Day 2 - electric power and hydro power

After a long and deep sleep we were up with the alarm and back to the PATH to find our car hire.

Despite Dave’s wonderful instructions yesterday, we spent a good 30 minutes trying to find the rental desk. Finally found, the lady at the desk suggested we take an electric car. So we were presented the keys to a nice blue Tesla.

We have never even stepped foot in one, so after trying all sorts of improbable ways to get in, we had to ask a passer by, who showed us what to do. Next came 20 minutes of figuring out how to turn it on! Thankfully, Oliver was up for the challenge and before long we were on the road.

Today we are heading to Niagara.

But first, breakfast. As we set off on the freeway, Oliver typed “breakfast” into the satnav, and the first option was “Stacked” a pancake place at an out of town shopping mall. Oh how Stacked fitted the breakfast brief! Like the set from an old American movie, with Formica tables and wood walls, and a server walking around with a permanent pot of coffee.

Oliver and I both went for a stack of pancakes, while Andrew went for an all singing all dancing plate of eggs, bacon, potatoes and toast and it came with its own pile of pancakes. Absolutely delicious!

After a few hours of the freeway we entered snowy Niagara. It was quite a shock to see ugly high rise hotels and a casino. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it seemed a bit grubby. Concrete hotels that looked very 1970s. No matter, we aren’t here for the architecture, we are here for the falls. We parked the car and walked to the visitor centre. Deserted. Just hardly anyone around. Again, it’s geared up for some serious footfall, but we just walked to the front and bought three tickets for “behind the falls”. It’s a small foot tunnel that takes you behind the water and means you can see them a bit lower down.

Ponchos at the ready we got into the lift and made our way down. Due to the rather, this part of the falls is actually frozen, but you can hear the power of the water in front of them. It was great to see them from below, and we didn’t need our ponchos - but I put mine on anyway!

We left there after taking some photos and headed back up to the shop and the cafe.

We then joined the rest of the brave visitors (maximum 20 people) outside to experience the falls from the top. They are vast and they are absolutely jaw droppingly beautiful. You can see them on TV or in books, but nothing can prepare you for seeing them in person.

We had a cute rainbow over the falls the whole time we were there, as the sun made a little appearance.

We left after a few hours, so grateful for the lack of tourists and then drove to Niagara on the Lake for some lunch.

To get there we took a small local road and passed the most amazing houses. All decked out for Christmas. This is wine land and the houses were broken up by fields of vines.

Just 20 minutes of driving past these beautiful properties was enough to make our day.

But then we came to the town. Oh boy, what a place.

One street with quaint shops and cafes - so typically North American. We found a café and Andrew and I had soup (green lentil for me and quinoa and chicken for Andrew). Oliver had lasagne. Full and happy we make our way back to the car for the drive home.

As we left there we decided to try ‘valet mode’ on the car. Unfortunately we then couldn’t switch it off! This disabled the satnav, the trunk, limited the speed and most functions. We tried all sorts of pins and resets to no avail. Panic soon set in, because we had to charge the car to get us back to Toronto, we didn’t know if we could even charge in valet mode. After a bit of googling we found a place to charge the car (the car park of a Tim Hortons, oh joy) and got us back to downtown Toronto just in time for the second half of the ice hockey match on the screen in a nice restaurant. The Leafs (yeah, that’s the correct spelling) beat Chicago by 4 v 2.

Well done to Mr B and his excellent driving and to Oliver for copilot skills. We plopped into bed absolutely exhausted again