Niagara Falls!

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On Thursday morning we started the 4 hour drive to Fenwick (a little town near Niagara Falls) to stay with Chris and Dave's friends Judith and Phil for a few days.

The drive down was rather interesting as we saw a lot of a Mennonite people, who are an Amish sect - took a few pictures but felt a bit cheeky! They were on their horse drawn carriages and working out in the fields, it is odd to think that people still exist in such a simple way in today's society. We stopped at a Tim Horton's for some iced cappucinos (have had way too many of these this week) and then travelled on down to Guelph where we stopped for some lunch. On the second part of the journey down the temperature reached 38°C , and it actually felt like walking into an oven when getting out of the lovely air-conditioned car!! There are lots of vineyards in the Niagara region and we stopped to one called Featherstones to do some wine tasting. Found a wine I really like called Gewürztraminer (this is Beth writing if you hadn't already guessed). We arrived at Judith and Phil's around 3pm and happily got straight in the pool! It was ridiculously hot and even though the pool was about 30°C, it still felt nice and cool compared to the air temperature! Their house was beautiful and had a lovely long garden with a pond, an outdoor pool and long deck (all houses in Canada seem to be amazing...). We had ribs and salad for dinner, and then relaxed in the air conditioned house. We bought our Niagara Falls tickets the day before as we got an adventure pass thing which was $45 and included all the Niagara main attractions plus a shuttle bus, and worked out as really good value.

We spent all of Friday at the falls. We got there bright and early at 9am (30°C already) and went on the first Maid of the Mist boat of the day (no queues!). The falls are so impressive at first sight and being right up close to them on the Maid of the Mist is awesome!!! We got completely soaked which everyone was very happy about as it was so hot, and all the other tourists on the boat seemed to cheer every time we got sprayed with mist! We spent the rest of the day walking up and down and looking at the falls, going on the other attractions; Journey Behind the Falls (viewing platform right next to the falls and tunnels behind so you can see out), Niagara's Fury (4D ride thingy with 360 video and water and shaking platform - I realise this isn't a good description!) and White Water Walk (boardwalk alongside the class 6 rapids further down from the falls). The Maid of the Mist is definitely the best thing there and the town of Niagara Falls itself looks like a cross between a Florida theme park and Blackpool - all very touristy and a bit gawdy - but there are some beaufitul bits too.

That evening we all went out to dinner and we all had fish and chips with cups of tea - felt like a very English dinner! The restaurant also had trivial pursuit question cards in the middle of the table which I thought was rather cool - so we spent most of the evening failing to answer these, as they were all really hard questions about Canada.

We left on Saturday morning and took a longer drive back to Kincardine as we passed through Niagara-on-the-Lake (really beautiful little town) and stopped for a lunch and saw more amish people! Arrived back in Kincardine early evening and went down into the town to see their Saturday evening parade which is a scottish bagpipe band (Kincardine are very proud of their Scottish connection).

This morning we drove north to Southampton and rented a tandem kayak! We spent two hours kayaking down the Saugeen river which was really fun although the river was shallower than usual due to the lack of rain recently and therefore our kayak kept getting stuck on rocks! Quite amusing.

We are off to Barrie tomorrow to stay with Sian and Brad, and also spending two days in Toronto by ourselves, and then off to Ottawa on Friday.

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Photos

Close!
Journey Behind the Falls

Soaked
On Maid of the Mist

Out for dinner
Tanned and freckly

Dave, Aled & Chris
Kincardine evening

Kayaking!
Down Saugeen River

Comments

[chris Evans]

fun in Kincardine
Just wanted to know if I could do this really and wanted you and Aled to know that we soooooo enjoyed having you stay with us and wish you all the best in your travels I will be watching your blog as you go along

[Stephan]

Beers
You can't mention 8 beers and then not tell me what they are!! We've just booked to go to Sicily for a week from 6th August - sure that will be very hot too. Hope you're still enjoying yourselves.