Mennonites, Falls and Islands
Directly following the Hoverd family visit, a couple of Wil’s friends came to stay with us. The boys all went canoeing in Algonquin Park for a week, leaving me home alone in blissful silence. I had a lovely week watching the new version of The Forsyte Saga (with Damien Lewis and Rupert Graves) on Netflicks. If you like a good period drama, it’s very enjoyable.
When they got back, we all went for a whirlwind visit to Niagara falls. We drove first up to Saint Jacobs, because Wil wanted to go to the Mennonite farmers’ market there. The market is huge, and way beyond just Mennonite farmers. It felt like there were thousands of people there – and a lot of the stalls seemed to be selling the usual flea market junk you see at so many other markets. It was a bit disappointing.
There were definitely Mennonites selling produce and other things, but overall it just felt like a big market, nothing special. I think actually the Byward Market in Ottawa is more interesting.
Between Saint Jacobs and Niagara, there was some getting lost, which added another hour or so of driving onto our already 8 hour driving day. However, we finally arrived at about 6pm, and checked into our hostel. The hostel was this neat Victorian building which used to be a doctor’s surgery and hospital. I could imagine the room we were in might have previously been a ward.
The boys wanted to see a movie, so we went down and watched Prometheus. I thought it was pretty good. Some plot flaws, but overall enjoyable. I actually can’t remember if I’ve seen Alien or not. I feel like not. After the movie, we dropped the car back to the hostel, and then walked into Niagara to have dinner. Walking through Niagara at night is kind of insane – it’s like a mini-Las Vegas, all lights and sideshows. There are three waxworks museums. Who needs to visit that many waxworks? It’s touristy to the max, and extremely tacky. We went and got ribs and wings, washed down with beers for the boys and alcoholic pink lemonade for me. The photos below were actually taken the next day, so you miss out a little on the mad atmosphere of the evening.
Mild panic in the morning as my kindle had a glitch and told me it was 10.30am. Wil and I had planned to be on the first sailing of the Maid of the Mist at 9am. I rushed into the shower, and then found out that it was actually 7.30am. Panic over. Wil and I walked down to the Falls and joined the queue for the boat, in plenty of time for the first sailing.
The Falls are amazing, and the Maid of the Mist very worth spending the money on. You get so close to the Falls, you can really feel how powerful they are. Of course you get a bit wet – even your stunning poncho doesn’t help with that completely – but it was quite a hot day, so it was really nice to be in the spray.
Working the blue poncho
Afterwards we went for a little walk along the Falls promenade, before hopping in the car to head to Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Niagara-on-the-Lake is a very cute little town surrounded by vineyards. Basically it’s like Martinborough – people come and hire bikes and ride round doing tastings. We went to a couple of vineyards and also had something off the Rotary Club’s Canada Day barbeque for our lunch.
We ate some of these PEI oysters at one of the vineyards - delicious!
Then, time for the drive home. We didn’t get lost this time, even though we did take a slight detour to do the Thousand Islands scenic drive. The Thousand Islands is a beautiful stretch of river that divides the US and Canada, which is dotted with lots (maybe not quite a thousand) of little islands. Lots of little (and not so little) holiday homes on the islands. I think I'd like a little island of my own.
