Toronto and Niagara

I left Ann Arbor on Thursday afternoon, and I arrived in Toronto in the early evening. Back to Canada! This time around, I'm planning on continuing the drive eastward, all the way to the Atlantic coast. And for most of this trip, I'll be alone and motel-ing it, but for the Toronto portion, I had a host family. They are the parents of my friend Mark, a former resident of mine from Emory. Mark grew up in Toronto, and when I called him for recommendations of places to visit, he contacted his parents, who offered to host me while I was there.

Anyway, I met Guico and Lily that evening, and they are fantastic. They are originally from Lima, Peru, but moved to Toronto shortly after they married. We had a nice evening at their home, and Lily gave me lots and lots of recommendations of things to do and see while I was in town.

I actually took her up on one of the most unlikely ones: to do a double-decker tour bus trip through downtown Toronto! It was interesting, and I certainly saw lots of sights I would never have seen on my own, including a 19th century castle which was built for a private citizen, the old and new Toronto City Hall buildings, and the financial district. But several of the things I saw were really interesting to me, and influenced my entire day in downtown Toronto.

First of all, the bus took me directly to the Toronto harbor, which is directly on Lake Ontario (Great Lake #4 of my trip!). From there, I got off and took a boat to the Toronto Islands, which are immediately south of downtown. I spent a while wandering around the main island, which has gardens, fountains, bike and boat rentals, three beaches (one nude), and even an amusement park! But I wandered through the gardens and over to the shoreline. The lake was beautiful, calm and turquoise, and I just sat there for an hour looking out over the water and the occasional sailboat which flitted by. I could have stayed there all day.

Reluctantly, I got back on the boat and then went back to my tour bus. The next place we went was to the St. Lawrence Market district, which had a huge street festival going on that weekend, and we drove past the Distillery district, which was the old whiskey distillery that made whiskey to sell to the USA during Prohibition -- it's now been renovated and turned into shops, galleries, and restaurants.

When my tour finally ended around 3pm, I made the executive decision to go to the street festival. It was cool! It was called Busker Fest, and although I didn't know it before I came to Canada, a busker is a street performer. There were buskers from all over the world at this festival! I saw fire breathers, stunt men, a Japanese unicyclist on a 15 foot-high unicycle, lots of "statues" which moved when you got too close to them, clowns of all shapes and sizes, and trapeze artists and all kinds of acrobats. It was amazing, but expensive -- especially since I kept tipping all of the buskers as I watched their shows, and paid $30 to park!

After I left Busker Fest, I drove to the Distillery and wandered around there for a little while, as well, and I'm glad I did -- they did a fantastic job renovating it. The buildings are the same old buildings, and the streets are still cobblestone, but the shops and galleries are really cool. There was one gallery, in particular, which had something I'd never seen before: art made out of Rubik's Cubes. There were pictures of Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, Bob Marley, etc., and each of the "dots" of color on their faces was a pixel from a Rubik's Cube face. It was kitschy, but cool nonetheless.

That evening, I went back to Lily and Guico's house for Shabbat dinner, which was really nice. They had a friend over for dinner, too, and so the four of us had a great time together. The next morning, Lily had her housekeeper cook me breakfast (Lily wouldn't cook on Shabbat, but wanted me to eat something substantial), and then sent me off to see Niagara Falls.

I have to admit I had some trepidation about seeing the falls; they are supposed to be so....overdone with all of the touristy stuff. And it was, no doubt. But once I saw the falls themselves, I mostly forgot about all of that. The falls are just impressive. First of all, some facts:

1. There are two actual falls: the American falls, which are straight, and the Canadian falls, which are curved and area also called the "Horseshoe Falls".
2. The falls occur where water flows from Lake Erie (Great Lake #5 for this trip!) into Lake Ontario.
3. 34 MILLION gallons of water flow over the horseshoe falls every minute.
4. 16 people have tried to go over the falls in a wooden barrel; 5 of them have died.
5. One person has accidentally gone over the falls and survived; he was seven years old, and fell out of a boat that capsized. He was rescued by the Maid of the Mist. He is now a practicing minister in Detroit.

I ended up doing two "must dos" while I was there, and I was glad I did. The first was the "Journey Behind the Falls". It's basically a tunnel behind the (Canadian) falls themselves, with some places where you can look out and see the water. The first two lookouts were truly behind the waterfall, and you can't even see anything -- just a wall of roaring water. The next two lookouts were cooler; they are located just to the side of the falls, about halfway up. From there, if you look up you see the falling water; if you look down, you see the huge spray from the water as it lands in the lake below. It's very cool. From that perspective, the wall of water appears green.

The second was the Maid of the Mist, the boat which takes you close to both sets of waterfalls. The Maid of the Mist has run continuously since 1846. We passed the American falls first, which was nice, and then went over to the Canadian falls, at which point we turned the boat around to go back to the dock. When the boat turned, we literally got right up underneath the falls -- and we all got soaked!, poncho or no poncho.

After I dried off, I went back to my car and then went north a bit, through a LOT of wineries, to a town called Niagara-on-the-Lake. Lily had recommended it to me, and I'm so glad she did; it is completely different from the tourist hubbub at the falls. It's a little Victorian town, old and super-quaint. The main street is Queen Street, and it's lined with tea shops, bakeries, boutiques, inns, and restaurants. I wandered up and down until the shops started to close, and then I found a little restaurant and had a nice dinner before driving back to Toronto that night. It was lovely. I definitely would like to go back there someday for a long weekend.

Sunday morning, I had breakfast with Lily and she showed me some of the art and Peruvian artifacts in their home -- they have quite a collection of pre-Columbian artifacts, and it was impressive to see, especially after appreciating the primitive style of the Eskimo art from Alaska. It was a wonderful couple of days in Toronto. I felt very badly about being so...active...on Shabbat when I was staying with a religious family, but they truly didn't seem to mind. Toronto is a beautiful city, and there is certainly lots to do and see there. It was great, pure and simple.