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Published: February 4th 2009
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Via Rail style
Lok enjoying the Via rail journey, after the shower had been fixed. With a tinge of sadness we left Winnipeg and jumped on Via Rail for a 39 hour rail trip to Toronto. While this might sound ghastly, it was made all the better by being able to be in sleeper class. A bed made for you every night, a shower and three cooked meals a day. All we had to do was read, sleep and the proverbial. And we were the youngest there by around 20 years. Travelling by land doesn’t really get much easier than that. Having said that, apparently the trains are European and not really made for Canadian conditions. The shower drain in our car froze closed at one point when Catherine was in it, sending water overflowing all over the floor. Then in the evening the toilets froze and wouldn't flush. They have a tech that rides on the train and he has some heating guns/ elements that he uses to thaw things out to get them going again. None of them seemed too surprised when we told them what was going on. It creates employment I guess.
Toronto greeted us with snowy slush and salted paths that managed to infiltrate every part of our clothing from
CN Tower
Our view of the tower as the $21 per person admission seemed a bit steep. our mid calves down. Canada’s biggest city is well big, and while the weather wasn’t treating us with love, the cab drivers were. Toronto has some of the friendliest taxi drivers we have ever come across, who kindly informed us about where to get the best coffee and doughnuts 24 hours a day, and where in the City to avoid because that’s ‘where all of the crack-heads hang out’. There is a fantastic multiculturalism that seems to be thriving here. News readers and television presenters on commercial networks are from visible minorities. Hello Australian television networks...
After a couple of days of wandering around Toronto and wondering where the hell everyone in this huge city was (Note. they’re all running through the heated subterranean mouse maze beneath the city pretending like winter doesn’t really exist) we headed to Niagara falls. Although in winter the falls carry significantly less volumes of water than in the summer months, they are still very impressive. So much water and in the winter the mist from the Falls floats across, settles and then freezes on the surrounding trees, fences and buildings, creating icicles everywhere.
Apparently one of nature’s greatest wonders isn’t enough to
entertain and amaze people, so Niagara Falls is surrounded by cheesy tourist attractions and chain restaurants - think haunted houses, amusement arcades, Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood. Little did we know when we planned our trip that Niagara Falls was the haunted house capital of North America. Honestly, how many of those things do you need in one place (Catherine and Lok suggest none would be the best answer, but that is just a matter of opinion). In the Niagara downtown area, away from the tourist mecca, we came across one of the most interesting diners we have ever been to. Simon’s is just around the corner from the HI hostel and purports to be a newsagency/diner. The owner is a bit of a collector and his newsagency/diner is his storage shed, so the walls are no longer visible and the boxes storing the various decades of paraphernalia have somehow become the walls. Sounds horrible, looks off-putting, but is one of the best places in town. We had the friendliest waitress, were given Niagara Falls pins by the owner as a keepsake, were invited to sign the guest book, and chewed the fat with some locals who chose to
Are We In Vegas?
No, we are at one of nature's great beauties. come in and sit at our table rather than one of the three empty tables available. We think we gave ourselves away as tourists when we ordered our coffee from the waitress. The locals just walk in, go to the counter and pour their own coffee before taking a seat and thinking about what they might order. It was better than being on Cheers and on top of that, we also got a great fry-up at a bargain rate.
After you've done the important bits of Niagara Falls - visited all of the haunted houses and maybe even seen the falls - the Daredevil Gallery in the IMAX building is a great way to spend an hour or so. And better yet, it's free (well you're probably supposed to watch the IMAX movie, or at a minimum, buy something from the gift shop, but after you've paid to go through all of the haunted houses, who has the money, right?). They have stories about all of the idiots and geniuses who deliberately went over the falls, as well as some of the contraptions they used in their endeavours. We challenge you to read all of the stories and not
wonder, if only for a fleeting second, maybe I could make it over the falls..........
Back in Toronto, the Art Gallery of Ontario has only recently been re-opened after a Frank Gehry designed re-development. We took advantage of free Wednesday evening admission to check it out and got some Canadian culture. It was worth going to look at the building and we learnt that Canadian artists were as inspired by their winter and the outdoors as Australian artists were by the outback - Not necessarily representative of how the majority of people live their lives in the respective countries, but a part of the national identity nonetheless.
After all of this cold and wet weather, it was time to act like Canadians and get out of this place for a while. Goodbye snow, hello Cuban sun.
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