Ontario notes

The last time we were in Canada (April 2012 in Vancouver) I ended up back in the USSA with three bits of currency and some pocket change.

I saved it in a mustard jar.  All USA citizens from within a few hundred miles of the border know that occasionally a shopkeeper will try to pass you a Canadian coin when they give you change for a purchase you are making with good old USA currency.  Every time that I notice I give the Canadian back and demand real money, particularly since the exchange rate has moved so noticeably in favor of George, Abraham and Thomas (and Andrew and Ben and is it Ulysses on the 50?).  But they slip one past you now and again and I took to adding them to my mustard jar figuring that I would be back in Canada at some point and could pass them at par.

Well, bad luck about those Canadian pennies.  Canadians don't take them anymore.

My plan is to just leave them there on the desk or maybe just throw them out the window of the car as we leave town tomorrow.  Disposing of Canadian one cent pieces when Canadian business no longer accepts them as payment seems a task outside of my job description.

We separated for breakfast today.  The FT stayed in and I wandered down the path towards a food court I had spotted inside the casino just downriver from where we are.  It turns out I should have checked the food court a bit more carefully.  There was only one place open for breakfast business.  We had had a coffee a couple of times at the most ubiquitous of Canadian businesses but today I had to have a bacon breakfast muffin with my Tim Horton's coffee.  The coffee is fine, the muffin is a McDonald's McMuffin only not quite as well rendered.  And I say this thinking the McMuffin is anything but well rendered.  Once again, the coffee was fine.

On the way back I broke out my portable communications device and tried to communicate with the FT in the tower.  Eventually we started to communicate (via text) and I got her to move the curtains and wave confirming which of the rooms is ours.  Third from the top under the word "Hotel".

Here's an Ontario note that struck me as a little strange.  We took considerable pains to acquire an international calling plan from our cellular provider.  It was all good in Toronto but here in Niagara Falls I have discovered that my phone is definitely on the domestic plan.  Apparently there is a tower near enough by on the USSA side of the border to provide service to me here in Canada.

So anyway, later in the day I took the reverse angle photo from our hotel room of the spot where I was standing when FT and I were waving and texting.  I was in the second circle along the decorative brick path after that path veers away from the street.  Very pretty purple blooms on the trees down there.

And a lodging note.  We are in a more or less circular tower up here.  The rooms are all radiating out from a central area with elevators and hallway.  This means our room is more or less a triangle.  The acute angle back towards the hotel's center contains a bit of hallway and a wedge for the bathroom.  The very end of the wedge is the shower, a very oddly shaped shower.  Both the FT and I have observed that falling down in the shower is not only unlikely, it seems almost impossible.  I can make it all the way to the shower head but there really is very little room beyond.

Today was mostly cloudy and even though there was a stong sense that maybe we should just sit in front of our window and soak it all in we decided to follow up on some of the other stuff in the guidebook.  All of the water going over that cliff in front of our window is traveling from the fourth of the five great lakes, Ontario, into the last, Erie (and south to north at this point).  There are ships that make that same trip from Ontario to Erie but the ships make the trip via the Welland Canal.  We headed over there to take a look.

Ships are lifted 326 feet within 7 miles on a trip lasting about 8 hours.  Ships plying the Great Lakes (usually referred to as "lakers") are designed to fit within the existing locks of the various canals.  Here we are at Lock 3 (of 8) along the route as the Harbour Fountain, a tanker, enters the lock traveling from north to south, Erie to Ontario, at this point upstream, up the hill.

And a few minutes later the water from upstream has been allowed to fill the dock and the ship has been lifted up to the next higher level.

We drove along the Welland Canal Parkway up to Lock 7, the lock where the greatest change in elevation occurs, what folks around here refer to as "where the ships climb the mountain".

But what struck us most about that spot was the close similarity of this thing to our dafter's favorite Musée d'Orsay piece "Ours Blanc".  If I was at home working from my full library of photos I could post a link to a view of the sculpture in Paris, for now you will have to rely on your memory.

White bear indeed.

But after a while the Canal mostly seemed like just another industrial work area.  And further, being as we live quite near to the lock and dam systems of the Mississippi River, we found that even though the whole lock system of the Welland Canal is quite an impressive engineering feat, we have both seen plenty of craft passing through locks.

It was interesting but not as interesting as what is right in front of the window of the place we are renting.

This afternoon's view of Horseshoe.  It looks a little bit different every day, the lighting conditions change, the view changes.

This afternoon's view of the American Falls.

We have now been here long enough to notice that the schedules for the excursion boats coming up for a close up look at Horseshoe are not completely regular.  During the middle of the day the trips seem fairly regular but as the afternoon has worn on the last couple of days at least the frequency of trips by the blue boats (Maid of the Mist from the USSA side) seems to diminish.  The red boats (Hornblower from the Canadian side) also seem less frequent but are still running at least once in a while while the blue boats seem to have stopped for the day.

Ontario note:  You get blue complimentary plastic ponchos on the Maid of the Mist, patrons on Hornblower are wearing red plastic ponchos.

And so we are nearly done here.

There is a slight chance that something more will occur this evening but it is getting late here now.  If something does occur I will include it in tomorrow's post.

LATE EDIT:  Something did happen and it seems well worthy of inclusion here.  Some entity or another shot off fireworks over the Niagara River gorge this evening.

Anyone who has been following along will appreciate that we had a pretty good view.  The bursts were actually below us, who doesn't like watching fireworks from above.

Floodlight lit American Falls on the right for perspective and scale.