Our first trip…

The Mr and I took our first trip away since moving to Canada last weekend, for our first wedding anniversary (awww). There were some GREAT bits and some downright crappy bits…

We decided on the spur of the moment, that we wanted to go away for our anniversary to celebrate it a little bit more excitingly than staying at home watching Netflix (aka a normal weekend) – because, how often will we celebrate our FIRST wedding anniversary!?

So… I set about planning us an amazing weekend away and Robin even managed to get a day off work so we could make a proper trip of it. The highlights would include Toronto’s architecture and food markets, and two days exploring Niagara Falls.

On Friday, I picked Robin up from work at 6pm, which became 7pm because driving on the ‘ahem’ wrong side of the road, on the ‘erm’ wrong side of the car, in the snow/sleet/rain, in the dark is HARD and hella scary…! I was on the edge of my seat and had a wide eyed look of terror/concentration Robin has never seen. We kept each other awake, stopped for the loo and a break, swapped drivers and… eventually arrived in Toronto (our stop for the “night”) at 4.37am. 10 hours of driving in conditions neither of us had ever driven in left us hollow, and we were technically only supposed to be in our Airbnb till 10am. We set our alarms for 9.30 to maximise shuteye and hit the pillows. I didn’t sleep a wink, but after a warm welcome from our host Bobbi, and a generous offer to stay till 1pm (thank you!), a hot shower and a STRONG cup of coffee we were ready to get on our way.

From our short stopover, Toronto seems like a cool city – one of the bonuses was walking in a shop and being greeted with ‘hi’ instead of ‘bonjour’ made it feel a bit like home. Highlights included driving into downtown Toronto and visiting the Gooderham Building, a peculiar wee thing built on a triangular piece of land right in the centre of town. It’s often photographed as an iconic Toronto landmark and I wanted to see it up close.

After that, we stopped by the St James Cathedral which was a beautiful building, with stained glass everywhere and cool turrets and spires on the outside. They were setting up for a funeral so we couldn’t stay long.

Then we walked over to the St Lawrence Markets for a taste of the best Toronto has to offer. Truth be told, we were feeling so gross after being awake for 24 hours straight by that point, we walked through, took some photos and left. Its a huge building full of meat, fish, vege, and fruit markets, as well as some cooked food stalls, bakeries and souvenir shops. Had we been feeling on top of our game, I’m sure it would have been delicious – next time!

We then got on the road and headed for Niagara. Seeing as GoogleMaps had lead us so astray on timing the previous night, we bargained for a much longer trip, but it ended up only taking us just under two hours to get there, which was great! We had time to take a slow drive along the river and drive by the falls before meandering our way to our next Airbnb, which was IMPECCABLE! Cleanest, tidiest place I’ve stayed in using the app ever. They provided us with towels galore, comfy beds with clean, nice smelling linen, board games, Netflix on our private TV, breakfast food, first aide stuffs, a fully equiped kitchen… wow, such a lovely place to come to after such a rollercoaster trip.

We had an hour ‘off’, which included unpacking and lying on the bed staring at nothing, and then we headed out to see the sunset and find a bite to eat. We ended up in a slightly random Italian place and had pizza and pasta surrounded by tourists and local families, went back to our place and collapsed in a heap.

Sunday dawned and we slept till 10, eventually making it to the day I had planned. We had purchased the a WonderPass each, but should have just paid for the activities individually, as in Winter most of the attractions are shut or have limited hours.

We began by experiencing the Journey Behind the Falls- this is well worth doing! You are taken from the surface of the falls, down 38m in an elevator, to a viewing platform where you can see the American Falls, Bridal Veil Falls, and the incredible Horseshoe Falls, which are directly to your right. At this point it was around -15oC, so with the spray from the falls and the cold, our fingers were numb pretty much instantly. We could then walk along a tunnel that traverses behind the falls and has viewing portals at two points directly behind where the water falls. The first one was blocked by frozen water and snow, but the second one was really amazing – 85 million litres of water falling right on front of you isn’t a sight you see everyday, and the roar and rumble that the water makes is able to be felt in your bones. All up, we spent about 2 hours down in those tunnels taking photos and reading the history of the falls, and by that point, we were both essentially numb all over.

We then wandered down to Bird Kingdom, because the Butterfly Conservatory was closed (the only thing I actually wanted to do, other than the falls 😦 ) This ended up being really interesting, I got to hold a rainbow macaw – surprisingly heavy – and we had the opportunity to feed some very tame rainbow lorikeets. I also took loads of photos on Robin’s camera, which he let me loose on!

After realising the time, we then scooted over to the Skylon Tower, where we had booked a table in the restaurant for our anniversary dinner. We went up 175m in a glass walled elevator (not my idea of heaven, but amazing views) and were sat overlooking the American Falls. We ordered cocktails and our meal, which was nice enough, but not worth the price tag – a common downfall of tourist destinations. We were able to go upstairs to the viewing deck after our meal to see the light show on the Horseshoe Falls. After that, it was back to our Airbnb and off to bed.

Monday morning arrived at 6am, with the dulcet tones of our alarms – sunrise photo expedition here we come! A quick shower, breakfast and coffee and we were packed up and ready to go. I have to say watching the sun come up over the falls was one of the most breathtaking things I’ve ever seen. The colours on the sunlight reflected in the mist rising from the cascading falls were spectacular. Robin got the shots he wanted and we jumped back in the car… on the road, homeward bound.

Thank the Lord the roads were clear on the way home, no problems or hiccups on the way, just oodles of straight roads, full of trucks and cars going quite a bit faster than us. We arrived home around 5pm the took our rental car back across town at 8pm.

A note on car hire:

If you don’t have a credit card then forget it. Gone are the simple ways of life in NZ where you can hire a car with your debit card… After what felt like days of searching… I happened upon Turo, an app that allows you to hire cars belonging to private owners, and it provides insurance to boot! The guy we hired the car off wasn’t super nice and got cross at the state of the outside of the car (driving in snow = horrendously filthy car) but we ended up okay…

All in all we have (mostly) positive memories from our trip, and learned a few life lessons on the way. I don’t think we’ll drive again till winter loosens her icy grip, but it was certainly an experience.

 

 

Gooderham Building

Toronto

St James Catherdral

St Lawrence Market

Clementines

Bakery

Sunset over the Falls

Horseshoe Falls

Behind the Falls

Playing tourists

Polly want a cracker?

American Falls

View from the top

Dinner with my love

Sunrise over the falls

Frozen

Sunrise over the falls

Sunrise over the falls

On the road again