Niagara Falls and the end of our trip...

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Due to our delays (which have been up to ten hours) as we travelled across the country by train, we discovered that we had lots and lots of Via rail train credit. So for our eight hour train journey from Montreal to Niagara falls we could afford to travel first class. Was awesome we got food and loads of wine.

Niagara was much like I expected, a compleate contrast of the natural beauty of the falls teamed with a street of tourist attractions, tacky shops and a glittering shiney big wheel.
America is literally a bridge away from you in Niagara and I didn't realise that one of the falls is American and the other (the horseshoe shaped one) is Canadian. The bridge is named rainbow bridge and as you walk along the waterside on sunny days there is almost always at least one rainbow. There was one huge one and a faint one above it yesterday, very pretty.

We bypassed the wax museums, ghost trains and various other crazy attractions and spent our money only on the maid of the mist boat ride, which goes right into the mist of both falls. You get a fetching blue poncho to wear and from the path above the boat looks like its full of smurfs, but its worth it, was so much fun. Then in the evening the falls are lit up by really tacky coloured lights! First white, then pink and then different combinations of rainbow lights, but we kinda had to go see it for ourselves.
The whole scape is finished off by casino signs and a big flashing gateway that welcomes people that cross the bridge into America.

So then we got the train back tonight to Toronto, as tomorrow we fly out. We plan to head back to the Kensington Market bit of the city tomorrow, before we lug our stuff back via the subway and a bus to the airport.

My time in Canada though has been amazing, in the same time of five weeks we could have travelled some of Europe, but each place in Canada is so different its hard to believe they are all in the same country.
If or when I come back it will hopefully be in winter and I would love to travel much further north to Churchill and then onto Alaska and into the Arctic. but saying that Charlie and I are already planning to volunteer for working the Vancouver 2010 winter olympics.

And we saw one bear!!!

Back to boring England now, I expect its raining.

Lotsa love Claire


P.S Forgot to mention that Niagara is the squirrel capital of canada, there were so many squirrels everywhere and so of course we had to feed them :D

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