June 2, 2011.
Well here I am sitting in my Niagara Falls hostel room just pick enough for four beds and four corresponding people. Yesterday I picked up Laura Cesa from National airport amidst a storm of heavy rain and loud hail. Not too long after Brett and Perri arrived from their 12 hour long day drive from Indiana. Oof. The whole gang was assembled and ready to go. Excited for the trip to follow.
Today began with 8 hours of driving and three different drivers. I started a Michael Chabon book on the way up, so the time passed pretty quickly for me. The check-in point at the border was super exciting, as we were almost overcome with anticipation. The border patrol interrogated the surprisingly shifty-eyed Perri about her possession of her mother’s car and her propensity toward firearms and mace. Nevertheless, we made it through and dropped off our stuff at the hostel ready for adventure. We asked the hostel worker for a dinner recommendation and were lead to a Caribbean restaurant located in a surprisingly deserted part of town for it only being a little after seven. The food was great, but spicy, and unfortunately my appetite was not there. But a headache was. Regardless, we all soldiered on. On the way we encountered a charming scene of a tourist trying to take a picture of a raccoon that was just out in the open. The raccoon won by chasing the poor man away. It was soooo cute! We got to see Niagara Falls lit up all pretty with different colors ranging from slime green to pretty purple. During this time we also waited for fireworks that were supposedly supposed to come at 10pm. Lies! We topped off the evening with a Ferris wheel ride for Perri, Brett, and Laura as I wandered the two blocks of super touristy disgustingness that I would never take my hypothetical children too.
And that was the evening. But before I sign off on this day, there’s one more thing. Gigantor has found her true home. During dinner we had discussed the giant wooden fork and spoon that hang in my room (don’t ask) and Perri swore to start sending me unusually large commonplace items. Well this evening we saw plenty of Gigantor sized objects, including but not limited to, a giant calculator a giant hamburger, and a giant dream catcher. Gigantor may have forgotten her true origin story, but I’m pretty sure the answer lies in Canada.
June 3, 2011
The main event for today was an hour and a half long, walk/trot trail ride that took us along the shores of Lake Erie. I rode Skittles the allergic horse. Poor Skittles is allergic to dust and sounded like he might cough out a lung while he trotted. He also made an excellent potential poster child for Jenny Craig. He had apparently lost a lot of weight before coming to his current home, so the whole back of his neck was one floppy fatty deposit. He was a nice horse despite a few attempts to smear me off onto a tree and a few sneaky forays into tall grass for temporary snacks. After the ride, we ate lunch at our first Tim Horton’s, and then headed straight to the Falls for basically the rest of the day. Our original plan had been to go to a place called the Cave of the Winds where, as far as I could tell (and I could not see the appeal), we would be pelted from up above with the majestic waters of Niagara Falls. Unfortunately, we realized too late that the Cave was (obviously) located on the American side and one of us didn’t have our passports. Instead, we walked along the falls from above, stopping every 10 ft for a new photo opportunity at a slightly different angle. We found a similar Cave of the Winds experience on the Canada side, but were put off by the $16 price tag. After some more walking around, however, we were pouted into submission by one of our travel companions and agreed to go on a different $16 adventure called the “Lady of the Mist” or something hokey like that. This included a boat ride that took us all right up into the business of the Canadian Falls. It was a little difficult to the see the Falls through the clouds of mist that enveloped our poncho covered bodies, but what we could see was pretty frickin amazing. I will not even try to explain the drama that occurred for the most of the rest of the evening. Anywho, we finished off the night with fire works that shot above the falls in bright, loud colorful formations.
June 4, 2011
TO TORONTO! Today started off as a pretty miserable rainy day, but with some awesome thunder. Consequently, we decided to see a movie that had come out the day before at a semi-nearby Niagara Falls movie theatre. X men First Class. I had seen trailers for it that looked super good and period piece like and it was a comic book movie, so Perri, Brett and I wanted to see it. Laura had less interest so she watched Bridesmaids at the same time we watched our movie. I can’t speak for Bridesmaids, but we all thought the X-Men movie was very good. After watching Thor with Perri and Brett (which involved a very out of nowhere romance and a quick personality transplant), X-men seemed completely character driven and all the better for it. I, of course, liked Magneto (the tortured villain), and of course the mutant aspect. But, on it’s own, the movie was also a good period piece, though with an altered timeline of the sixties’ Cuban Missile Crisis (that worked really well). After our two movies let up we stopped at a breakfast chain called Cora’s, then took our 1.5 hour drive to Toronto.
In Toronto, at night/evening we ate at a restaurant called Everest Place, or something like that. It had the feel of a super expensive trendy restaurant, but with affordable prices, huge serving sizes, and a surprisingly Asiatic feel too it. Then we wandered Queen St, a very promising shopping site for tomorrow, and topped off the evening with a bar. In said bar/pub we did like the Romans do. We watched hockey on TV and I drank Canadian Beer. No really the Beer was called Canadian. Then we came back to the hostel, and I wrote this. The end.
June 5, 2011
Today was our first, last and only full day in Toronto…and that may turn out to have been too little. We’ll see. For the first half of the day we split up into two groups. I accompanied Laura to the Toronto Science Museum, while Brett and Perri went to a semi-pretentious Bach garden and explored all of China Town. I had become psyched to go to the Science Museum when I learned there was a reptile exhibit going on with real reptiles and everything. Yeah. After completing a one-hour commute on Toronto’s subway and bus system I was confronted with the terrible truth that the exhibit opened on June 10th. So close. I knew they were all set up and ready for it b/c they were giving members a sneak peak. Stupid arbitrary start date! Anyway, despite this, and the disappointing lack of chemistry related science for Laura, we had some fun in the large building. We got a glimpse of outer space, saw a few creepy crawlies (including a duo of snakes), read about the human body, and tried to complete a variety of interactive tasks, some of which embarrassingly went straight over our heads. I think some were so simple that we over thought them.
After our fill of the Science Museum, Laura and I headed back, to meet Brett and Perri for lunch. We stopped in a Korean Grill lunch place and I started to recognize a pattern. So far we are having really good luck with finding restaurants of high quality, excellent atmosphere and cheap food. Our dinner from the previous night and the Korean Grill had great food for good prices. This is a nice relief after Niagara Falls. Though it fills me with a deep sense of dread that eventually we will pick a place that looks cheap, and actually is cheap. If you know what I mean. Lunch was followed with shopping on Queen Street. I made it to two comic related stores. The first almost makes me want to move to Toronto. It’s primarily a regular bookstore, but the prices were ridiculously cheap, and it was mostly new books. They were very light on DC graphic novels, but hey, cheap books! The next comic place was not as small and charming and a little threatening, what with the glass and plastic rap over most of the merchandise. I was still able to find something though. Oh and then we did not-comic-book-related shopping too. We then moseyed on over to the old town section of Toronto, which was pretty enough. For dinner was some less than perfect Indian food, and none of us were really hungry at all for some reason. Cough Cough—afternoon ice cream—cough cough.
To be continued...
I'm waiting breathlessly for part 2.
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