With a red-eye flight from Toronto to look forward to at the end of our Canadian trip, we needed somewhere to spend a few hours on the way from Niagara-on-the Lake to the airport. The Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington were the obvious choice for a green-fingered pair. After checking out of our plush hotel,…
Month: October 2016
Niagara-on-the-Lake: Just a little too perfect?
Niagara-on-the-Lake is one of the most picturesque towns I’ve had the good fortune to visit. But there’s also something a bit odd about it. After a couple of days exploring, I couldn’t help but feel a bit spooked. It’s just a bit too perfect, and its population just a little too nice. It brought to…
The vineyards of Niagara-on-the-Lake
I had no idea that Canada had a wine industry. As far as I was concerned it was too far north and far too cold. But as we discovered, Ontario is positively Mediterranean in its latitudes and its summers are hot and sunny. Planning our Canadian trip, we read that the Niagara Peninsula is one…
Niagara Falls: A natural wonder scarred by greed
Niagara Falls is a spectacle of epic proportions. Niagara Falls the town is grim, an example of how greed and tourism at its worst can come close to destroying its reason for being. I spent our day and night there trying to ignore the ugly buildings and brazen commercialism, to focus instead on the waterfalls….
Toronto: Cabbagetown and the CN Tower
Wherever we went in Toronto, the soaring CN Tower haunted us. The city’s trademark building dominates the skyline by day and by night, when it’s illuminated in a rainbow of colours. I loved it. But before we took our inevitable trip to the top, we had a few other stops to make on the city’s…