Toronto and getting wet at Niagara Falls


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North America » Canada » Ontario » Niagara Falls
August 19th 2008
Published: August 19th 2008
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The bus journey from Boston up to Toronto started at 5am. We got the bus from Everett to the subway and then the subway in to the centre of town and the Greyhound station. Our Greyhound bus left at 7am and was due to arrive in Toronto at 20.55. It started off fine and our first three stops and driver changes were fine, everything ran on time, but then we arrived in Buffalo. We arrived 10 minutes after our scheduled arrival time at 17.55 and we were due to leave at 6pm, but due to the utter incompetence of our driver and his faffing around, we didn't leave until 19.30. 15 minutes later we arrived at the Canadian customs. Most of us were through within half an hour but after an hour there were still 4 people holding us up, a mother and her two young children from Jamaica and a gypo man. The gypo man took the longest and I don't blame the Canadians for not wanting him. He looked like a big hairy gypsy who had spent some time on an Indian reservation - Alex's description. He wore no shoes and looked like he wanted to smoke the world's supply of cannabis. At 20.10 we finally left customs, 15 minutes after we were due to arrive in Toronto, so things weren't going well! We finally arrived in Toronto at 11.40pm and made our way to the hostel.
The hostel we stayed in was on Bathurst Street and only a few kilometres from anything we could want to see. Our first day in Toronto we wandered round Markham village, did some window shopping on Bloor St and had some lovely Thai food for lunch! Day two we went to Toronto's first Post Office, learned how to write with quill and ink and sent a couple of letters. Then we went to the Distillery District, had some lunch in a microbrewery before heading to Honest Ed's in Markham village where they have the world's supply of tat and useful things for ridiculously low prices.
The next day we caught the Greyhound to Niagara Falls. We are staying in a lovely hostel near the main street in Niagara Falls which resembles a tacky and cheap version of the strip in Vegas (minus the Casinos) or an upmarket (meaning more Neon) version of the strip in Magaluf.
Today we were looked at like we were crazy for suggesting that we were going to walk more than about 5m (apparently Canadians are like Americans in their inability to walk any distance!) and then headed off to walk the 3km to the Niagara Falls whirlpool. We then walked back along the length of the Niagara River up to the horseshoe falls. We went on the Maid of the Mist boat tour, where you get on a boat, wearing a fetching see-through blue poncho with a ridiculous number of other blue people and head into the thick of the mist from the horseshoe falls, it's like standing in a windy rainstorm.
After lunch we walked out to see the Old Scow, a boat which ran aground on some rocks a loooong time ago and hasn't moved since, we also took a few photos (lots) of the falls, both the bridal and horseshoe falls, from ground level and from up the Minolta tower. Tonight we plan to take it easy and wander along to see the falls lit up at night and then come back to have a good nights sleep before we head back to Toronto tomorrow.

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