Niagara Falls

The Maid of the Mist is the oldest continuously running tourist attraction in North America, and (while on the boat), you reach a point where the mist is whipping your face and the seagulls are straining to hold their own against the wind. It's an incredible experience.

I'd always kind of assumed that Niagara Falls was a tourist trap, and that it couldn't be that cool. And it is touristy (you can see it as you drive down the main street with three different wax museums). But if you manage to stay off that couple of blocks it's really lovely. The area is set up with large boulevards and parks all along the area across from the falls (the falls are generally across from you if you're on the Canadian side), which is incredibly peaceful. The falls really are magnificent. Up to 200,000 cubic feet of water go over every second, and that's with a significant percentage of the water diverted to an electrical plant.

In addition to the falls, we took a wine tour through Niagara-on-the-Lake, which is the town on the Lake Ontario end of the river. Having not really heard anything about wine from Canada, I was a bit surprised to find that the Ontario region has a pretty sizable number of wineries. The tour was interesting- the wine was good, and it definitely helped to clarify what I do and don't like in a wine. The highlight was the last winery we stopped at, where we were able to taste wines with single differences (different varietals that went into a blend, different years, or different types of soil, etc.) to see what difference they made in the wine.

The week went by too fast, but it was a lot of fun. If you're headed to the area, we definitely have hotels/ B&Bs to recommend (and probably other things). Pictures are up from Niagara on Brian's Facebook account- email me if you need the link.