Still in Niagara - day 4

Our final day, with one more thing to do before we go home. OK, more than one thing because we have to watch a couple more ships transit the lock. Well, that's the point of staying at the Inn at Lock Seven, isn't it?

Packed up and ready to leave well before check-out time was a new and exciting experience for me, especially with a party of four. But, there we were, getting ready to drive away with more than an hour spare. How on earth did that happen?

We were heading to Hamilton and the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. Having just written that out, I have realised that "Warplane" is a made up word, and it's proper meaning could easily be a surface upon which a war is fought. But we all know what it really means, it's War 'planes, as in Aeroplane or Airplane. Pedantry is not yet dead, so I shall abbreviate it to CWHM.

The museum is a collection of aircraft, many of which still fly, and a workshop from which these aircraft are maintained. It occupies a purpose-built hangar in the corner of Hamilton International Airport and is quite the place to visit.

The entry fee is very reasonable (a little over $14 for an adult), and for that you get a nice little interactive display about Royal Canadian Air Force people over the years, before they let you lose in among the aircraft in the main part of the hangar. I was very surprised to find that we could walk under the Lancaster Bomber, one of only two still flying, and the Douglas DC3 Dakota, both of which regularly take to the skies. Indeed, for a fee, you can fly in them yourself when they're scheduled to fly. This particular day both the Lancaster and the DC3 were resting, but outside on the apron, a de Havilland Canada Chipmunk and a North American Harvard were up and running and taking lucky punters (albeit members of the museum) for half-hour trips over Hamilton. That's the true meaning of interactive.

It was excellent to be able to walk in among the aircraft, although obviously not to touch them. The place was teeming with museum guides, old geezers who really enjoyed their work showing visitors around, and on this day, parties of children getting special tours with said guides, and all for $14. 

Charlie loved it, too, and was able to sit in a Canadair CT-114 Tutor and twiddle the controls for all he was worth, all under the expert eye of a museum guide of course. He didn't realise it, but it was the same type of aircraft that the RCAF Snowbirds Aerobatic Team fly, so I was moderately excited.

There was a nice little cafe on site, too, which looked right out onto the apron, and we sat watching the two excursion aircraft prepare for flight while we had some lunch. Indeed, it being such a nice day, they had the patio open, which was the outdoor part of the cafe and gave you not only the view but the sounds of the aircraft as well. DW and I sat for a while out there and watched as both the Harvard and the Chipmunk buzzed the airfield and then came into land.

We spent a happy couple of hours wandering around, and even spent a little money in the gift shop, before we started our homeward leg of the trip.

There's not too much to be said about driving the 403 and the 401 that hasn't been said before. Too many drivers are complete numpties, they drive too fast and too close, and it's little wonder that there are nasty crashes almost every day. Thankfully we arrived home having avoided all that, but there'd never much pleasure to be had driving on Ontario's 400 series roads, and I'm always relieved to be off the darned things

Three nights, four days, quite a lot of money spent but everyone enjoyed it. The weather was good, if a little warm, and despite the drenching at the Falls, it didn't rain once. I think we can file that trip away as "Successful".

Still in Niagara - day 3

 Today's plan was hit the Falls and make some use of the bus passes we'd bought. But first breakfast. Everyone was up late, but we seemed to get moving fairly quickly. When I'm on these jaunts I tend not to keep checking on the time, unless there's something specific to aim for, and today it was just making good use of the time. We'd decided to make our way over to the Queen's Coach again, a wise move given the availability of vegan comestibles, and the fact that it was only ten minutes from the Aerocar parking lot on the Niagara River Parkway.

The Queen's Coach was not quite so busy, so a little easier on my ears. The vegans went vegan, and I opted for the cheap default breakfast again, which I knew was going to negate the need for lunch. The bill was still fairly reasonable for four people, so I think the Queen's Coach gets a thumbs up from all of us.

It really was a short hop to the Aerocar parking lot. Because it was free parking, we weren't sure how busy it was going to be in the middle of the day, and had a backup plan if we couldn't park there. The main, and very large parking lot for the Falls was our fallback, made possible because the WeGo bus pass allowed us to park there without paying the $36 fee, which I thought was quite the deal. As it turned out, we didn't need to drive into the Falls because there were plenty of parking spaces at the Aerocar lot.

The young ones booked Aerocar car tickets for the afternoon, and we all piled onto a bus and let it take us into the chaos of Niagara Falls on a summer Thursday. The bus was slow and very full, although the driver seemed to be equipped with superhuman patience as he exhorted people to move down the bus, and to get able-bodied people out of the "Mobility" area, to allow people with mobility issues to sit. There may even have been a wheelchair loaded, I couldn't see from the back, but either way he had everyone boarded and charged headlong into the heavy Falls traffic.

At the Table Rock Center, the shopping mall that sits just feet from the edge of the Horseshoe Falls, it was manic. There were lines for the toilets, lines to buy tickets for the various attractions, and above all noise. I had to retreat to the outside and wander around, marvelling at the Falls and at the all the people milling about rather have to deal with the assault on my ears. To be frank, I wouldn't normally attempt Canada's most visited tourist attraction during the summer, but when there's a school-aged child in the mix, there's no choice. That said, it is part of the overall experience, and the crowds are very International. Tourists from China, Japan and Korea flock to the Falls, as do Americans (the US is literally just on the other side of the river), and of course, Europeans. I saw footy shirts being worn, from Chelsea, Arsenal, and Shamrock Rovers of Dublin. As I said, a truly international gathering.

We sauntered up towards a position opposite the American Falls, but didn't get very far. We watched various iterations of the "Maid of the Mist" boats driving loads of poncho-wearing tourists into the spray at the base of the Horseshoe Falls, and we took in the sights.

What we didn't do was head up Clifton Hill, which is a street that runs up from the river into the Hotel District. It's Canada's answer to Blackpool, or Pigeon Forge, a street so full of tacky diversions and ways to relieve you of your money that I would pay good money just to avoid it. Yes, I'm getting old and grumpy, and maybe Charlie will appreciate it when he's older, but for this trip, we kept away from the place. The strip of land along the river on the Canadian side, and pretty much most of the way to Niagara-on-the-Lake, is controlled by Niagara Parks, a quasi-Governmental organisation that still has some standards. Yes, the attractions along the river are expensive, but all of the outlets are Niagara Parks branded and you know that some of the money is going back into maintaining the place and not into some wealthy person's already bulging pockets. The Parks also limit the worst commercial excesses, and if you want to know just how bad the Falls area could be if left to private enterprise, just visit Clifton Hill.

While I'm on the subject of who runs what, I have to say a word about the WeGo buses. There are a couple of routes, one along the river and one up the hill into the town, and they run every fifteen minutes during the day. The vehicles themselves are the lovely "Bendy" buses, and while fairly new and full of innovate things like wheelchair ramps and "kneeling" suspension, they did scrimp a bit on the seat padding. I'm certain they're operated by a local bus company, but it's all under the auspices of Niagara Parks again, which keeps them honest with scheduling and the like. When we visited last time, a long while ago, the buses were the green and white Parks buses and they stopped running after Labour Day. Just take that in; Canada's most visited attraction and the transit system stopped at the beginning of September. That was old thinking, where it was imagined that everyone went back to work in September and nobody visited. Thankfully Niagara Parks has moved into the twenty-first century now and the WeGo buses run all year round, albeit on a reduced schedule away from the summer. There's also the link up with the attractions and the parking, where you can by one ticket that covers everything, which is another innovative move, although I have to say that it was long overdue.

Anyway, back to our day. We decided to buy some tickets for the "Behind the Falls" attraction, a walk in the tunnels behind the cascade, and out onto a deck right at base of the falls, pretty much where the Maid of the Mist boats travel to. We had to time it so that we could get the kids back to the Aerocar for their trip over the Whirlpool, then come back to the falls for the tour, and that involved yet more bus rides. We were getting value from the tickets we bought.

We were early for the timed ticket entry for the Aerocar, so hung about the gift shop and any shaded areas we could find, because it was a very warm day. They wouldn't let the kids in to the ride until 3pm, and even then it was a twenty-five minute line up before they could get on the Aerocar, but the they did get on, and I think they enjoyed the ride. For those that don't know, the Aerocar is a big cable car that runs across the Whirlpool, the circular pool in the river formed by the river taking a right angle turn at that point. The river does fairly rush through a narrow gap before entering the whirlpool and then lurching off towards Lake Ontario. When you remember that Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron and Erie all drain through this little gap, you can imagine the quantity of water that's gone through there to create the whirlpool.

Aerocar trip completed, we boarded the bus again and made our way back into the Falls area. On the way, the bus diverts from the Parkway into the town of Niagara Falls and the combined GO railway station and bus terminus. I have to say, and others on the bus said it too, that two blocks off the Parkway and you're into a seriously run down area. Boarded up buildings, empty lots where buildings have been pulled down, and even Queen Street, the main shopping area, looks as run down as any little Ontario town. Then, two blocks east and you're back on the razzle-dazzle of the Parkway. 

The tour of the tunnels under and behind the Falls was self-guided (although we knew that), but involved a forty minute line up where you collect a yellow plastic rain poncho and line up for the elevators. Part way along was a young man in charge of a camera, whose was taking pictures of people with an exciting backdrop. I didn't want my picture taken but was nudged into position by one of the youngsters. I kept my hat down over my eyes, too. The photographs were available at the end of the tour, but we passed on that, and I didn't even take note of the cost, which I'm certain would have been exorbitant.

Down in the tunnels and out on the terrace there were too many people to make it enjoyable. That said, standing at the base of Niagara Falls is quite the experience. The noise and the spray frame the view up as millions of gallons of water continually cascade over the lip of the falls. We'd done the tour before, but even with all the people, it was well worth doing it again.

Back up above the falls, we made for the bus stop and yet another journey out the Aerocar parking lot to collect the car. It's worth pointing out that all the attractions have good public washrooms available, and that I put down to Niagara Parks influence; I doubt commercial enterprises would be so keen to provide such things for free.

In the car, we opted to go straight back to the Lemon Tree restaurant in St Catherine's for another vegan food-fest. Second time around it didn't have quite the wow factor, but it was still a good way to end a busy day. Of course back at the hotel, there were a few ships to watch through the lock before bedtime, ad I felt the choice of the Inn at Lock Seven was inspired if only for the canal excitement.

I would be packing up day tomorrow, and an end to the trip. There was one more excursion, though, which I'll document in the next post.

Still in Niagara - day 2

 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?

Not Airstream Camping, but Hotel Staying - Niagara - Day 1

I wasn't sure that I wanted to document this trip, being sans Airstream, as it were. But, as the day has been long and interesting, I thought it worth a few words.

We had planned a trip with Emma and Charlie to the famous Inn at Lock Seven, which is in Thorold and sits right beside the mighty Welland Canal. It actually overlooks the lock, which is nice.

We had wanted to visit the area again, but this time for Charlie's benefit, and we could incorporate lake freighters, trains and the Falls into one trip. We settled on the lovely but dated Inn at Lock Seven, not only because of its panoramic view of the canal, but also because we'd been before in August 2009, on "Honeymoon 2", the little post wedding trip that supplemented the longer pre-wedding trip to Nova Scotia. The fact that the Nova Scotia trip was supposed to be the post wedding trip is a distant memory now. It's complicated and involved Canadian and British Law.

Anyway, I digress. We packed lightly for our four day, three night trip, and set off only fifteen minutes behind schedule on a bright day, albeit that the smoke from wildfires elsewhere in the great country was drifting over and making everything seem hazy. Just a few yards from home, looped back to get get some cushions from the other car, but hey, it's a long trip.

The 401, the big bad highway to Toronto, wasn't too awful, and we made good time to a pit stop at the service centre at Woodstock. While at the Service Centre I abandoned yet another attempt to buy a cup of coffee from a Starbucks outlet after my presence at the counter wasn't acknowledge by any of the four employees behind the counter, let alone any of them actually offering to serve me. It's too bad, it really is, especially as I had an identical Starbucks experience at Toronto Airport a few months back. Why do these places employ people who have no idea of how to operate in a customer service role? Oh yes, I remember, pay minimum wage (which is minimal where the job involves gratuities) and get the worst of the worse. 

Back on the road and feeling a wee bit slighted that I hadn't been able to get coffee, we made even better time getting to Aldershot Go Transit station, where Charlie and Emma were going to board the curiously slow Go train into Toronto. Now here's a funny thing, especially if you're a Brit. The Go Trains outside of the Lakeshore East and the Lakeshore West routes only operate in the rush hours. There are stations at Niagara Falls (well, a few miles away from Niagara Falls), and Hamilton, but none of them offered any practical service outside of the morning and afternoon rush hours. I mean, Niagara Falls is one of Canada's biggest attractions, but you can't get there by train from Toronto (or anywhere else) during the week unless you travel in the early morning or late afternoon. It's absolutely bonkers. There are a couple of trains at the weekend, but vast swathes of the Go network shutdown for most of the day. I just don't get it. The upshot of all this was that we were dropping the kids at Aldershot on the Lakeshore West line, where there were two trains an hour, and they were heading up into the Big City to ride the TTC, that is the Toronto underground system (also buses and streetcars). I still struggle with the fact that it takes seventy minutes to cover the 58 kilometres from Aldershot to Toronto, which averages out at less than 60 kilometres an hour, or 37 miles an hour. It doesn't compare well with the speedy British trains we had used earlier in the summer.

Anyway, kids dropped off, DW and I made our way first to Bloomers Bakery in Burlington to stock up on vegan doughnuts and to get me a cup of coffee. The shop was on a very busy road, with only minimal on-street parking, and I wondered just how all the businesses along there ever attracted any customers. Having fed our faces, we made our way to the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW), the expressway between Toronto and Niagara, for a run into St Catherine's, not far from our intended base for the next few days at Thorold. Unfortunately, the QEW is one of those roads that runs almost at capacity for most of the time, and even the tiniest issue creates four lanes of backed up traffic in no time at all. We found a couple of issues this Tuesday afternoon and ended up in stopped and crawling traffic for miles. It's interesting to watch all the people who were in a hurry lurching between lanes and racing, as far as they could, up dead end lanes and then having to fight to get back into the traffic, all to advance six car lengths up the road. I guess I had been like that once, or at least a bit like that, but not any more, it's far easier to just go with the general flow.

We did roll up into St Catherine's with enough time to get some lunch, but the trip took us about thirty minutes longer than planned. As soon as we left the QEW and dropped into St Catherine's, all was peaceful and calm, and while it's a busy little town, it seemed so much less fraught than being on the highway. We found the restaurant, Rise Above, and sat to enjoy some plant-based lunch. We seemed to hit the rush, but the young woman serving was super-efficient, and was getting everyone served quickly. As a counter to the awful service in Starbucks, she saw a woman come in the door and immediately called over "I'll be with you in a minute"; see, that's how you do it.

Our lone server wasn't perfect, though. She didn't write our order down and forgot that I'd ordered a side dish (and that's becoming a thing for me, too). But unlike the nonsense in the pizza place in Manchester where the server not only forgot my starter, but then said I hadn't ordered one, this server recovered brilliantly and said "Oh yes",  scurrying off to get the missing dish. She was tipped well.

After lunch we motored over to our accommodation, only about ten minutes away, and checked in. The Inn at Lock Seven is dated, that's undeniable, but it does occupy a commanding view over Lock Seven on the Welland Canal, and all the rooms have a patio or balcony on the canal side of the building. It's a North American, 1960's concrete monstrosity that they can't do much about, but it's clean and reasonably priced and I'd take it over some of the overpriced but more modern places in Toronto any day. We settled in, took in the view and readied ourselves for a run back along the QEW, to Aldershot GO station, to pick up the kids.

It was rush hour, and there had been a collision on the QEW, so it was a long crawl again, although the frequent glimpses of Lake Ontario certainly made it more interesting than looking all the other vehicles stuck in the jam. By the time we made the station, we were running about thirty minutes down again, and now we had to deal with all the seriously stupid people in their cars who had come to pick up their loved ones from the station as well. There's a multi-lane drop-off point but no, the entitled numpties here had to park in the Fire Lane and part way across what was left of the access road, so effectively the entire drop-off area was blocked and locked solid. It's rank stupidity in my book, and I can't imagine having to do that every day.

Despite the look of the traffic on the QEW, the alternative routes didn't look great either, so I opted for the straightforward option, and headed back to Thorold on the QEW. The traffic had, thankfully, abated significantly and while not the quickest run I'll ever do along there, it wasn't stopped or crawling along.

We managed to get back to the hotel in time to watch one of the big bulk carriers negotiating the lock in the canal just in front of us, which was odd because it had just started negotiating the locks below lock 7 as we were leaving for Aldershot, so it had taken a long time to get up the mountain (which is canal-speak for negotiating the locks up the escarpment). Maybe they stopped for dinner. 

Then fairly soon afterwards, another bulk carrier started down the mountain, using the full lock of water the previous ship had left behind. It was getting dark(ish) by this time, but it was great to see the ship all lit up, descending into the lock as the water was drained out.

We had, of course, been using mobile apps to track what ships were likely to enter the canal, and we'd taken on a newer and better one than we'd used before called Marine Traffic. With the free access you don't get all the information that you could, but it beats the constant stream of ads we were getting on the other app. I noted that there was a ship out on Lake Ontario and given that its destination required it to transit through the canal, I hoped we'd see it in the morning. The canal is, of course, a 24/7 operation, but I didn't want to be getting up in the wee small hours to watch the ships, so I didn't look to see if anything was due through. 

Then it was bed time. As I said, a long and busy day, but interesting for all that. Lets see what tomorrow brings.