Niagara Falls splashdown

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It was a fairly early start today as we wanted to spend the day at Niagara Falls and then head into Toronto from there. The breakfast at the hotel was pretty good and even had its own waffle maker which was neat. While eating Alex made a great comment about being inside Jake which was hilarious. The car seemed even bigger once I was sitting behind the wheel and typically I took a wrong turn straight away. After while though I got used to the size of the car, it helped that the roads were massive and it was essentially one highway to the border. The scenery had been great the whole journey through New York state and this continued for the rest of this journey. On the American side of Niagara falls we went through a couple of towns and villages that had seen better days. When we got to the border I stupidly asked which was the best way to get to Niagara Falls when the way was signposted. The woman at border control looked at me like I was an idiot and everyone else got a good laugh out of that.



The Falls themselves were absolutely spectacular and by far the best natural scenery that I had seen while travelling and was well worth the stop. As we were only going to be in Canada for 5 days and we all thought that the $500 dollars we had brought with us would be more than enough for that we decided to get the package deal to see all parts of the Falls. By the end of the day this would be something that we would later come to regret as $500 was nowhere enough for the 5 days. First up on the package was the rapids which was a short bus ride down the road, I saw the next hard rock on the way, which we had free access on with the pass that we had purchased. It was quite a lengthy queue as it was a small elevator that took you down to the rapids which could only take down a small number of people at a time. The rapids were really good and something that I would recommend doing when there. Next up on the package was the Niagara cruise which was a boat that would take us towards the falls and back again. There were repeated warnings about how wet it would be and we had to take a poncho as protection. The warnings were not wrong the power of the falls was unbelievable and I got completely soaked. I tried to get a video of the go pro but the water was so powerful I was unable to actually hold the camera in place! Jack had the best quote of the day: 'this poncho does nothing!'



After the cruise the next stop on the tour was the journey behind the falls where we took the tunnels that came out directly behind the falls themselves which was quite a surreal experience. There was a ledge on the outside where I got soaked yet again! Thankfully the weather was really good and it did not take that long to get dry. The final item on the package was a video on the creation of the falls which no-one was really that interested in seeing so we went to the hard rock so I could grab a t shirt and then stop off for a beer (which was very expensive so I did not have one). It was only a 2 hour journey into Totonto and again it was only 1 freeway going in. The closer we got to Toronto we started to see the CN tower appear on the horizon and by the time we got into Toronto itself you could see how ridiculously big it was. The next day we were going to be hanging off the edge of that building and now that it was in sight we were all pretty intimidated. The traffic in the center of Toronto was actually quite bad and in took a fair bit of time to get to the hotel. The hotel had its own car park across the way which had to be the smallest car park that I had ever seen, the car only just managed to fit in and there was not room for 2 cars to be going separate ways once inside.



The hotel room seemed quite good and it was from this moment that we would decide who would be in each room by chance initially with rock, paper, scissors but later on names out of a hat and the same for the single bed. We had arrived into Toronto with plenty of time to spare so decided that we should go out for a few drinks. Jake went to meet his Canadian friend and the rest of us went to get some food at the Hard Rock which we all agreed would be the only time this would be done. After hitting a few pubs which were not that great we were advised to go to a bar called Dukes. This was an excellent recommendation as the pub was great, it had excellent beer and good music as well as the sport on as well. Jack discovered a beer in there which he absolutely loved called Tankenstein but the rest of us though this drink was disgusting and could not see the appeal in it, we would continue to take the piss out of this beer! We spent a good couple of hours in Dukes but I did not want to drink too much as the CN tower was the next day and the last thing I needed was a hangover while doing the edgewalk! When I got back I read the guidelines and it did state there would be a breathalyser test to make sure no-one was drunk whilst completing the walk. I really hoped that I had not had to much to drink to fail that test the next day!

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