Let's Do Niagara Falls!

 

We called an Uber to get us to the Marriot City Centre Hotel for our True Experience small group tour to Niagara Falls. 

Sasha is our guide

Apollo was the driver, and Sasha was the guide.  We learned that Toronto in Mohawk means "the place in the water where the trees are standing."

We stopped at a rest stop on the way down.  In the center of the rest stop was this large picture of Multnomah Falls!!! I wonder what the story is about that.  Maybe there is a Canadian Falls that looks just like Multnomah Falls.  I asked the tour guide and she did not know.  In Toronto, if you order a double, double at a coffee shop it means coffee with 2 sugars and 2 creams.

We drove on towards Niagara on the QEW or the Queen Elizabeth Way.

Close to the falls, there is a whole area of typical amusement park kind of attractions.  Tacky.  Casinos and other attractions. I guess this really bothers some people.  

The flowers are still in full bloom

The America Falls with a lot of rocks at the bottom, The small falls to the right are the small Bridal Veil Falls.  Wow! 

Stunning.

Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side.  See the boat going into the mist.  That will be us.

We heard a lot about the erosion and how the falls are gradually moving westward.  It is not eroding as quickly now because of the water that is being siphoned off to divert it to the power plant.

There were only 13 in our group so Sasha did not have to work too hard to keep us all together.

Sasha, our guide

Sharon, Jeanne with her head down, and Kris.  They handed out these red rain things. They looked pink to me. They are not very attractive. But they were effective.  

We had to go down an elevator and through a tunnel to get to the Hornblower Cruise Boat.

For the American side, people must walk out to the end of this platform to get a good view.

Or they can hike down the side to get to the water.

Sasha and her boyfriend.  He had just flown back from Poland to surprise her for 'Take-your-boyfriend-to-work Day' ;-)

As we were leaving the boat from the American side was heading out.  Note, that all the people had blue rain gear, instead of red.

I stood up on the upper deck near the front.  I wanted to get wet. Some others in our group did as well.  Sharon, Jeanne, and Kris stayed on the lower deck thinking that they would not get so wet.  On this trip EVERYONE got wet.  I guess it depends on which direction the wind is blowing. It was so much fun.

Sasha taught us an acronym to remember all of the Great Lakes, unfortunately, they are not in the correct order.  HOMES: Heron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior.  I guess it should be SMHEO (west to east) 

This picture doesn't really show how wet my pants are.  Luckily, I wore sandals. Maybe they will be dry by the time I need to pack them tomorrow morning.

We all gathered back at the van to head out to lunch at the Table Rock Centre.  

Our whole group opted for the lunch.  We had broccoli soup, a choice of chicken, cod, or ravioli, and then an apple crumble for dessert.

I had the chicken.  It was good. I wasn't impressed with the mashed potatoes or green beans.

The apple crumble would have been better if it had been served warm.  The food was OK but not great. 

More views of the falls from Table Rock.  Because of the direction of the wind, all the mist from the falls was blowing our way.

We continued to drive up the Niagara River gorge.  Technically I guess it should be called the Niagara Strait.

Aerial Tram you can ride across. 

Then we stopped at the largest functioning floral clock.

The smallest church.  It holds 5 people (bride, groom, pastor, and 2 witnesses).  There is a similar church we saw in Washington near where Nathan worked one summer.

We stopped at Niagara-on-the-Lake.  We spent an hour in this cute little tourist town.

We just wandered around dinking in the little shops.  It was fun.

We passed through a lot of wine-country

There is some black netting under some of the grapes.  I don't know why.  I think it might be to protect the grapes that will be used for iced wine.

Then we had our 2-hour drive home.  They let us off at the first hotel stop.  We had tried to figure out if there would have been a better stop for us.  We took an Uber back to our apartment.  We got back at 7 pm.  We started getting organized for the trip home in the morning.  We did some packing.

For dinner, we ate up some of our leftovers.  We could not quite finish them all.  We also had cheese and crackers.  We finished our wine.  No one had the energy to go buy another bottle, so we all went to bed early.

Our essentials.

  I scheduled a Beck cab ride for 8:30 am.  This has been a fabulous time in Toronto.  As usual, it wasn't long enough.