Day 12 - Niagara Falls

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What a day!!! Got picked up @ 8:15 for our tour to Nigara Falls. First stop was a Winery for tasting at 10am!!! Winery was a teaching school and was opened by Prince Charles about 2 weeks ago! We got to try 3 wines. The last one was an icewine! So so sweet, they actually wait until the grapes have frozen completely (about mid - late December) and then they crush them. As the juices that make normal wine are frozen they just get the sweet nectars. Very very nice, but costs a fortune, because they can only make 1/10th of what they can out of a normal acre of grapes.

Next stop was the town of Niagara-on-the-lake. Very colonial style town, one small main street, with great little shops. Sort of like a country town.

Next stop... NIgara falls!!! There are no words that describe it. It is massive!!! The Canadian falls are the well known horse shoe shaped one and the others are the American falls. We got to have a beautiful 3 course lunch looking over the falls. Odd bunch of people on our tour. No-one on our table spoke for the majority of it. Finally started talking to them when dessert was served, 2 pom couples and an Italian. Turned out to be nice in the end, but none of them drank, so we looked like alco’s again! It started to rain a little and when we went outside there was a rainbow in the falls mist. So pretty!
We then went on a Journey Behind the falls. There is a platform 25 feet above the water level right next the edge of the falls. It was amazing! So much water coming over the edge, and so fast! Fantastic view of it. They had portholes, that were a walkway right out into the falls so we could stand behind and look out. Just a sheet of water, but amazing. It goes to about a third of the way round, but seemed to us to be longer.

Next we headed to the town next to the falls, Clifton Hill to wait till it got dark 5pm). It was full of commercialised crap for kids, Haunted houses, wax museums, game worlds and everything repeated about 5 times. We headed down to have a closer look at the American falls... still nice, but nothing compared to the Canadian falls. We were really happy that we made the effort to come to Canada, because from the American side you wouldn’t have been able to see it all.

When t got dark, we saw heaps and heaps of light displays for Christmas and for Disney. Some great works of art. Then as a complete surprise, the tour guide took us up to the tower that lights both falls and we were allowed to do it!! Sooooo exciting. There are about 5 lights on the American Falls and 10 on the Canadian Falls, and we got to change the colours on all of them. Was so cool... and we had the best view of both of the falls... Great way to finish the tour.
Made the 1.5 hour trip back to Toronto. I was stuffed, but because the weather had cleared up, Andrew wanted to go to the CN Tower (the tallest building in the world - because of its antenna height). Andrew surprised me and organised to have dinner up there in the rotating restaurant. Beautiful views of Toronto, because it is so flat we could see for miles and the town lit up so nice. Beautiful dinner too. Huge meals, Andrew had a 16oz steak, the biggest piece of meat I have seen on a plate for one! He did a good job of it too. Even though the tower closed at 10, we were able to hang around so we went to the observation deck and then went to the glass floor! NO WAY was I going near it. Andrew hesitantly went on it and in the end loved it.

Very long day and now I am exhausted, but unreal!!

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