Our first full day here was a quite mix. We started by watching ships in the canal lock (of course we did), before driving over to popular eating spot called "The Queens Coach". I say popular because it was packed.
Breakfast and lunch places are very common in Canada, and many follow a certain pattern, and clientele for that matter. The restaurant will generally be dark wood, as was this one, and the patrons will be of a certain advanced age, as was they were this fine morning at the Queen's Coach. It was packed, too, but we were efficiently ushered to a free table and menus arrived forthwith. The serving staff were very busy, but coping, until two of them collided and upset a few tumblers of cranberry juice on the white outfit of the unfortunate lady at the end of the long table they were sitting at. A brief altercation between the staff ensued, but they all quickly turned their attention to the now pink-suited customer. A free meal was offered, and I suspect that the rest of the party would have been offered a similar deal, if only the party hadn't been one of at least fifteen people. I think the wet customer was very unhappy, as she had a right to be. I hope the manager offered her a little more than free meal.
Our breakfasts, vegan platters for the vegans and a standard sausage, egg and home fries for me, was ordered and delivered in quick time. My coffee was regularly topped up, too. Because my meal was the default breakfast, it was $7.95 before tax, which is really competitive, at least compared to Chatham. We were happy bunnies as we left.
Our next port of call was a farm shop on the Niagara River Parkway that hosted a real church in a garden shed, or at least that's what it looked like to me. It's a show stopper and gets people in the shop, but there was a constant stream of tourists having their photographs taken one the church step. That's step in the singular of course, it being a very small church.
From there we motored over to the port of Dalhousie, just west of St Catherine's, to visit a couple of lighthouses there. The run over there took us through the famous Niagara wine producing area, and the rows of vines were present for miles around. Did you know that warm air is wafted over the vines in the winter to stop the plants from freezing? I didn't, but I do now. If we were more winey people, we'd have loaded the car with local wines, but we're not so we didn't.
The lighthouses were a bust, for Charlie at least. They're not big stone affairs, but rather wooden structures built to mark the harbour entrance. The old, disused but preserved one was all fenced off, and Charlie took against walking to the end of the breakwater to see the active lighthouse, so it was back to the car with very little to show for our efforts.
Just across the harbour, though, was a very interesting attraction that we decided to visit, namely a lovely, preserved Merry-Go-Round, just by the beach at Dalhousie. It was $3 to park, and the parking lot was busy with beach goers, but the Merry-Go-Round was excellent. It was housed in a purpose-built roundhouse, it was every bit the classic fairground ride, with prancing horses, mirrors, and fairground organ music. The fee was a five cents a ride, but if you didn't have five cents they let you ride anyway, and Emma, DW and Charlie all had rides. I'm a bit of a martyr to motion sickness, so gave it a miss. But what a great thing for the people of Port Dalhousie and its visitors! I didn't take any photos of the Merry-Go-Round because pointing a camera at lots of other people's children really isn't the done thing these days.
After a fairly long stay there, we motored back to the hotel for a break, and to watch ships in the lock again, before going almost all the way back to Dalhousie to visit the Lemon Tree Restaurant in St Catherine's. The Lemon Tree's menu is 100% vegan, although you'd never know it from the choices. I won't bore you with the meal details, but it was fabulous and all four of us had to carried to the car in wheelbarrows afterwards as we'd eaten so much.
The night was still young, so we drove over to Niagara Falls, yes the one with the waterfalls, the tourist tat, and the tourists. The Falls area gets ever more commercial and ever more busy, particularly given that its the summer holidays We drove right down past the falls, but baulked at paying $36 for a car park when would only be there for an hour or so. We turned the car around, drove past the falls in the opposite direction and headed away, along the Parkway again. When we reached the Whirlpool and the Aerocar attraction (a big cable car that runs across the Whirlpool in the Niagara River), we pulled into the parking lot to see what was what because Emma and Charlie wanted to ride the Aerocar. While were there, a couple of WeGo branded buses came and went, and, realising that the parking there was free and we could access the Falls area by catching the bus, we made an on the spot decision to buy a couple of 48-hour bus passes for everyone. As if to prove that it was a brilliant wheeze, we boarded the bus and rode the thirty minute bus journey right back to the Horseshoe falls.
The bus, a noisy and quite uncomfortable "bendy" bus, duly dropped us at the Table Rock Centre and we alighted to give young Charlie his first glimpse of the mighty falls. For a five-year-old he looked quite impressed. As usual there was a lot of wet mist coming up from the base of the falls, but for some odd reason, it suddenly started to rain huge amounts of spray, so much that thought it was rain. Like so many of our fellow gawkers, we were soaked in seconds. We retired from the fray, (or should that be spray?) to go inside the shops there and buy a couple of plastic rain ponchos and in my case, a $30 baseball cap to keep my specs clear. We had hoped to stay to see the Falls all lit up as the night drew in, but it was so busy and so wet that we decided to call it a day and head back to the car on the WeGo bus. We did at least see the lights, all LED and fancy now, but it wasn't yet dark enough for them to make an impression on the falls themselves.
Back at the hotel, we watched another ship transit the lock and finally crashed out at about 11pm. A busy day for sure, but will we match it tomorrow?
