I was woken up a couple of times during the night by a guy snoring his head off. I had my headphones so I put on some music and went back to sleep. Today we are off on our Niagara Falls tour. We had to get up 8 - the guy on the bunk below me was still holding onto the ladder, so I ended up jumping down! Once showered - we checked out the room, locked our bags away before the tour bus picked us up. There must have been 40 people from our hostel doing the tour today. It sounded like they were all from a university and had come away for the weekend. (Some sounded British!). At the front of the bus we had 10 older people that must have thought "what the hell are we doing on this school trip?."
Our guide and driver Alex had a lot to talk about, he was full of information, some he was even able to repeat during the day. It was about a one hour and fifty minute coach journey to the town of Niagara. (I keep wanting to call it another word sounding like Niagara, but with a "V").
The journey was ok, and I think I was even able to get a little sleep in between the useful information. When Alex could hear people talking he would tell them off like school children! The bus had to drive into a town call Grimsby.. Some girls needed to use the washroom, and as soon as one girl wants to go, about 10 pipe up needing to go. After the piss stop, we finally arrived at Niagara. Alex did a count down as the falls came into sight. It looked impressive! The first stop was a photo one. Everyone got off and walked down to the water edge. It was difficult to get pictures without anyone else I'm the shoot. I think I am going to need to do some editing when I get back. I could see the maid of the mist in the river below getting a battering by the water. Everyone onboard getting soaked, that would be us in about an hour.
Once back on the bus, we drove about 2 minutes further down the road where the maid of the mist boarded. Got our discounted tickets and made our way down to the boat. Picking up out free bin bag... Ok it was more like a poncho, it was mean to keep us dry while onboard. They must have got loads of us onboard this boat. Everyone wearing the same blue coloured poncho with the logo of Maid of the Mist. The first part of the falls we went past was the USA side. Then we headed to the Canadian side. It crazy just how close we were the USA. We could have just crossed a bridge and we would have been in New York State. Anyway back to the boat - it was so windy and wet but the poncho was doing it job...! As we approached the mist I put my camera away. Didn't fancy it getting wet. Chris has his waterproof camera out, so he was getting some good videos. The boat journey must have only been about 30 minutes. Overall I didn't get that wet, so the poncho was better than I thought it would be. It was then time for lunch, and we didn't need to be back at the bus for a couple of hours. It was a hard choice between 2 x restaurants. Hard Rock or Rainforest Cafe. We decided on rainforest cafe! It was really good, both had burgers and they were gone in no time. After we took a walk up the Main Street in Niagara the sun was out now. It was a little bit like Blackpool. (Cheap & tacky!) - sorry if I have offended anyone when I said that. We walked to the top of the street and passed some haunted houses, loads of fast food joints. Then on the way back to the bus we walked past a fudge shop, they had the best looking toffee apple and of course we had to get one each. They were good, but it took me about 10 minutes to break into mine before I got any apple. You should have seen everyone walking pass us eyeing up our toffee apples! We walked back down to the falls one last time while the sun was shining before getting back onto the bus. Next stop was a look out photo stop, and gave us a chance to see the river.
Only two more stops before retuning back to Toronto. First wad a small village called Niagara-on-the-sea. I was tiny, very quiet with nice wooden build houses. There was a beach, and a street with loads of bars and shops. I must have seen about 4 couples getting married in the town. The town even had its own Christmas shop (Sadly I didn't get anything for you Mum). We were only given an hour in the town before heading to our final stop. Wine tasting! I am sure a lot of you are thinking this sounds really good. Firstly I am not a great lover of wine, secondly this isn't just any wine... It's ice wine. This vineyard was owned by Dan Ackroyd. The grapes are kept below -10 for 72 hours before they are picked. The 3 wines we had were not very nice - Very Sweet.. And at £25 a bottle. No thanks.
It was then time to return to Toronto, it was a couple of hours drive. I managed to get a little sleep, and Alex didn't talk all the way. Arriving back into the city Alex was giving a list of things we should do... We had done most of them. Once we were dropped off at the hostel, we took a walk to the time square area of Toronto. They had some live music and some kick boxing on a big screen. We then decided to head to St. Louis, for wings and a beer before the joy of our night bus to Montreal, Quebec! Once we were full of wings beer and chips (sorry Fries!) we walked the 15 minutes with our rucksacks to the greyhound station. It was about 23:30 by now, our bus departed at 00.45.
Our first Greyhound bus departed on time and we had a 9 hour + journey ahead of us before arriving in Montreal. We were also going via Ottawa, where we have a wait of 50 minutest. We both managed to get 2 seat and I actually slept really well.