The bright lights of the big waterfall

An early start today to beat the traffic out of Toronto. We dropped Justin at work and headed straight to the line for the drive through at (where else?!) Tim Hortons. The true Canadian experience and we were in and out in 9 minutes. We learnt some new lingo. Double double means two milks and two sugars. A tea biscuit is in fact a kind of corn bread muffin. And sometimes people drink their coffee or tea with pouring cream. Who knew!

Breakfast sandwich, hash brown, and coffee at the ready we set off. Niagara is only 1.5 hours from Toronto and we had a pretty smooth ride there. Past some industrial towns and many roadside Tim Hortons. We pulled into a pretty empty car park lined on one side with life size dinosaurs and a mountain that spewed fire and had a waterfall on it, and that’s just the mini golf! Clifton Hills is the ‘tourist area’ that leads down to the Falls themselves and it's like one big theme park. There’s bowling, arcades, a Ripley’s believe it or not and also numerous rides! All signaled with large characters on the buildings, music and neon signs!

Once we got down to the waterfront area and the Falls there were beautiful manicured gardens and a lovely walkway. A complete contrast. As the weather was gorgeous we took our time wandering around and admiring the Falls. There’s a lot of water! It’s always up for debate as to whether the American Falls are better than the

Canadian Falls or not... my personal opinion is that the American Falls are pretty and the Canadian Falls are impressive but that’s just me. What is bizarre is looking across the river and thinking that’s America just there! Land borders still intrigue us.

Of course there are many tours and walks and trips to choose from to experience the falls up close. We decided on the Behind the Falls option which allowed us to walk along tunnels 200m along behind the Falls themselves and see the two entrances out to the Falls, as well as standing on two observation decks very close to the edge of the Falls. The sheer volume of water and the force with which it moves is certainly impressive. The yellow biodegradable souvenir ponchos were no match for the spray, we all got pretty wet! 20% of the world's fresh water passes over the Falls so it’s no wonder we got wet! And yes with this much water moving through here, they utilise it for power. They have moved the power station further down the river from the Falls but it did used to be right at the Falls. The Falls supply a quarter of the power used in New York State and Ontario.

We were well in need of some lunch and a beverage by now so we found a picnic table at the Brewery restaurant for a beer flight and some meatball sandwiches. I’m still shocked sometimes by the amount of food! I was easily defeated by only half the sandwich after insisting we needed some corn chips and guac too... there was a guy on guitar entertaining us too. Despite the wind it was a great lunch in the sun to set us up for....

Dinosaur Mini Putt! The competition was fierce, there were places when the waterfall was blown into our faces and the fire breathing mountain scared us but this time Crom came out on top... by one shot! The wager was icecream but no one felt like one so we headed back to the car.

And got stuck in traffic... took us over two hours to get back but we were still in time to grab a hot dog (with zucchini relish and olive options!) to take into the Blue Jays game with us. The Rogers Center has a retractable dome which was open so we got a fantastic view of the CN Tower. Unfortunately the Blue Jays were not so fantastic tonight against the Tamper Bay Rays (feat. Matt Duffy!) but we did see a few great home runs.

We had a pitt stop on the way home for some beers and darts before stocking up on pizza before bed. Still no raccoon viewings...