Category Archives: Canada

The rain had gone this morning but it left behind a lovely humidity in the air that made my four miler a very soggy one.  But it was worth it to cover the calories in breakfast: pancakes (GF for me!) with “bananas foster” (really bananas fried in Kahlua!) with sausage and a starter course of diced fruit and nuts in yogurt. We ate a bit earlier and then put the top down and headed for “The Falls”!

We paid the exhorbitant parking fee to be right at Table Rock and wandered the along the edge of the falls.  Frank had visited before when he was in Buffalo with my brother for the Frozen Four but it was a first for Gillian and me. The sight and the sounds are truly breathtaking.  It’s almost inconceivable that there could be that much water anywhere let alone all in one place.  We stared at the Canadian falls for a good while before wandering down to the American falls (which unfortunately really aren’t as nice).

We then decided to see what was up with the “Maid of the Mist” that I had heard so much about.  For a mere $20 CAD each, we got bundled up in blue plastic and joined other lunatics at the front of a rusty bucket that gets as close to the base of both falls as one could want. As the day was getting progressively hotter, there were not many complaints when the spray soaked us and everyone around us!  It was truly amazing to look up at the 170+ foot wall of water crashing down just in front of us.

By the time we were done water gawking, it was coming up on lunchtime and the place had gotten frighteningly crowded.  I confess that I was amazed at the number of people with resort wrist bands and multi-day passes.  I enjoyed the 2.5 hours we spent there but can’t imagine basing an entire vacation on the falls!  Instead we meandered back west to Niagara-on-the-Lake.  Talk about quaint!  It was almost too much!

Of course, there were wineries along the way!  First stop was a small place called “Between the Lines” because it was on a diagonal street between 4th Line and 5th Line (which are street names – very odd!) They did a very nice Vidal so we bought a bottle of that.    This was the first winery we were at where they didn’t wave the tasting fee when we bought a bottle of wine.  There are apparently very strict laws in Ontario on how tastings can be done with limits on how many ounces you can serve at any one time and how many kinds of wine you can pour.  It seems that the standard rule of thumb is a flight of 3 or 4 wines to taste for $5 (or thereabouts) with some wineries charging 50 cents or $1 per taste ($2 was common for ice wine) and every winery (so far) waving the fee if you bought a bottle (or two for the fancier wineries).  So our nice Vidal was a tad more expensive than we had expected but still worth it.

We then moved on to the famous Inniskillen Winery – the one that at least 4 different people told me was a “must see”.  Well, apparently I’m not good with “must” as we stopped and saw but didn’t bother to taste.  It is big and well organized with grand buildings but when we went to taste their famous ice wine, we stopped and gawked:  $5-$10 per ONE OUNCE taste.  Yes, that is right.  Every other place we had been that offered ice wine had either no additional charge or a small extra fee but really…. I usually drink wine that costs $10 a BOTTLE so there was no way I was paying that for an ounce.  Now granted, ice wine is much more expensive to produce because the grapes are harvested in January while they are still frozen and it takes more grapes to get the same amount of juice (and the sugar and alcohol content are higher) but seriously, $10 an ounce?  Ice wine is only sold in 375 ml bottles (half of the standard 750 ml for wine) and Frank noticed that a 3 pack of the smaller bottles sold for around $120!  And we were outta there!

Lunch in Niagara-on-the-Lake (NOTL) was nothing special: we stopped at the first reasonable looking place we saw which sold burgers and salads and ordered those. (If you are keeping track, that’s a salad pretty much every single day for me – and still the shorts are getting tight!).  Then we wandered around the impossibly cute town where everyone was either an British or Commonwealth expat or was apparently visiting from London to escape the Olympics.  There were Union Jacks flying everywhere and both a Scottish and an Irish shop in between the dozen or so shops selling ice cream.  We did stop in to the Scottish Loft and picked up some Irn Bru for the road tomorrow as well as a Wallace and Grommit DVD which has all the movies.  We thought we’d skip the Irish Tea Room and wandered down to the lake instead where we found another shortcoming in either our parenting skills or our child:  Gillian can’t skip rocks either….. I blame Frank for this one.

On the way back to the car, I realized that the forsaken Irish Tea Room actually sold GF pastries – lots of them!  So I secured a slice of raisin tea loaf and zucchini bread with pistachios to have with breakfast tomorrow and got a cranberry orange crumbly thing to eat right then and there.  Delicious!

Then we were back on the road for the rest of the afternoon’s planned activities: winery visits!  Gillian had been looking forward to driving us around so she could a) make fun of us for being lushes; and  b) drive in Canada – but alas it was not to be.  To much sun and not enough water had taken it’s toll and she wasn’t feeling well so we dropped her off to have a nap and ventured out on our own.  We had complementary tasting cards for a few of the local wineries complements of the B&B so we headed to those places first.  At 13th Street Winery, we were glad of the complementary tasting card because we were not enamored of any of the wines enough to buy a  bottle to avoid the tasting fee.  From there we went to Stoney Ridge winery with a similar card.  There we actually found a Chardonnay that Frank liked – slight hint of oak was the key – so we didn’t really need the card since we did buy a bottle.  The white wines in this region tend to be very minerally so even the Rieslings taste very citrusy – to the point of not *really* tasting like Rieslings at all.

For our final stop, we wanted to go to a winery called Foreign Affair, mostly because they have a moose on the wine label, but it was closed and so we headed for the nearest alternative: Greenlane Winery.  And boy were we glad we did!
We got there just at the end of the day and had the small tasting room to ourselves.  It was $5 for a flight of 4 wines with the tasting fee going to the local animal shelter (bonus!) and since there was a possibility of eight wines, we got to sample all of them.  And 7 of them I would have bought!  The woman was very nice and she was the one who gave us the skinny on the tasting rules and how ice wine is made and all sorts of inside info on the Niagara wine region.  We even tasted our first (and only!) ice wine:  with 18% residual sugar, I thought Frank was going to gag!  2% is about as sweet as he can tolerate without comparing a wine to Robitussin. But there was no extra charge and we wound up with 3 bottles of very good Rose, Cabernet blend and a Pinot Gris – Reisling combo that could be wickedly dangerous to drink on a hot day.  We even got tips on which wineries do the best reds – too bad we’re leaving tomorrow… 😦

Then we woke sleeping beauty and headed to The Lake House – another restaurant recommended by the B&B proprietor.  We ate on the deck overlooking the lake (lovely!) and ignoring the biting flies (not lovely!) had a very nice dinner.  Not nearly the feast we enjoyed at August on Saturday night but I had a tasty lobster risotto, Frank enjoyed his steak and Gillian was content with a chicken Caesar salad.

All in all, the trekking by the falls helped us to rack up 14,461 steps or 6.23 miles.  Interesting food for today: my dessert tonight was a meringue surrounded by creme anglais and covered with caramel and almonds.  It had some Italian sounding name and was very yummy.

And so we say good bye  to New York state and the USA.  I did my final run of the week – a short 3 miles- and confirmed that Skaneateles is where the sidewalks end.  No matter what major thoroughfare I traveled along, the sidewalks ended exactly at the village boundary which was usually about one mile from wherever I started.  We also said good bye to the Arbor House Inn which was a perfectly serviceable B&B, but it’s not one I would recommend especially for those with food sensitivities, even if they say they can “accommodate” you.  This morning’s breakfast choices were two croissant based casseroles which were not suitable for me so although I was offered the mushy Vans waffles again, I opted for yogurt, fruit and my granola.

Then westward ho!  We broke the trip in Rochester to wander around the campus of RIT which was Gillian’s concession to me for spending all day at Skidmore on Monday.  All of us were pleasantly surprised at how attractive the campus was and how suitable it seemed to be for her.  I won’t get my hopes up that she’ll actually apply but she really is being open minded about things this trip so I can’t complain.

We continued  our journey to the great white north and got to sit in traffic at the border crossing (I think our agent had a Napoleanic complex!) before we finally were able to watch the kilometers click by on the Queen Elizabeth Way.  Unfortunately, all the waiting had taken it’s toll and we were in desparate need of a washroom (I speak Canadian already, eh!) It just so happened that the first place we saw where we could take car of this urgent need was…. a winery!  Who’d have thunk it?

So we were on our way to discovering the joys of the Niagara wine region! The Harbor Estates winery was a lovely little place (with a washroom!) that made very nice rose which we procured for later enjoyment.  The woman behind the bar was joking with Gillian about coming back for a visit when she turned 19.  Very nice and pleasant folks!  We wandered down the road a bit more for a late lunch in Jordan Village with salads and sandwiches – and delicious GF fries with homemade smoked ketchup… yum!

Then we jut had to stop at two more wineries – really, they are everywhere here! – at Megalomaniac Winery where the building is half underground, the label is very cool and the Cab Sauv is unbelievably smooth.  Right down the road is Tawse Winery which has the most impressive building and an equally impressive price tag on their wines which we opted not to purchase. The atmosphere was not particularly inviting; it was almost like “our wine is awesome so buy some and leave”!

So we left without buying and headed to the hamlet of Grimsby – okay, more like a regular town or suburb but it’s our home base for the next three days.  The B&B is on the ridge of an escarpment (I needed to look it up too!) and is very unassuming looking from the outside but our room is wonderful – including a deck where you can see the lake and the Toronto skyline – and so is the proprietor. Michelle made us feel right at home, verified that I could have two of the three courses she was making for breakfast tomorrow but that she really didn’t do justice to GF muffins.  I’m sure I’ll survive.  She also suggested places to eat for tonight and Monday and then made reservations for us.  Talk about service!

And what a recommendation!  We ate tonight at August Restaurant in Beamsville and I honestly can’t remember when I have had a better meal! Everything is organic, locally sourced and expertly prepared.  Even their winelist is 100% Ontario wines!  Starting with the antipasti platter (the smoked trout, duck proscuitto and 2 year old cheddar among other things) and then moving to the roast lemon rosemary chicken (Gillian), peppercorn steak (Frank) and vegetable gratin (me – Gruyere and garlic cream sauce, need I say more?), everything was absolutely wonderful and mostly gluten free!  They even brought me corn bread to have while the gluten eaters had their honey flax seed bread.

Then the pièce de résistance – dessert…. they had sticky toffee pudding on the menu and it was gluten free!  It wasn’t that I could order it that way, it is the only way they make it.  I haven’t been able to have sticky toffee pudding for years – the last time was in Simpsons on the Strand in 2007 before I was diagnosed.  It was heavenly!  I really didn’t need to order one and needed even less to eat it but I was truly in food heaven.

So I now realize that I did nothing but eat and drink today and surprisingly, didn’t do much walking.  The pedometer reads a measly 5090 steps or 2.19 miles which isn’t nearly enough to burn off the 5000 calories I ate today but there you go.  Most unusual food item:  venison pate with cherries.  Didn’t think there was any way I could possible like it but I did.  More so than Frank actually and he’s the venison fan.