North America 2022 : Thursday September 8 Day 10 Niagara Falls and Wineries

Robyn had booked us a boat trip at Niagara Falls for 10:30am this morning and we thought we might be running a little tight for time, especially as breakfast at the B&B didn’t start until 9:00am. But we needn’t have worried overly, the drive only took us 20 minutes or so, and I’d found a car park that gave us easy access to the embarkation point.

Before we’d left Australia we had watched Griff Rhys Jones’s Canadian Adventure, a British TV program that followed Griff’s travels from one side of Canada to the other, and he had been very disparaging about the over-commercialised Canadian side of the falls. He was right. It was like a tatty theme park with chain restaurants and coffee shops and tourist junk shops and amusement arcades all over the place. It is impossible to avoid as you walk towards the river, though we did that as fast as we could.

A bit of a problem actually finding the boarding area was followed by the acceptance of a one-use plastic poncho – later dried and flattened out for a possible further outing, somewhere – and we were on the boat.

We parked ourselves at the back of the boat up top, mainly because that gave us a good look at both sides of the river and because the front was already full. A brief pass of the American falls and before long we were being drenched by the spray and mist from the Canadian Falls, which are bigger, better, and allow for closer access than the American ones.

It’s hard to describe what’s it’s really like that close to that amount of water; it’s loud, wet, windy at times, almost completely white in close, and shedloads of fun. It will be one of the highlights of our trip, I’m sure. The whole trip lasted about 45 minutes but seemed to over in much less time than that.

We had a better chance, and more time, to have a look at the overall falls after disembarkation from the boat. A walk along the ramparts above the river showed us that being on the Canadian side offered much better views that you could possibly get across the border. It also allowed us access to the Skylon Tower which gave views from a great height. It also had a bar where we could sit and have a drink as well as some calamari for lunch.

Despite the best efforts of the bar staff to move us along we sat and finished our lunch, and our drinks and headed back to the car and the drive back to the winery district.

There we had a fantastic tasting at Pilliterri Estates Winery where, by asking the right questions and showing and interest and some knowledge, we were given a wider range of tasting than is normal. Along the way we learned that the first three winemakers employed by the winery were all from Adelaide.

Dinner was next door at the attached pizza restaurant. By the time that was finished so were we.

Day 2 driving map: