Hayley & Shaun in Canada: Toronto & Niagara Falls, ON

Apr 23-29th

So our last blog captured the last few months living in Canmore and told you that we had just arrived in Toronto by train. We stayed in Toronto for 6 nights at the Comfort Hotel near the Airport and unfortuantely it was a bit out of the way of the city and we had to take a bus and then subway to get in there which took over an hour each time (a bit longer one time when we took the wrong bus by mistake!) but the system was fairly straightforward which made it easier.After our first day where we basically slept after recovering from no sleep and food poisoning on the train, the next day we headed into the city to begin our hop-on-hop-off tour of Toronto. We had pre-booked this tour and it worked out good as we could use it for our whole time in Toronto so that was handy. We did a full north and south loop of the city tour to have a look at everything and then got off later in the afternoon in Chinatown and had some lunch. We then walked back through the city to the main square and had a look at various shops and buildings a long the way.

Over the next few days we used our tour to get around the city area and we visited Casa Loma (an old castle that people used to live in) and we could do a self-guided audio tour of the whole inside of the castle which was cool. There was also an underground shopping area called the PATH which we walked through a few times. We visited the Shoe Museum full of different shoes from throughout the year (luckily we went on a free day because it really wasn't worth paying for!) We also walked around an exclusive shopping area with brands such as Gucci, Tiffany & Co, Burberry and such which was cool and had drinks at a cool bar at the top of a really tall building. Unfortunately it was rainy and cloudy and we couldn't get any good pics of the view. We also made sure to have lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Toronto as we had eaten at so many of them in other cities in Canada, and this one was really cool, we got to sit at a table in an old streetcar in the middle of the restaurant!

The rest of our time in Toronto was spent looking at shops and just wandering the city. The weather made it a little hard to see some things as it was rainy and cold and windy on the day that we wanted to go out to the islands on a ferry and do outdoor stuff so that was a shame. Otherwise we did enjoy Toronto and what we saw of it, although we also noticed that people weren't as friendly as they had been back in Alberta.

Oh and we enjoyed picking up mistakes the tour guide was making with facts about various places, even in Canada which wasn't very good!

While we were staying in Toronto we took a Greyhound bus for a day trip to the canadian side of Niagara Falls as we had pre-purchased passes for some of the activities there. We arrived at Niagara at about 11am and were amazed at what we saw! The day was really beautiful too so that made it even better! It was very hard to believe we were standing in front of THE Niagara Falls and the amount of water going over was just incredible. It was a great sight to see! Some of the activities we took part in included a 4-D movie about Niagara where we had to wear ponchos because we got sprayed with water and snow and the room shook everytime they explained the erosion and creation of the falls! It was a really good movie with amazing footage of the falls. We also went on a 'white water walk' where you could walk down near the gorge and see lots of rapids and lovely scenery (this was a bit further up from the falls) and we took a cable car across the gorge to see the whirlpools down below. But the best activity we did was putting on our ponchos and taking an elevator down a few hundred feet to behind the falls where we could go out on a platform and the falls were literally meters from your face. You could also walk behind in these tunnels and stand right in front of the water pouring over the side. You will see more of what I'm talking about in the pics below. But it was absolutely amazing to be standing that close and seeing the amount of water from that angle. And we got soaked!

We had bought tickets for the Maid of the Mist boat ride also but unfortunately it wasn't running just yet so we have tickets to go back in May if we can make it as we both still would really like to have that experience. But we did get extremely close anyways with our 'Journey behind the falls' as well.

We had a lovely day in Niagara and arrived back to Toronto pretty late, about midnight so we were pretty exhausted after that, but its great to say we have seen it now and had an awesome day!

We left Toronto on April 29th at about 9:30am and took the train to Quebec City which took about 8 hours. We are now in French Canada which is very different, but you will have to wait for the next blog to read all about that one!

Speak soon
Love Hayley and Shaun
xoxox