Canada- here we come ( take 1)

Well, there was not much of slowing down, we're in Canada. After 3 nights at Salisbury Beach we went on an unspectacular, but still nice 2 day trip through Vermont to Montreal, Canada. Montreal is rather -hmmm, how do I put this nicely? - uninspiring which wasn't helped by the cold an d drizzly weather and the fact that most of downtown seems to be torn up for building projects. It took us about 1 1/2 hours to realize that this is not for us, so after the second night we hit the road for Ottawa.

The contrast couldn't have been bigger! Ottawa is a beauty, it was a lovely sunny day, Ottawa is possibly the most bicycle accessible city we have seen, in short: perfect! We did our sightseeing in the morning and spent the afternoon on a 30 km round trip along the Rideau Canal and river. This was the end of the annual Tulip festival, meaning heaps of people out and about. It appears that the Canadians are quite a different bunch from the Americans. At least half the city must have been doing something outdoors. A great day!

But again, as Claudia and I are not the ones for museums, one day was enough to see most of the sights. The weather was cooling down as well and with the forecast for more rain we hit the road again for Toronto and Niagara Falls next.

As far as we have read about Toronto this city might not be what we are interested in. The main attraction apparently is shopping in underground malls, huh? When  we reach Toronto the weather is cold, it's tough too find a car park for Shorty, so what the heck, we bypass Toronto and move on to Niagara Falls straight away.
We have picked a 'quiet' - it is actually everything but quiet as this is Victoria Day weekend, a long weekend that starts the camping season for many campgrounds in this region - camp ground at Niagara Falls on the Lake, about 16 km from the Falls. As it rains all afternoon, we use the time for some washing and cleaning up.

Next morning the sun is up early and so are we. We are on our bikes by 8 o'clock and pedalling our way up a hill to the start of  a bicycle path that runs along the Niagara Falls Parkway through the Niagara gorge. Being that early has the advantage that despite this being one of the first really busy weekends we have most places we get to to ourselves. That's just the way we like it !

On our arrival at the falls an hour later they are hardly visible at all through all the mist they produce, so we indulge in a nice Coffee Latte in a very stylish paper cup from Starbucks :-). Half an hour later the sun has burnt away most of the mist and the falls present themselves in all their beauty. The falls are impressive, no doubt, the thundering noise is deafening, the spray a little too cool for my liking, but... again it's all too accessible or Disney-like, casinos and hotels a mere hundred meters from the falls, several cheap entertainment businesses as well . Claudia and I are more purist and think that one doesn't need to 'spruce up' an environment like this. Every Friday and Sunday they have hoge fireworks and the falls are illuminated in different colours.

Initially we had considered  doing a tour on the Maid of the Mist, the boat that takes you right into the middle of the Horseshoe Falls, the Canadian part of the falls. After seeing that the boat - even at that early hour - is crammed with tourists, all nicely packed in blue plastic raincoats, we again decide to skip this and just enjoy the views as they are from the rim of the gorge before returning to our old trustworthy Shorty around noon.