(8/6)We had a wonderful day today – possibly the best of the
whole trip. We all got up at a relaxed
pace, ate breakfast, loaded the van and headed about 10 minutes to the Amherst
Ward sacrament meeting at 10:00 a.m. It
is a very young ward and we got to hear lots of children’s testimonies. We wanted to stay for some more spiritual
nourishment in second hour, and all enjoyed our lessons and fellowship.
Next, we headed northwest about 30 minutes to our hotel and
got there early before check-in. So, we
went and found Tim’s restaurant, Tim Horton’s.
It is a chain with a variety of foods offered, sort of a one-stop
shopping for food of all members of the
family. It was great food and very
reasonably priced. We headed back down
Niagara Boulevard and relaxed in the lounge of the hotel until our room was
ready. This Microtel is brand new since
May and all rooms were booked, so the maids had lots to do. We all napped before awaking and heading to
the U.S. side of Niagara Falls.
Once there, we found some cheaper street parking than the
$20 lots and wandered around looking for reasonable food and souvenirs. We were disappointed in the lack of options
and noticed many businesses have gone belly-up.
Not a good economy. Solinda
suggested we go to the Canadian side.
At first, it looked like a mistake – as the wait was almost
30 minutes and we had to pay a toll.
Once, we got on the Canadian side and made our way left, we saw a packed
tourist area for about a mile and slowly made our way down looking at
deals. We all decided to eat dinner in
the world famous Skylon tower at night
(Solinda had spoken with an older couple at the Smith farm who mentioned
their kids loved it so much years ago that they still speak fondly of it years
later).
After purchasing tickets at the bottom, stopping by the
washrooms, and checking out the Canadian arcade games, we headed up the
elevator. It was a great
experience! We got a great window table
facing the falls. Sam and Sariah got to
sit next to the window and loved watching the falls change color with the
spotlights for over an hour. They also
both ate as much food as Tim since this was our first buffet of the trip. Both of them ranked the experience at the top
of the trip with Hershey’s park.
We then
went up a level to the overview level and spent a good 30 minutes looking and
listening to the view in all directions.
We could see our van parked, got to hear a concert below us and loved
the view of the Canadian side at night.
Interestingly, we could see Toronto and all the lights on the northern
side of Lake Ontario off in the distance (we are headed there tomorrow).
We got a few souvenirs on our way out, and hit a gas station
for restrooms on our way out.
Interestingly, many families with young kids were still out wandering the streets at
11:00 at night. The gas was sold in
Canadian dollars per liter and the kids got to talk conversions. Solinda and Tim noticed that our phones have
no messaging or Internet functions in Canada and we will be driving with a map
for our Canadian journey. We were happy
with the simple and funny Border Patrol agent who got us into the U.S. in less
than 5 minutes.
No comments:
Post a Comment