What a day!
On Wed, October. 3, all of my day was divided into three parts. We launched from Hamilton, Ontario to Hastings, Ontario, at 8 am. It was supposed to be a 2-1/2 hour drive! We just pulled into Hastings 15 min ago at 9 35 pm.
What happened: PART 1: We figured that since we were in the neighborhood, we'd might as well stop at Niagra Falls. Did you know that there are two sides to Niagra Falls? You can either view the straight wall of rocky waterfalls from New York, or see the horseshoe-shaped falls on the Canadian side. The Canadian side shoots up a spray after it lands that is so intense that you can
barely see 1/2 of the falls.
J
U.S. Side. Sorry the pictures of these Falls are so crummy but we were shooting directly into the sun.
Canadian horse-shoe-shaped side.
PART II: Suddenly my friend Penny started commenting about the inordinate amount of wineries we were passing. What?! Wineries in Ontario....wineries in Canada?! Who knew?
So, we found the closest winery on yelp- nevermind that it took us back tward the falls!-
And turned the car around and went to it.
Enter bliss.....
We sat at the end of a pier, sipping wine, eating a humas plate, and watching the herons fly overhead and dive down to nibble on the grapes.
PART III: We turned the car around and headed back north tward Hastings for about 1-1/2 when Penny says, "Aren't we going to explore in Toronto ( which we had
Just passed)?
"Of course we are," said her accommodating driver, who then turned around and headed 40 min. back toward the falls. What should we do? (Get out Trip Advisor.) Go to museums? No. Go shopping?- wait, here is a whole section of town dedicated to selling vintage items. Yes!!
Kensington, Toronto
We enjoyed or should I say we didn't enjoy our sandwiches for dinner. Penny had a mush Burger, which was some kind of eggplant hamburger and I had a chicken burger at a Portuguese restaurant, although we highly doubt that it was really Portuguese since there was nothing Portuguese on the menu, but it was in the Kensington area right across from the homeless Square so we had lots to look at.
We eventually got on the Road and got stuck in a terrible rush hour traffic jam for about an hour. We were headed north again for the third time. It got dark. An hour and a half later we found ourselves climbing Hills with our ears popping in the pure Darkness of the Ontario Canadian Countryside. There were no lights on the side of the road and only a car every once in awhile. No homes; only endless winding roads upward. The car is running great, but I couldn't stop yawning. And then we came across a pocket of about 13 Cannabis stores within about 2 miles. Our favorite one was the Pot Shop, we drove further north keeping ourselves awake by calling out the names of these hysterical stores in the middle of this God forsaken place. Darkness. If it was possible, it got even darker and we drove and we drove further north calling out the names of the legal stores, even to include the Magic Mushroom House. Then we turned a corner and where were we but under a big willow tree and this is what we saw our Hastings, Ontario Airbnb.
We dragged our suitcases up the grass mound to the front porch. There was no sidewalk for this old farmhouse. Once inside we found the kitchen on the main floor and it was fully stocked with food and refrigerator items for breakfast for us. Every floor was crooked just like the last Airbnb; if you put something round on the table it would roll all the way off. We didn't like this place because it had the Enemy Within a giant staircase. And my bed wasn't long enough for me so I had to sleep diagonally and I still couldn't stretch my legs out so it's 3:15 a.m. now and I'm blogging.
We have four and a half hours to go today until we're in Montreal. I hope Penny doesn't get any bright ideas once we're past the spot this time, but of course that's half the fun!
We're getting along great and of course have endless things to talk about. There's an age gap between us which shows up when we try to discuss our growing up years and music we listend to and Fashions we wore and rules we obeyed in our homes. But we have Golden Apple to share so we are anchored in a solid community. Well, to tell the truth, actually it's becoming a little dissolved but penny and I still go way back because she was the seminar leader for my group of ten teachers' Northwestern sabbatical. ❤️
Here is where we stayed tonight.
Creepy doll collections all over the house.
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