Bridget and her sister took me on a field trip to see the famous Niagara Falls today. The falls were huge and spectacular and because of the late winter there was still heaps of snow and ice gathered around the base of top of the falls which I thought was pretty cool. However Bridget is probably going to murder me in my sleep tonight, because this part of the falls is actually the less dramatic USA owned side of the falls. The more dramatic Horseshoe falls are a few hundred meters to the right, but I really liked all the snow and ice gathered around this smaller part of the falls, besides the Horsehoe side of the falls is photographed much more often.
The “town” of Niagara Falls was the weirdest town I have ever seen. Its like a permanent carnival, full of weird attractions like haunted houses, wax museums, laser tag, arcades, ferris wheels, with crazy over the top facades to attract tourists.
We also took a trip to a maple farm where we had a maple drowned Canadian breakfast of pancakes and Canadian bacon before taking a small tour of the farm. I have the feeling the tour was geared towards kids as we were the only adults on the tour who didn’t have at least one 2-10 year old child with us, but it was still pretty interesting.
The maple is harvested from the trees using a series of pressure and gravity fed pipes which are literally tapped into the trees to collect the sap in a huge tank. We made maple syrup taffy by tipping boiling hot maple on top of the snow and using a paddle pop stick to create a lolly pop glob of hardened taffy. It doesn’t really get more canadian than that.
Here are some other things I have learnt over the past few days in Canada. Saying your food is “alright” in Canada means you actually hate it but too polite to say so. Scotiabank is a canadian bank (a major bank in South America) and is not pronounced Scott-e-a-bank at all. Canadian bacon is thick! Kinda like thick fried slices of ham. Asking where is the “toilet” is considered rude or vulgar in Canada. The plural for Moose can be either “Moose” “Mooses” or “Meese”, and no, they cannot be ridden or domesticated.
