And finally, after almost a whole week in Ontario, mostly spent in the city of Toronto, the trip was almost over and the day had arrived for my flight out. But the trip wasn't over yet, and there were a couple more interesting things left to do before flying home.
My flight out of Buffalo didn't leave till the late afternoon on that day, September 11, 2017, which left plenty of time to see some other stuff. During the drive up to Toronto, on the highway along the shore of Lake Ontario, seemingly every highway exit had signs directing people to at least two wineries near that exit. I knew I would have to stop at one, and that's what I did on the way back. There were so many, so I just picked a random exit from the highway and a random winery from there. I wound up at the Peninsula Ridge Winery. I had expected I'd have a big bottle of red or white wine when I left, and I did indeed taste several such, but they also served something I had never tried: ice wine.
It seems that some vintner accidentally invented ice wine decades ago when his grape crop was frozen solid during a winter. He then found that wine made from these frozen grapes was quite sweet and thus a marketable product. I tasted this and it was indeed sweet and delicious. So of course I had to buy a bottle. It was small, though, a bit shorter than a typical wine bottle and much thinner, probably an inch and a half wide. This is just what they bottle ice wine in.
To get to Buffalo, one must drive through Niagara Falls. That name refers not only to the Falls itself, but to two neighboring towns, one in Ontario and the other in New York, with the Niagara River, forming the US/Canada border, running between them. I did have a few more hours so, may as well check out this world-famous tourist attraction. First, I stopped in the town on the Ontario side of the border. Both of these towns were quite tourist-trappy with shops everywhere selling hokey souvenirs. You can find all the usual tourist trap staple businesses, like a Hard Rock Café, Ripley's Believe it or Not, an IMAX theater...in fact, I'd go so far as to say it's like a PG-rated version of the Vegas Strip. There's even casinos and the occasional Elvis impersonator.
I typically don't mess around with hokey souvenirs so I went straight to a place where I could look at the majestic waterfall:
Time to cross the border now. Right next to the vehicle checkpoint there's a duty free shop, where I stopped because someone back home wanted a souvenir keychain. They also sold quite a lot of Molson beer, which I only wished I could take back with me but that would be hard to take with me on a plane. I bought the keychain there and found they had a curious procedure for buying stuff there and taking it back to the States. This is all tax-free, only intended to be bought by citizens of other countries, so of course they don't want ANY of this stuff circulating in Canada. When you're done shopping and you pay for your purchases, they don't hand it back to you; instead they keep it behind the counter and give you a receipt. Then you go back outside, get in your car, and drive down a one-way driveway around the back of the building and stop at a drive-up window. You give the receipt to someone at the window, and they go back and get what you bought, the keychain in my case, and give it to you there. At that point all you can do is drive across the border, so your tax-free merchandise leaves the country.
Finally I had to stop in the town on the New York side of the border and get a shot of the falls there:
And that was pretty much it. After that it was just driving to Buffalo airport, turning in the rental car, and then a pair of flights to Baltimore and then to San Antonio.
All in all, a good trip. I think I more than scratched the surface of Toronto, certainly more than Montréal a year earlier, and wouldn't mind dropping in one more time to hit up anything I may have missed. If there's a marathon there, it's only a matter of time before you see me running in it.
Other articles in this series:
