Water, water everywhere

Before the field work begins in earnest and I am even more tired than I currently am, Anas had the brilliant idea to go to Niagara Falls for the weekend. A hearty breakfast is of course required before any road trip, and there is none heartier than that offered at "Fresh Kutz". I was told that I had to try Peameal Bacon, so try it I did. I ordered two poached eggs with peameal bacon, which came with two pieces of bacon. This may indeed seem stingy, until you realise the size of these pieces. Imagine the main piece of a rasher of bacon, and then imagine it being two centimetres thick. Like a steak. A bacony steak.

We then went to the Bracebridge Farmer's Market and picked up a supply of Austrian cakes and pastries for the journey, and we were off! The drive to Niagara took quite a while as the traffic was bad, but we handled this difficulty with Linzer Torte, cinnamon buns and a poppyseed roll. We had booked ourselves into the Travelodge in St Catharine's, a town not too far from Niagara Falls, earlier that morning. After finally finding the motel (we were mistakenly looking for "Comfort Inn" instead of "Travelodge"), we checked in and discovered that the card keys to Anas' room did not work. After telling this to the person working the front desk, she came and tried them too before agreeing that they did not work. Apparently the machine to make new cards had died in the arse so she decided to give Anas her card to use to get into his room. I will return to this saga shortly..

Anyway, we dumped our things and drove to Niagara Falls, marvelling at the hordes and hordes of cars and tourists and paying $20 for parking. We then went exploring for a couple of hours, checking out the falls themselves (which Anas has seen countless times but which I was blown away by) and people watching.



We then enjoyed a buffet dinner at the top of the Skylon tower, overlooking the falls which by this stage had been illuminated by lights. As is expected at a buffet we ate possibly twice as much as necessary and so then went walking to explore the more cheesy parts of Niagara Falls, the main streets and shopping areas. Filled with flashing lights, haunted houses, fudge shops, souvenir shops, Cuban cigar shops, more haunted houses, Starbucks everywhere, it was both mesmerising and horrifying. It was like being on Pleasure Island from Pinnochio (I'm sure I saw a few asses).

Once we'd had our fill of neon and sugar we made our way back to the hotel to rest up for another big day. Or so we thought (dun dun dun!). After arriving in Anas' room, where I had left my things as my room hadn't been cleaned yet when we checked in (at 5pm), we saw that he had a message on his phone. It was instructions to contact reception immediately. So off we went, to be told by the new person working the front desk that Anas should never have been given the other person's key, as it was a master key. We had assumed that this was the case but held ourselves back from ransacking everyone else's rooms. We were then told that Anas would have to come and ask to be let back into his room whenever he wanted to get into it, or he could just leave the door ajar. Despite being told how ridiculous this was, the woman refused to come to any other sort of arrangement and kept going on about how there was nothing else she could do, and how it was going to be quite inconvenient for her to keep opening his room for him.

The saga actually continues further but I can't be bothered going into it any further. One thing I will mention however is that breakfast was served using entirely disposable "crockery" and cutlery, which resulted in my bagel melting into my styrofoam plate.

Not letting the motel experience sour our moods, we headed into Niagara-on-the-Lake for a day of wine tasting and architecture perving. This is the area that is famous for ice wine, and I tried quite a few!! I am not usually a fan of sweet wines, but I really did enjoy some of these. It was a really lovely little town as well, filled with tourists but they were a bit more of your up market tourists when compared to the hordes in Niagara Falls. High
tea eaters and wine tasters. We found a few shops absolutely packed with jams and tapenades and dips and jellies, all with open jars and cut up bread or pretzels so you could taste everything. So we tasted everything. There was also some free entertainment, as there was one very hot chilli cheese spread that kept causing people to choke in shock.

After getting our fill of culture and wine and fudge we got back in the van and headed home to Bracebridge, spying this on the way..

Mister Peanut!