A Little Sojourn to Niagara Falls, Ontario

Did you miss me? We were away and we did not have free wifi. I figured at $200 a night, they could have thrown it in…it was a matter of principal.

Of course, it has to snow on our driving day.

Snow, snow, GO AWAY.

We like to get away from time to time, even if it’s just a couple of hours away. This weekend is our relatively new Family Day holiday in Ontario; it was an election promise by our current Premier Dalton McGuinty (one that he actually kept!) creating a statutory holiday to help bridge the gap from Christmas to Easter, and to beef up tourism in Ontario. We took a little trip to Niagara Falls Ontario.

Niagara is a wonderful combination of culture, food, natural wonder and of course, shopping, and it’s only an hour and a half from our home! We’ve stayed in several different places over the years but this time we’re staying at the Gateway Fallsview Marriott which is reasonably close to Casino Niagara where on Sunday night we will see Band from TV. Here is an adorable little clip of Teri Hatcher singing Kerry Underwood’s Before he Cheats. (Kerry is married to Canadian Mike Fisher, who comes from Peterborough, my nephew (Brian) and niece (Laura) went to school with his siblings…cool eh? 6 degrees of separation!)

Now you are well aware that I bumped into Flat Ruthie the other day at the Toronto Courthouse (not sure what she was doing down there, and perhaps I don’t want to know). Anyway, she finagled her way into coming with us this weekend…I think we’re in trouble…

Oh my, Ruthie, we're ONLY gone 2 nights!

We dropped our luggage at the hotel and then took the Whirlpool Bridge across which is ONLY for Nexus users — we breezed through (the Rainbow Bridge had at least an hour long lineup! Yay Nexus). We went to Walden Galleria to shop where I only got a few things…we declared everything and didn’t have to pay anything! We’re lucky that way. That’s all I’ll say because I don’t want to jinx it! In Canada anything less than 24 hours away and you’re really not supposed to buy anything and bring it back, or you should pay 13% taxes and then about 10-15% duties; but it’s really up to the crossing agent – they determine if you pay. After 48 hours I believe you are allowed $300 plus a litre of booze each. But it’s not worth staying in Niagara Falls New York, believe me, it’s such a dump.

We ate lunch at Gordon Biersch; it was a very nice, pub like establishment, but what really drew us to it was that they make everything from scratch right there. And they brew their own beer. A lot of the menu had beer ingredients, which is always quite cool. I ordered the Ahi tuna salad which was quite tasty (Ahi Tuna, blackened and seared rare, with Märzen Balsamic, Vinaigrette and Cajun remoulade) but as usual they really over dressed the greens…enough already! JT had half roast turkey and swiss sandwich and a beer and cheddar soup – the soup was so rich he couldn’t/wouldn’t finish it. For Buffalo, it exceeded my expectations (I was just hoping we wouldn’t have to dine at burger king).

JT had the beer, I had a glass of wine. I usually find beer too filling.

This is the view from our room:

This is a panoramic view from our room using Photosynth - a photo stitch ap on the iPhone

I told her I wouldn't be able to get a good shot, but she insisted.

We stayed at the Fallsview Gateway Marriott which is apparently a different hotel than the Fallsview Marriott. We thought we were in the other one. It wasn’t bad, it was just unexpected. We had a very nice view of the falls. There were no bedbugs. Thank goodness. It’s also a little ironic that we had free wifi in Morrocco, yet, in Niagara Falls Ontario, it’s about $12.75 plus taxes a day. I didn’t get it. Hence my absence this weekend.

King-size bed. There, I said it.

The bathroom had a glass wall facing the bed…I’ll leave that to your imagination.

The fancy tub (can you imagine the bacteria-fest in the pipes? YUCK!)

I’ll review the restaurants and the entertainment in the coming days.