The last time I drove through New York to Canada was to go to Montreal as a freshman in college with some friends. Montreal was awesome, but we really could’ve just drove across the border and found the nearest bar because the whole point of the trip was to be able to go out to the bars. We were 18, maybe someone was 19. Canada was like some mythical place where I could step into the future and see how I would soon be wasting my money. This time, traveling to my destination Ontario
, I learned that eastern Canada is still pretty awesome even when the magic of showing your id for something besides an R rated movie has worn off.
I crossed the border at Niagara Falls, because name me a cooler boarder crossing in the world, that’s why. I did all the activities from Niagara Falls, Canada, because I figured if I somehow fell and was hurt I’d be able to afford going to the hospital on the socialized medicine side. There are an amazing amount of ways here to see water falling: you can take the Maid of the Mist boat to the bottom, you can go through caves behind the falls, you can go on a cable car above. All of the multiple methods of viewing the falls are necessary because there are so many tourists that they need to be broken up into as many groups as possible to keep any one crowd from getting to unmanageable. Still a cool thing to see, and if you’re American or Canadian, it’s definitely one of those bucket list destinations you can say you saw.
Before heading to Toronto, I headed North from Niagara Falls to Niagara-on-the-Lake, a wonderfully hyphenated town on Lake Ontario. Here I was actually talked into trying an Ontario Spa
. It was, of course, totally relaxing and kind of brain melting. I found a beach on the lake an mostly just laid down for awhile after.
But I did make it to Toronto, Canada’s largest city. It’s a huge city, with endless amount of fun to be had.
But that’s just the tiny southern tip of Ontario. Ontario is a huge province, with amazing wilderness everywhere, which the Canadians always know how to take advantage of. The best part of my trip was after having explored Toronto, I just drove North, hoping to get adequately lost for serendipity to take over. It did.