We rented the car on Friday morning from the lovely people at _______. Why do I have trouble retaining such details? Perhaps it's because I don't care too much. Nevertheless, the people were lovely. I say that like I expected them to be anything other than professionally nice. But I think that they were genuinely nice. When we talked about buying extra insurance, it reminded me of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry and Elaine rent a car. Jerry ends up pissed about not getting the type of car he requested. When the rent-a-car lady asks if he wants to buy the extra insurance, he tells her something like "Yes. Because I intend to beat the shit out of this car." It had nothing to do with our experience. I just think that it's funny.

I don't remember what we did for breakfast this day. We ended up heading out of town around mid morning. Craig, with sadly misplaced good intentions, decided to take the scenic route, which is winding and meandering, and twice as long as it needs to be. We passed through many charming little "towns" full of charming little to big brick houses and buildings. We passed the memorial to ________ in _________ town, the site of Canada's only military battle. Once again, I've lost the details, but that's because by this time I was a little carsick. I was so focused on holding back the vomit that I forgot to take notes. Craig is always good at receiving, retaining, and spewing forth this kinds of trivial details. I have to be really interested to receive and retain such details. Oh, and not nauseous.

Eventually, we got to Niagara-on-the-Lake, which is an alarmingly beautiful little town. The Shaw festival was on. We didn't plan ahead, so there was no chance of seeing anything. Besides, my cousin isn't too into the theatre. I am a little, but not to the detriment of a holiday. There's usually only so much time, and I want to see the place, not sit in the dark. Here are some photos of Niagara-on-the-Lake.









These two photos are of the Prince of Wales hotel.








We ate lunch at some pub (so maybe we didn't have breakfast). It is the yellow building on the corner in of the photo.


I took two photos of this building. I have no idea what it is, but it's quite pretty. It has a stature of George Bernard Shaw (hence the festival), and some really fancy landscaping/flowers.








There was much good shopping here. Although I coveted all the fancy wool sweaters and cotton shirts at the Irish, I didn't buy anything for myself. This store reminded me of when we went to summer school in England. I bought myself one of those cable knit sweaters. When I got home, I somehow managed to shrink it into a doggy sweater. Of course it was too hot for the dog, so the sweater disappeared. Having learned my lesson, I decided to not spend a few hundred dollars on a fancy sweater or shirts this time. Instead, I bought my mother a subtly Celtic designed necklace and pendant with sparkly purple and green stones. Not only are these her favourite colours, but because there are more purple than green stones, the necklace fits in with the Red Hat ladies dress code. She just joined them this year but is eager to catch up on all the tackiness of the red and purple dress code.

The best find was this fancy pet store:

where I found an organic, fair trade, blah-de-blah dog toy for the monster. He destroyed it within 5 minutes of receiving it, so the poor toy has been banished to the cupboard of maimed friends.

We climbed back into the car and made our way to the mecca of tackiness, Niagara Falls. What an amazing natural wonder/man-made disaster. I took too many photos, and I won't bore you with them because it's possibly one of the most photographed things ever. But I am particularly proud of this one, which juxtaposes the tackiness of the commercial tourist ventures with the natural wonder that started it all, the falls.

You can barely see the falls in the lower right corner, and that's pretty much an accurate symbol to what has happened to the area.

We didn't shell out the big bucks to partake in any of the panty-drenching tourist rip-offery such as The Maid of the Mist or the tour Behind the Falls. All it took, besides seeing the prices, was for Craig to point out the surging green sludge at the edge of the falls. "That's in the air," he said, smiling like a bastard. We were silent for quite a while as we walked through the mist. God that place is damp. You can't escape the mist cloud that rises from the falls. It's only kinda gross.

We paused long enough to get photos of ourselves. I'm in front of the American Falls; he's in front of the Canadian Falls. Over my right shoulder, you can see the newest adventure by those crazy Americans: a balloon that goes out over the falls. Nifty.









The call of all things commercial beckoned us up the hill. Ripley's Believe It or Not. Madame Tussaud's Estranged Nephew's Wax Museum. Too many haunted house-type things to count. So many restaurants. There were some guys parked on the side of the road, rap music blasting, trying to sell their cd to passersby. They called out to many people around us, and ignored us altogether. Just another confirmation that we're getting old, and have never been hip or cool. We were dissed by the desperate street vendors!


After wandering around for a while, buying too much unspecial stuff at the Hershey's store, we ended up in a couple of arcades. Craig insisted that we pose for photos in the first one, so naturally we tried to cram our fat asses onto some kiddie rides.



Bert's got the bad deal in the first one, and I've apparently sprouted cat ears in the second one. We then went to the Marvel Comics arcade, and played a lame ride-through lazer gun thingy themed with Spider-man. It might have been cutting-edge technology a few years ago, but now it's about as tired as the kids running it.

On the way back to the car, I took a few parting shots of the falls at twilight. This one made the cut. The faint tower on the left side is Marineland. We didn't make it there this time, even though everyone loves Marineland.


And then we drove the two hours back to Craig's apartment. We had another early morning planned for Saturday.