That's plants?

Last night there was quite the rain storm, thunder, lightening, tornadoes around.  Thankfully, we did not have a lot of excitement and were safe and sound in the hotel.

This morning was grey and I really wondered…but we decided to risk it and go the Botanical Gardens regardless.  The weather held, was even cooler – ish, and we walked the gardens.  They are very nice in general, but they are peppered with topiaries of all size and shape.  Some  huge and all of them composed of plants that texturally and color-wise reflect whatever is portrayed.  It really was a sight.

For me, we also went into the Insectarium and saw all kinds of bugs, living and dead.  It wasn’t as good as reptiles, but still pretty cool.

The walking though was hard on us both.  We were exhausted by late in the day and decided to call it a night early.

Tomorrow we will head back into NY and towards home… Yes, we will come home.  But only because we didn’t get a better offer.  (And my French is definitely NOT good enough for me to runaway to Quebec!)

This hasn’t been as eventful as other treks, but there has definitely been some highlights that make it worth the ride.  

Little Bee?

not for drinking

Frank

Lemur crossing

Note the people trimming for a sense of scale

the tree from afar

plant of the apes

Little B.

Wonderful Glass

We have arrived in Montreal, very tired.  Today we hopped the subway and went to the Art museum.  I was a bit nervous about the subway – I know too much about crime.  It may make penitentiary museums interesting, but it has detrimental effect in other things.

But the subway was fine, clean, easy to navigate and perfectly acceptable.  The underground life here is also quite impressive.  Here too, I understand and appreciated it today and I’m sure I would in winter.  (In reply: to C. :   it’s god-awful hot here too, but it’s supposed to break tonight.)  But while the underground is nice, I still can’t help but wonder about it’s crime rate.

Anyway, we went to the museum to see Chihuly.  Amazing.  It was his fire, plants and towers.  They are always impressive alone, but in a group, it’s even more impressive.  The colors are vibrant and I don’t know how he gets the color and shape.  M. and I both agreed it would be horrible to be the set up person, it would be stressful.  I was surprised too, they let us get pretty close to them.

Definitely worth it.

The Force Was With Us

Okay, I know I’m a geek.  Worse, a geek of a particular generation and type.  But today we went to the Star Wars exhibit at the aviation museum and it was the coolest thing ever!  The show was actually very educational, taking about how things shape who we are – culture, parenting etc. all through examining the characters of the story.  It was very high tech with electronic devices telling us stuff, but these wicked cool bracelets that were interactive so at various stations you had to choose characteristics (are you a human or a wookie?  Where do you live?  Who is your mentor Vader or Obi wan… )   

If you’re all very nice, we’ll send you the link to see the character that was our end result.  But you have to be very nice.

Frightening isn't it?

Anyway, it was soo cool – we got to see costumes and original drawings and the puppets and the models.  Clearly, I was very excited.  Mike was happy to see me so happy. (Clearly he did not see the original movie over 10 times.)

The airplanes at the museum were okay too.  And we got to see the space arm – Canada’s contribution to NASA.    And (I know this makes little sense given my recent ravings about StarWars) the museum did confirm, I have no desire to be an astronaut.  None.  

We also visited the National Gallery.  The place is huge.  Their current show is on indigenous people.  It was very ‘artsy’  after discussion, I guess most of it made sense, but… It did nothing for me.

The last highlight of the day was visiting Canada’s cold war bunker just outside of town.  It was dated and very … scary really.  Knowing what we know now, it would not have saved anyone, but it was impressive – in both size and ideology.  Very…institutional, though I suppose what else would a government bomb shelter be?  It reminded me of the movies I saw as a kid in school… if  a nuclear bomb drops, we’ll all go to the shelter for a month…. Ah yeah. Right.

This is a bomb

The way in....

We did a fair amount of driving around too, saw Parliament, etc.  Very nice gothic like building.  The driving here, while still urban is so much better than Toronto. 

But perhaps my favorite part of Ottawa – is dead center in town they have an experimental farm.  A working farm and museum. (We did not go to pet the cows.)  But we did drive through the corn fields and gardens.  Pretty cool.

Downtown.  Really.

All in all, it’s a nice city.  I would come back and it’s only 1 hr from Syracuse or so they say.

Tired, but here goes...

Today was more the full day you’ve come to expect from us and a series of tiny little museums.

We began our day at the Penitentiary Museum (this was for me.)  I enjoyed it thoroughly, and found it interesting to see what Canada was doing in corrections.  They have some new women’s options that are quite unique, integrating the offenders into aboriginal culture.  And the art work was some of the best we’ve seen this trip.  Mike was not as excited as I was.

Moving on we saw a Martello tower, a military fort like thing, big and round. 

And onto the National Health Care Museum.  It was a good museum, though I skipped the dentist room.

From there, we visited the Pump House museum.  Big pipes! (But I did also see Whale baleen.  That was interesting. It looks hairy. 

From there we went to the woodcarving museum.  This too was small, but very friendly.  More planes than I have ever seen in my life.  They had a little woodshop hands on area and I printed a picture of a beaver that tickles me no end.  Mike printed a dragon fly.  Somewhere there’s a wood block carver who would be thrilled!

Driving up the coast more, we were deeply in the 1000 islands.  Still early in the day, we hopped a boat tour.  It was lovely – the sights, the water… I’m more sun burnt, but it was worth it.

Tonight we are in Ottawa and will be tomorrow too. 

Downstream

We are in Kingston, half way between Ottawa, Montreal and Syracuse, on the start of the St Lawrence Seaway.  The hotel we’re in has fantasy suits… there is the Suzy Wong oriental room, the Flights of Fantasy room…not what you’re thinking, the bed is in a basket of a 2 storey hot air balloon.  And my fav, the Tranquility Base – a custom made lunar lander outfitted for comfort.

don't believe us?

We are in a “normal” room, that has a weird northern country charm, a rustic wooden bed frame (knotty pine) and gas fireplace.  It also has a book case with old books. 

And what’s really weird… this is the Best Western plus.  It looked perfectly normal from the outside.  It’s fine – clean, comfortable, but… Tranquility Base….

Flashback….

a giant apple on the side of the road

Up this morning, we were still in the same place of not wanting to fight the city and finding nothing worth it.  So we headed northeast out of town staying off the highway and traveling up the river. 

We stopped at an art gallery in Oshawa.  It was a nice stop, but the only work that was memorable was Inuit again.  But moving on, we opted to take the scenic route, traveling out to a peninsula, which followed the water.

It was vineyards, little shops and nice bay views.  Mostly nothing exciting, but very relaxing. 

A wooden (we think) horse in a front yard

So we’re following the route, I have the map.  Mike sees a sign for a ferry.  A ferry!!!  He says, hopeful. I say, no.  No ferry, we’re following the road. I don’t even see where the ferry goes!  Okay. 

We’re trekking along and… um, the road ends at the bay.  But, but, but…I look at the map, Rt 33 goes all the way through!?   And it does… it’s just some of it floats…on the ferry.  Mike is happy.

the road floats!

The passage was pretty short, and free!  That was actually a bigger surprise than the ferry.  But it was pretty cool and … we got to ride on the ferry!

We’re still tired and sun burnt and ready for sleep.  No big events, no fantasy suites.  Hoping for a quiet night’s sleep.

Not what it appears.

Today is probably going to seem dull for all of you following along at home.  First thing this morning, 8 am we were at the car rental.  We explained what happened.  The nice man there came out and looked.  Pounded on the side of the car a few times, pushing the bumper that had popped out of it’s clips back in.  It looked not 100% back, but 98% and if you weren’t looking, knowing what you were looking for, you’d probably never see anything.  The nice man said, there ya go.  And that was that.  We were on our way by 8:15.

We took the side roads from St Catherine to Toronto, Lakeside drive, which was by the Lake, but also a lot of residential and towns, so it was sporadic views. 

Our first stop was Hamilton.  If you go by the tourist propaganda, Hamilton is a rising city, filled with little neighborhoods that have large art districts, boutique shopping, and café’s.  I wondered if we’d make it to Toronto today reading the flyers. 

Hamilton in reality, is not this.  It’s a very hard, sharp, dirty city.  It does have some unique shops (like a yarn shop) tucked into streets that look like they’re trying but have seen much better days.  We stopped at the Gallery of Hamilton, their art museum, only to realize it’s closed on Mondays.  We then went to the info center, where the very nice lady really couldn’t offer us much to do aside from a plane war museum and hiking and a large botanical garden.  Since it was mid morning and like 110 degrees, hiking was not even an option.  The gardens did look nice, we did a drive by, but the heat made it impossible and I am still a lobster.

I think we spent all of an hour in Hamilton and that included my visit to the McD’s restroom.  One of the “big shopping areas” according to the tour book didn’t even have a store on the nice residential road.  So much for truth in advertising.

Along the way we did stop in the Burlington Art Center.  A great place if you lived here.  They have every kind of studio imaginable, from weaving to carving to ceramics.  Their gallery show was okay.  My personal favorites were a very large sculpture titled cow-zilla in which a Holstein was attacking.  And some carved canes which were gorgeous.  One had a cat handle, another was a friendship cane - a stack of small carved objects: a pumpkin, a mouse with cheese, eggs, etc.

By then I was starving so we stopped at a place down the road and I have finally tasted a Canadian Smoked Meat sandwich.  It’s good, a lot like corned beef (for some unknown reason I was expecting something more like bbq).  We’ve decided that it must be brined brisket, but this is thus far unconfirmed.

Making our way into Toronto we secured lodging and went for a ride.

Toronto is like New York.  Or at least it is like the New York that people think is NY.  It’s sprawling.  It’s dense.  It has lots of neighborhoods.  It’s busy.  There is no parking, lots of construction and the drivers are the worst I have ever seen in my life.  Mike doesn’t agree.  He thinks it’s “a certain think,” and that he’s driven in worse.  I’m glad he feels that way.  I feel like every 8 blocks (and my stress) reduced my life by 5 years. 

By the time we got down town, I’d say I lost at least 25 years.  We went to find the Inuit Art Museum.  Of course the road it was supposed to be on was under construction, nothing is clearly marked.  We parked and tried to wander – we found the street number, but it appeared to be a bank building.

Curious we entered, checked the directory and yes, it did say museum, so we kept going.  It was like an urban version of the Narnia closet.  Walk in and the more you go the more the world changed, from office building lobby to little mall… opening up to an indoor court yard, with water pools and escalator to a food court and yes, the Inuit Art museum. 

It was small, but very neat sculpture and art.  It is a form I really like, though a subject matter that does not always hold me.  Still, I was glad to have found it. 

Starving, we gambled on the Chinese restaurant off the food court.  I was expecting dismal, but was too tired and hungry to want to fight the traffic again without sustenance.  We got lucky, it was a high end restaurant, so we got to sit by a lake view and the food was great.

Of course, that was followed by another harrowing ride back to the hotel.  Frankly, there is nothing here that makes me feel the drive and parking is worth it.  While perhaps we’ll feel differently in the morning, at this time in our nightly writing, I think we are going to head out and not even fight the city.

Hit or Mist

It’s been a full Niagara day…We started very early, going into the Falls.  We got amazing parking right across the street and spent some time walking about in the mist and marveling at the view.

All the people who say, forget the American side, just go to Canada, are 100% right.  The falls are amazing, when viewed from CA.  At their opening, we journeyed beneath the falls.  Very wet.  Very cool. It was truly amazing.  I was soaked, and didn’t care, watching the water come over, the amount and the power of it was incredible.  Knowing that we could walk behind them, was also, for me, just amazing. 

Back

Front

 

We then walked a bit to see the falls and hoped on the WeGo bus.  Thank goodness for the WeGo bus, because walking or the continual find parking kind of approach would just be hellish.  But the buses run every 12 min, are comfortable, clean…

They do things right here, just like Disney.  Good crowd control and things move right along.  So continuing our trek up the river, we next visited the famous Maid of the Mist boats.  Very cool.  Very wet.  Thank goodness for the souvenir rain poncho’s.  I did not keep mind, choosing to recycle instead, but they are definitely needed.  The view from the bottom of the falls was, understandably more impressive then from the top.  Plus there was a wall of seagulls hanging out, and we got to see all the “walk next to and under” spots with all the people on them.

Back to our WeGo bus and we followed the river north to the White Water Walk way.  I was a little nervous about this, little wooden pathways next to rushing water ranks up there about at the same level as roller coaster and small mountain roads, but I was not willing to miss something.

Like the other two attractions, you ride a long elevator down, down, down.  And then, like below the falls, you travel through a very cool (as in temperature) tunnel, in which you don’t want to think about how much earth (and in some cases water) is above you.  But once outside, the walk way is pretty far from the river.  (10 ft?)  It’s not like the US where they’d probably put up a guardrail and a sign that says don’t jump.   (To be fair, there were a lot of signs that said don’t jump!)

The water was gorgeous though.  All the water here is a light jade-y green – from the minerals in the water that get eroded and swooshed about.  The rapids here that we walked near for about a half mile are class six, the roughest level.  They’ve tried a few times to have jet boats or guided rapid tours, but when they’ve tried, people died, so….

This too was amazing (my word for the day?).  It was like watching the North Atlantic surf in a hurricane, but on a nice day, in a river.  The path was far enough and sturdy enough I was not nervous in the least.

Next up the river: the cable car.  It’s been running since the turn of the century.  (Not the same car they told us, though looking at it one certainly would wonder.)  Since my rapids experience was so calming, and the cable car had a solid floor and didn’t swing, and moved slow, I was confident.  Yeah, okay, the cable car goes across the river over a whirlpool, but… it didn’t look that whirly.  The lady behind us in line was freaking a bit.  Though she also told us that she’d once gotten stuck in the air on a carnival ride for a few hours.  I could understand her being scared then, but I was still okay.  Even considering the fact that this whole car seemed to be held up by little wheels with a few inch of rim, going over a few wires…. 

So I got the car, thinking – two minutes across, two minutes back (I counted) this will be fine.  Huh.  Know that commercial where the older lady talks about riding her son’s motorcycle and says, “this is NOT fun!”

i did this

Yeah, for a good half the trip, it was NOT fun, but… it got better and I’ve experienced much worse.  You get used to things too, so by the time we were half way back, I was breathing normally again, and able to have a bit to eat and go back on the WeGo bus!

At this point we considered a power plant tour.  Niagara Power is planning, or maybe has started (I’m not sure) a big project in which they are going to build a tunnel under the city of Niagara Falls.  It will be 6 semi trucks wide and will travel from one end of water /power collection – bellow the falls to a spot above the falls, and be able to regulate water and power.  It’s pretty fascinating and a little, okay - very scary.

While I was curious as to watching/hearing about how they use the power of the water to generate electricity and learn more of this plan, we could not bring ourselves to go thru the 40 minute tour.  Pretty sure it would be “yay power plant!  See we are safe and environmental!”  Which, I suppose in comparison to maybe some other things, they are… but … 

So instead we got back on the WeGO bus, and into the crazy, midway part of town for one thing I just HAD to do.  Let me preface this by saying, I knew what this was going to be.  I knew it was going to be a ridiculous price for what it was (and it was) and that it was going to be lame (and it was) and there was no reason for most people on earth to do this (and that was also the case), but I HAD to.  In fact, we were probably among the ONLY people today to do this, and let me publicly say here, how wonderful Mike is to have indulged in this.

What was it?  The Criminal Hall of Fame wax museum (www.criminalshalloffame.com)  If you are picturing a very dark, smelly, fairly cheesy midway kind of wax museum with no budget.  You’ve pretty much got it.  I did not learn anything new, but I did see two original John Wayne Gacy painting.  This for me was worth the admission and the trek up a steep hill through craziness.

Sunburned, tired, and content, we headed out of town.  Stopping at Walmart for aloe, we had our next adventure… a young man in a BMW decided to back into our car.  This sounds worse than it was, really.  His car is fine.  Ours, the bumper clips popped a bit.  From a far you wouldn’t even notice it.  But we filled out all the paper work etc.  This was complicated by the fact that the young man was Chinese and did not speak a great deal of English.  But we got all info and shall stop at the car rental place first thing in the morning.

All in all a good day, though we are sooo sun burnt and very tired.

I also can’t imagine – one of the big stories here is from the 60’s when a kid (like 6?) fell out of a boat above the falls and with nothing but a life jacket made it over.  He survived and was pulled  out by a maid of the mist boat.  This was a miracle. 

And that lady from MN, I think it was, who went over in a barrel with her cat…. Ah yeah. I don’t know how they survived either.  Or what she was thinking… there MUST have been a different option.

All in all, Niagara Falls is definitely a place to see, but I’m feeling very contented with what we’ve done and ready to move on.  I would think about coming back to see it in winter, though the wet… and the cold?  The Maid of the Mist runs year round.  I can’t imagine.

Surprises

From yesterday....

 

We started our morning in buffalo, well, Amherst really – though nothing like our local one.  It was surprisingly easy to navigate the city and it all seems in many ways smaller than it should… With the notable exception of SUNY Buffalo.  The north campus, the newer one we think is shockingly huge.  It makes UCONN and UMASS seem like small liberal arts schools.  I was truly astonished.

But this aside, this morning we made our way downtown to Babeville, which (among other things) includes Ani DeFranco’s studio space, Righteous Babe Records.  It’s in a church!  Well, not in a church, it’s a church building taken over for recording studio, art, and concert space.  Sadly it was not open, but it was gorgeous.

From there we drove around some Buffalo neighborhoods – very urban artsy, hippie-esque.  Oddly M and I both agreed we liked Buffalo and it would’ve been an okay place to be.  Though at this stage, particularly given weather, there is no reason to be there.  Still, it was a surprise to find we rather liked it.

This being said, Buffalo also didn’t hold us that well.  The art museums didn’t have anything we particularly cared about.  We went to see the Frank Lloyd Wright house – because well, we have this tradition, but really… another FLW tour?  I just couldn’t do it.  The house looked nice though.  It was in a very urban (albeit expensive) neighborhood, I was surprised at this.  I think of him as requiring more property and less neighbors. 

FLW’s house here is 2 blocks from the zoo.  The exciting moment there here was that just outside the zoo we saw an urban bunny.  He was a tiny guy, on inner edge of the sidewalk, eating some shrubbery.  A bike came up the side walk, I don’t think the rider even saw the rabbit.  She stopped at the light a foot away from the bunny and the bunny didn’t flinch….

Down the road from this, we did see a dragon, so may be the whole scale is different here. Mike says don’t eat the mushrooms.

So, after driving around buffalo, we headed north, first to North Tonawanda.   A half horse town, but Hershel’s factory is there.  He made merry go rounds and other kiddie rides.  It’s in hard shape – I hope they make it, but it was neat to see the horses etc.  They’ve a working merry go around, but we opted not to ride.  (only horses – I really wanted a sea monster like the one we have in our dining room.)

Moving up the river, we got to Niagara Falls, NY.  It’s like a poor city threw up a casino and midway….I actually thought it would all be bigger.  This is true of the American side of the falls too.  We did walk out to see them, of course, and went up the tower walk way, and walked over to get closer and all… And they are impressive, but… at that point, more impressive to think about than to see.

As we have seen our share of plastic alligators, we did not walk around the midway area nor enter the block square high rise shopping mall.  Instead, we crossed the border to the other Niagara Falls.

Oh my.  This side didn’t just throw up a midway, it birthed one and the child is now a toddler.

We didn’t really stop or do anything today, we just did reconnaissance.  But even from the car, yes, indeed, there is no comparison of the Falls from the American side to the Canadian side.  The Canadian side makes the US seem sickly. 

And the midway… wow, more enough to for me to be overwhelmed and get my fill just driving around the block a few times.  There must have been 3 haunted houses, automatons all over the Ripley’s, the Ferris wheel…Giant Frankenstein 3-D billboards eating a hamburger from BK….

Wow.

Thankfully we are not staying in Niagara, but about 10 minutes north.  I was happy to leave the chaos and get a real, quiet, dinner.  We found a Vietnamese fusion place in St. Catherine where we’re staying.  It was fresh, good, quiet!

After dinner we took a ride to Niagara on the Lake.  Saw the lake, saw the ‘town’ – it looks like every other wealthy tourist town I’ve ever seen right down to the same stores:  Crabtree and Evelyn, 10000 villages…. It’s better than the plastic alligators, but still.

The lake is okay… big, but doesn’t feel big like an ocean.  Maybe it’s because I know it isn’t?

We are now done for the day and tired.  We are planning a super full day tomorrow doing the Niagara Fall’s stuff, like Maid of the Mist, etc.  We’ll be here again tomorrow night so, we’ll see where we are.

Shuffling off to Buffalo

So, we decided instead of Niagara Falls, maybe we’d just stay home and go to New Haven….

Okay, not really.  We left before dawn and 470 miles later, we are here in Buffalo, NY.  It’s actually not such a bad place, thus far.  From the drive thru, it has lots of alternative culture, lots of academia and the best darn buffalo wings I’ve had in years.

The ride was a bit long.  We did take a couple of detours.  First to Chennego, birthplace of Frank L. Baum.  I have a picture for a town secretary we all know.   We did not go into the All That’s Oz museum because it’s only open a few hours on Friday nights.  But it was a hoot nonetheless.

We also traveled along the Erie Canal.  As it happens, I’ve traveled along this before, but never actually registered canal, not river.  So that was kind of neat to figure this out (duh) and see the locks.

We then moved on to Syracuse, another town I’ve only been in the airport in.  It too was kind of a nice little city.  Very nice architecture.  There we stopped at the Erie Canal Museum.  Another tiny, but charming place.  They had a life size model river boat that I truly enjoyed and FINALLY learned why I associate the Erie Canal with donkeys!  The boats did not have motors or sails, but were pulled through the canal – by horses and donkeys!  Poor things.

We had lunch at the Miss Syracuse diner – another blast from the past, but not an intentional one.  It was very charming and right out of the 60’s.  Or maybe 50’s.

Still traveling west, we stopped at Seneca Falls – waved to the location that started Memorial Day, the park where they women “held their first convention” and went into downtown to the National Women’s Hall of Fame.  What a true disappointment.  While they had a couple of  interesting artifacts – Amelia Erhardt’s shoes, mostly it had 1 page bio’s with pic of women up on the wall.  Easily gotten from any encyclopedia or these days online.

Discouraged, we moved on to Buffalo, with some effort found a place to stay and headed thru town to the Anchor Bar, the self proclaimed originator of Buffalo Wings.  They were good.  They were too many of them. (By count, we got about 10 more than we ordered and we ordered a lot.) 

A full day, but good.

Preamble

Okay… every year I’ve blogged, I’ve been so proud that I’ve managed to get so much into my little  knapsack…This year, I’ve destroyed that record.  Because no plane is involved,  I know I’ve packed too much, more than one could possible need and still I feel like I’m forgetting something and should grab something else. 

The car, a Nissan Altima (that has made me sure that my poor little Mazda not only needs to go into the shop ASAP after we get back but is really a sports car, which is to say it does not have a smooth ride and sits pretty low) is packed.  We are planning on leaving at first light tomorrow to head to Buffalo.   (We’re up anyway…)

It occurred to us that Canada is actually “International”… that means that our typical modes of logging in (Verizon Broadband) won’t actually work.  So we will be dependent upon International WIFI.  While I’m certain this will mean no break to your regularly scheduled reading, I mention it, just in case I’m wrong.

 

Till tomorrow….