We rolled into our driveway at midnight last night. Had a great trip to Ontario and Niagara Falls. Here is my mini trip report and post-trip thoughts:
Bridge into Canada at Sarnia was easy and quick to cross. We stayed overnight in Sarnia and they have a beautiful riverfront walk where Lake Huron meets the St. Clair River.
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Our next stop was the Bruce Peninsula. We went to the very tip to Tobermory. It's a long way but worth the drive. We stayed at a cottage here for a couple of nights and just loved it. On one side is Lake Huron and on the other is Georgian Bay (the "6th great lake"). The waters in both are clear and cold. It's gorgeous and I would have stayed here longer if I could.
Then we drove through Ontario to the Niagara region. We loved this drive which was basically a chain of small English-inspired towns separated by picturesque countryside. The roads are dotted with flower stands and all sorts of growing things.
Canola field:
Then it was Niagara Falls. We stayed in St. Catharine's which was about a 20 minute drive from the falls. We got our room free on points so it was worth the drive to us. Our first view of the falls was awe-inspiring.
We had pre-bought our Adventure passes from Sam's Club so we went to the visitor's center at Table Rock and exchanged them for our lanyards and passes. Since we arrived around 5 p.m., a parks employee scheduled our four activities for the next day and spaced them out so we could manage it all.
We spent time admiring the view and then hopped on WEGO to head to Clifton Hill for dinner. After dinner we hopped the bus again hoping to go back to Table Rock. The bus driver said we would eventually get back there. We didn't mind sitting for a while as we were trying to kill time while we waited for the fireworks. We were on the bus about 45 minutes and saw a lot of the town--the good, the bad and the ugly.
Back to the falls for the fireworks.
My thoughts:
Buy
Adventure passes ahead of time; the visitor's center is crazy busy and congested with people.
Clifton Hill: Awful place. We all felt the same way and couldn't wait to get out of there. My husband said it was more Vegas than Vegas.
The food at Boston Pizza was way overpriced and just mediocre. We had an excellent meal at Boston Pizza in Sarnia so we had high hopes for this location.
Fireworks: if you are already nearby then watch them but we went out of our way to stay in town for a couple of extra hours to see the fireworks. It was not worth it to us. They are about five minutes long and you'll probably see better fireworks at any small town in America on July 4th.
Niagara's Fury is probably more fun if you have small children. Our kids (21 and 15) were "meh". They did notice it's like the Canada attraction at Epcot--you have to stand through the whole thing.
I thought it was cute but my husband thought Disney could have done it better.
Journey Behind the Falls is really cool. We loved this attraction.
White Water Walk was very neat. It took a long time to get down to the riverside because they only operate one elevator at a time. But it's a beautiful thing to see.
Hornblower Cruise: Loved this too. Everyone's favorite thing we did at Niagara.
We had all four events in one day and it was a lot. We were hot and tired by the end of the day. I wish we had spread them out over two days because we also wanted to walk up river. The kids were too tired to walk across the Rainbow bridge. We did drive across it the next day on our way home.
We left Niagara and drove to
Niagara On The Lake. Wow, such a beautiful, charming town! We wanted to get some dinner but after being hot, sweaty and drenched on the Hornblower we felt we were not presentable for any of the NOTL restaurants. The kids thought the town looked pretentious and geared to "old people" but my husband and I ("old people"
) are interested in going back someday.
Ontario in general: Beautiful, lovely land with mostly kind, friendly people. I loved driving through the countryside from town to town. Of course, it's just a personal preference but I enjoyed everything having to do with nature and the land, but was dismayed by loud, cluttered, expensive, snake-oil-salesman quality of a lot of the falls area.
I would go back to Ontario and Niagara on the Lake anytime.
Oh well, I noticed that there is a currency exchange right after crossing the bridge in Sarnia. It says it has no fees and pays $1.25 per $1 USD. I don't know if we should bother stopping there or not. We are spending the first few days of our vacation near the National Park on Bruce Peninsula, so seems we might need Canadian bills some.
