was so fun! Extremely touristy and totally a place to take your kids, or your kid-like self. It’s like a giant, tacky, fair with all the trappings. Dinosaur mini-golf, go-carts, a midway, all sorts of things like wax museums, zombie attacks, mirror mazes and an absolute plethora of places to eat. It also has Canada’s largest sky wheel! That’s where we headed first. It was supposed to be an 8 minute ride, but ours was much longer, maybe because half the seats were empty? All I know is that after every revolution Steven was deflated when it didn’t stop. He does not like heights, and he made me not move to take pictures. I tried to move as gently as possible, but he was having none of it. 😮😊. Thank goodness our car had air conditioning and music, so he could close his eyes and pretend he was elsewhere.
Satiated after that, and feeling the need to walk some of those calories off, we walked around the area and ended up in the Midway, buying tokens and playing all the silly games where a lucky person might win a crummy stuffed animal. It was really hot outside and the Midway was all indoors with powerful air conditioning and it made me laugh because almost every person in there was in their 40’s-50’s-60’s and more, with children being the odd exception. All these grown men playing Skee-ball and shooting tin cans at the Shooting Gallery and trying to grab a stuffie from the Claw Machine! Couples in their 70’s sitting in the 3D machines, laughing hysterically, it was awesome! It was like a Chuckie Cheese, tickets flying out of machines and no one (including me) had a clue what to do with them. Such a fun day!
We ended up walking back to the hotel, he had a hot tub, I had a rest in the room (all that Midway action…hahahah) and for dinner we walked up the street to My Cousin Vinnie’s and had a good Italian meal outside with live entertainment. I had tortellini, he had a seafood pasta.
We stopped in at the casino on out way back, but I guess all the people we were not on the streets during the week were all in the casino on this Saturday night. It was so crowded and noisy that we had to leave. I think every stag and stagette party in Ontario was there as I have never seen so many tipsy women wearing “Bride” and “bridesmaid” banners and groups of guys trailing after them. I’m pretty sure there was crying in bathrooms and much vomiting.
We watched the fireworks instead, and even that was crowded as there was some sort of concert happening in the park area by the Falls. It was an East Indian festival and the band was excellent. I love Hindi/Bollywood music, and it reminded me so much of the wedding in India I went to a few years back. Made me a bit maudlin to be honest.
And then we walked up the hill and went to bed. What a great day!
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