Canadian New Year's Trip

Day 1: Driving & Niagara Falls

Basically nothing eventful happened on the drive up. When we got to Niagara Falls, NY, we found a snow park thing. It had tubing, "ice" skating, and mini golf.

The snow park's mini golf was awful. However, it inspired us to invent speed mini golf. Whoever gets the ball(s) in the hole gets the point. Futhermore, you play with twice as many balls as players. So, there is obviously a fair amount of strategy/cheating involved.

The "ice" rink was actually not ice at all. It was a plastic resin developed my Mitsubishi, which makes for an extremely lame iceless skating rink. It's just like a real ice rink, only not fun whatsoever. You still wear ice skates on it, but you can't get going very fast and the seams in the panels can pretty much catch your skate and kill you.

The tubing was amazing. It was basically just like one of those long slides, only it was covered in ice. There was a "carpet-style" conveyor belt up to the top, so no climbing was involved.

We got to Niagara Falls, ON after sunset. We went to the Clifton Hill area, which is where all the touristy things are. Basically it's like Canada vomited on itself and put up lots of shiny, blinky lights to keep the Americans out of the real Canada. It was pretty atrocious. We had some Boston Pizza then walked down to the falls.

Now, everyone knows that the American Falls suck and the Canadian falls (Horseshoe Falls) are amazingly spectacular. The one nice thing about the American falls is that since they aren't huge and gigantic, there's no mist, so they can light them all neat-like. (They do this with the Canadian falls too but you can't really see it.)

Day 2: Niagara Falls & Toronto

We went to see Horseshoe Falls. They were pretty neat, only there were too damn many tourists. It was nearly impossible to see all of the falls because of the mist.

After a lunch of Mr. Sub, we went to an indoor aviary/reptile thing.

Then we went to the Whirlpool, which would've been cooler if the cable car that goes over it were operating.

Once in Toronto, we went to Dundas Square then ate at a pub called Elephant & Castle. I got a roast beef stuffed Yorkshire pudding. Then we briefly went to the CityTV New Year's Eve Party thing at Nathan Phillips Square next to City Hall. There were some crappy bands and outdoor skating there. It was lame so we went back to the hotel and watched the Corner Gas marathon on the Comedy Network, then watched the Toronto countdown.

Day 3: More Toronto

After a breakfast from Tim Horton's, we went to High Park, where there is a small zoo. There were llamas, yaks, bison, deer, goats, and too many kids. After that we went ice skating at the outdoor ice rink in the park.

Pretty much everything was closed, including Canadian Tire and the grocery stores.

We tried to go to Smoke's Poutinerie for dinner, but it was closed. Eventually, we decided to hit the Fox & Fiddle (or was it Fiddle & Fox) for dinner. Afterward, we went up the CN Tower. There, I discovered my camera lets me control a lot more things that I thought it did. We spent quite a while up there and learned some interesting facts about the CN Tower. For example, the tower is hollow in the middle, so it was used for the world's longest egg drop! Awesome.

Day 4: Even More Toronto & Binghamton, NY

In the morning we went to all the places that we had been meaning to get to, but were closed. I bought some hockey stuff at Canadian Tire; I got some Pepsi with real sugar from Loblaws; I got some Mars bars.... Tim Horton's for breakfast and Mr. Sub for lunch were good ways to bid farewell to Canada.

We got to Binghamton and attempted to look for some nightlife or some goings on or anyone at all out on the streets. We were not the least bit impressed. Wegmans is about the only thing Binghamton has going for it.

There was still a bit of evening left, so we headed up to Syracuse to see what a real NY State city should be. And it was covered in snow, so I was happy.

Day 5: Driving Home

The drive back was windy and cold. It was fine until about Harrisburg, PA, where suddenly all the snow disappeared and everyone started driving like assholes.