September 17th: Yup, That's a Lot of Water

We slept in a bit the next day and eventually dragged ourselves out of the apartment to wander around Toronto a bit. We eventually made our way all the way up to Casa Loma.

This used to be someone's house; it's a museum now and you can take tours inside (which we decided to skip). I couldn't imagine living somewhere like this - it's huge!

We wandered around a bit more and eventually wound up grabbing lunch at a gastropub near the apartment. It was a very duck-themed lunch...we had duck sliders and duck poutine. It was all really good.

After lunch we made a quick stop at the apartment to grab the car and my camera, then drove out of the city toward our stop for the afternoon...

...Niagara Falls! We figured since we'd be so close it would be silly not to go check it out.

The barge on the right side of the picture has been there since it was wrecked in 1918. Crazy! It got swept downriver and caught on some rocks, and according to the Wiki article it took 17 hours to rescue the two men on board since they clearly couldn't use a rescue boat because of how close it is to the actual falls.

We lucked out again with the weather...it was absolutely beautiful and there were rainbows all over the place from the mist.

You could see the Maid of the Mist boats doing their tours...they went pretty close to the falls. That one is Horseshoe Falls, the bigger of the two.

We could easily see over to the US side. We were so close that my phone thought we were still in the US and I was actually able to make a phone call and use the internet without roaming. We didn't bother crossing the border, though...the view was great from the Canadian side, so why bother?

The American Falls; Bridal Veil Falls is the smaller section of falls on the right. They're a bit smaller and really rocky at the bottom.

There is a path that stretches the whole length of the falls on the Canadian side, so we walked from one end to the other. There was still a bit of time before the sunset, so we decided to go grab dinner while we waited for it to get dark.

When we first got to Niagara I thought, "Ok, it's really pretty, but why the heck was this a honeymoon destination? It's just water!". Then we walked back away from the falls and I immediately understood. It was like a combination of a NJ boardwalk and Vegas...there were carnival games, wax museums, silly attractions, and souvenir shops. We walked a few blocks and wound up having a really good dinner at a restaurant that also made their own wine.

We got back down to the falls just before sunset. We'd heard that there was some sort of light show after dark, so we figured we might as well wait for that, too.

These people all had the same idea.

We didn't have to wait too long; as soon as it started to get dark they turned on the spotlights.

It was neat; the colors slowly changed, and all of the falls were lit up.

We hung out for a little while, then made our way back to the car and drove back to Toronto. Bye, Niagara!  :)