We have had these moments on the trip, where we have ticked life long ambitions off of the list as having now done. For example, visiting Green Gables was one of Karen's, and hanging out in the Scottish highlands was one of mine.

On our second day in Toronto, I added another tick, and that was to see Niagra Falls.

As I may have intimated on my last entry, we visited Toronto on the Labour day long weekend, which is the last long weekend of the summer in North America before the kiddies go back to school. So there was people everywhere, and Niagra was no exception.

On a normal day it would be about an hour cruise down the freeway from Toronto to the Falls. Of course we picked possibly the busiest day of the year to go, so it took us about 2 hours to get to the city limits. A city I hear you ask? Yes Niagra is a city. Maybe it's because I didn't read up properly, but I always imagined Niagra Falls to be in some kind of national park, amongst trees and wilderness.

Cue the game show ba - bow. Niagra is like the Gold Coast with streets and streets of casinos, bars and amusement parks, and that's just on the Canadian side fo the river - the same is repeated on the American side. Apparently it is honeymoon capital of North America. Who'd of thunk it?

So anyway, it took us a further hour to get from the city limits to the first carpark. When we got there, we were confronted with a parking cost of, wait for it, 18 be be be be bucks! Look in my wallet, only $14. Bugger. Do they take credit card? Of course not. Where is the ATM? Back in town past the traffic.Needless to say I said some rude words at this point.

As always, it didn't actually turn out that bad, because there was another carpark further down that was only $6.50, and was running a shuttle bus back to the falls.

The falls themselves are absolutely amazing. Nothing prepares you for the noise of all that water, and you get quite wet standing there having a look from the spray, or at least you would on a day where the whole street where you view the falls wasn't three deep with tourists. Anyway, we went and we saw, and we had Taco Bell for lunch.

There are several options for viewing the falls closer, you can get into one of the boats that goes right up to the base, or you can walk through the tunnel they have bored behind the falls. We thought option B seemed to be the way to go, and only $10 a ticket, it seemed reasonable. The cue to get tickets was remarkably short as well. When we got to the window at ten past 2, they told us we could expect to wait until 6 before we would get down there!

At this point we decided it was time to abandon ship and head for Niagra on the Lake, which is a winery district.

We went to three wineries and on the whole they weren't too bad. The most interesting thing to report is the very popular but horrendously expensive ($50 for a half bottle) ice wine. This is a dessert wine made by letting grapes freeze on the vine and then producing a sticky wine from it. I am not a wine expert, but the result is very similar to stickies we produce at home. The only difference is you can use any variety of grape since you are not relying on botrytis to do its work.

I am not going to bother with a seperate entry for Toronto day 3, because basically we were sick of the whole thing and did nothing. Karen spent half of the day in a spa being massaged and manicured, and I caught the subway out to the far suburbs to try to see I, Robot. Unfortunately I missed a connecting bus so I didn't get there in time to catch the film, so I just caught the train back into town and drank beer until Karen was finished.