Colonial Forts And Waterfalls

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Well the last week has certainly been a busy one as we seem to have been moving around a fair bit. We started our move across to the east side of Canada, after leaving Lake Louise, Banff, on Monday the 13th, and after a 4 hour coach journey on the Greyhound bus we arrived in Calgary later that evening. Calgary itself is a fairly large city, famous of course for the Stampeed which occurs every July, however because we turned up in May there wasnt a whole lot happening and there's not much else to see really. We had only planed on staying at the hostel there for one night as we were just there to catch a plane out of Calgary airport heading to Toronto on wendesday (we planed to stay at the airport the following night as our flight was pretty early wendesday morning, and we're trying to save as much money as we can now, and with accomodation being the most expensive thing it seemed like a good idea!)

So we spent our first (and only) day in Calgary wandering around the city which isn't too bad. The stadiums for the stampeed are massive (we didn't get to go inside we just saw them from the outside) and the city has some cool streets with quite good locations for shopping (the shopping centre even has an indoor park with ponds full of carp and trees with birds flying around, it was weird as we only found this by chance) and eating out. We've decided we would like to come back one year when the rodeo is on, as it sounds like a pretty good event and it would be good to see what the city is like when it's so lively!

So we spent our next sleapless night at the airport and made ourselves comfortable. Jade was happy as soon as she found a Tim Hortons (it's just like a cheap coffe shop, just a really good one!) and found out that it was open 24 hours! I think this will be one of the things we miss when we leave Canada as we have pretty much lived in these as we've moved across Canada just because of how cheap they are! We took off on our flight around 9:00 am the next morning, and i think we both fell asleap straight away, i woke up as we were about to land, but the flight was only 4 hours so we didn't get to toronto at a too bad a time which was good as we then had to find our hostel, and toronto is huge compared to the other citys we have been to in canada so it took a bit of geting used to being back in a fast paced city again. We eventually found our hostel though, which is a nice little place in Downtown. Again we stayed at the Hosteling International as we are both members and get $4 off each for every ni8ght we stay so it means we get to save a little bit, it's probably one of the cheapest hostels in Toronto aswel before the discount so it all works out.

The first day here we just wandered around Downtown, and theres definately a lot more to see and do here, the city also has a different sort of vibe, it certainly feals a lot safer here than some other places we've been to in north america in the past! ie no crack heads every few metres down the street and no gangs hanging around outside the hostels with baseball bats so it must be good right? We also decided to go and cancel Jades phone contract which had taken so long to get in the first place, as we thought we were going to work so needed a phone, and found out when we got there that she was being investigated for fraud by the phone company as the salesman who helped her had made up an address for the contract as neither of us had residency over here, so it was a good thing we went in when we did! It then took even longer to cancel it as jade had to call up a number of people and explain! Our second, and last evening here before we moved on yet again to Niagra, we decided we just wanted to chill out so went to the local cinema and saw the new Iron Man film (not very touristy i know! but hey it's a good film!!)

So Friday afternoon was the day we checked out of our hostel in Toronto and again boarded the Greyhound and headed for Niagra Falls which was only 2 hours away so it wasn't too bad, and we ended up staying in the run down end of town, the new hostel was only a 20 minute walk to American and Horseshoe falls though so it ended up being a good location. we managed to get there nice and early and found out that every Friday and Sunday night they have a big fireworks display over the falls so we headed off down there to see that and have a walk around.......Niagra falls town itself isn't too bad (think of Blackpool before everything closed down, with an american theme and a couple of casinos thrown in) so it was quite a lively place as it seems to be a big tourist thing to do.

On the Saturday we once again went down to the falls and got on the Maid of the mist, one of a number of small boats which take you right up to American Falls and then right into the mist and pretty close to Horseshoe falls which was really good and really worth the money, it was only $12 each so not bad.......we even got a free poncho woohoo, which did nothing to stop us being soacked but it's the thought that counts i suppose, and then after we were able to walk right the way along to a place called Table Rock which goes right up to the edge of Horseshoe Falls, and again got wet, but the views were amazing! it's definately one of the natural wonders of the world and would reckomend visiting, all in all it was a pretty good day.

There wasn't a great amount to do at the hostel itself so that evening we ventured to the end of the nearest high street (which seemed to be deserted no matter what time we had walked down there beforehand) to really nice cheap bar the Grand Central, really good food and cheap drinks so we stayed there for most of the night before heading back and preparing ourselves for what ended up being one of the longest bike rides i think either of us had done......Sunday we rode for 5 hours in total to get to Niagra on the lake which is a small town a little way away with one of the oldest British forts from the late 1700's from our old Colonial days. These forts seem to be every where in Ontario as it's where most of the fighting took place when we were at war with the Yanks......it was quit surreal every time seeing a huge British flag flying above the forts and seeing the massive influence we seem to have had on Canada. Fort George, the one we rode to in Niagara on the lake was pretty cool, we walked around for a while and watched some of the re-enactments of some Canadians dressed up in old British army uniforms. By the time we managed to get back to the hostel we were both knackered and i think it'll be a while before i can talk jade back around to geting on a bike again! haha......then it was time to get back on the coach again and head back to Toronto where we are now for the next few days where we will stay for Jades birthday and get an early morning train on Wendesday up to Montreal.....so we shall see how we get on in the French parts as we have been told they dont like the British much, and even more the Canadians so it should certainly be an experience!

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