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Events: Niagara Falls, the Ribfest, and assorted shameful hedonism while the world seeks help for Africa via Live8
Sun, 03 Jul 2005

We took a day trip out to Niagara Falls to enjoy some time away from chores, enjoy Canada Day and taste some really excellent pizza. The city, once the so-called honeymoon capitol of Canada, is really Ontario's private little imitation of Las Vegas - including the casinos and dorky souvenir shops but excluding the sin :) And yeah, it has The Falls of course! I must admit that although everyone I know has seen the falls dozens of times, the falls (there are multiple clustered together) really are spectacular to see each round and the surrounding area is gorgeous for biking, wandering around, wine tasting or eating fudge while attending wax museums highlighting well known murderers.

(The Ribfest we encountered back in Toronto, though they're popping up all over the place; theres another in Mississauga in a few weeks so we may have to attend there too.. see if you can find one in your location :)

(And since tomorrow is my brother's birthday .. Happy Birthday Punk!)

I kid you not - the city of Niagara Falls is both beautiful with a lot of parks to picnic in and cheesy beyond belief with midways, blinkenlights casinos, wax museums, and a Burger King restaurant with Frankenstein's Monster on top. All year round its like a Halloween party zone for the kids, though its nicest in summer with its ever-present cool mist from the Falls. Be sure to take a drive out through Niagara-On-The-Lake for the acre sized gardens and parks, the many vineyards and wine-tasting locations, and museums - especially if you've got some bicycles or want to drive along the gorgeous Niagara River or pop into a Bed-and-Breakfast. Anyway, I don't want to advertise too much beyond saying we pop by once or twice a year to wander over to the falls and up past the goofy stuff to nab a great slice of wood stove pizza.

(In case you're wondering, the really yummy wood-stove pizza place is atop Cliffton Hill -- head up the hill to Victoria Avenue (the first street at the top of the hill) and turn left after crossing the road. A couple doors over is the restaurant - Antica Pizza - a tiny little place that matches my primary requirement of having red and white checkered tablecloths and thin pizza that you can't pick up. Being Vegas-like, the tablecloths are plastic, but close enough..)

Anyway, throwing out the mundane hour by hour, I'll just go on a bit about some of the goofy things encountered this last weekend..

When we first arrived in Niagara Falls we booked into a hotel and while shaking down after the commute (being Canada Day weekend traffic was relatively crazy so we took back roads the whole way) flipped on the tube for a bit. Television in Niagara Falls is a little different (to us) since it features all the American shows we don't normally get -- being so close to the US border and to make it more comfortable for the many American visitors (since Niagara Falls is nearly exclusively a tourist city.) Well, apparently with the July 4th weekend approaching it was time for the annual Nathan's Hotdog Eating Contest somewhere in the Sowth and we were briefly mesmerized by the sight of many poor bastages eating more than 50 hotdogs each in 12 minutes. While this had nothing to do with Niagara Falls per se, it certainly enhanced the experience!

Ah yes, here is the famous Burger King Frankenstein's Monster on Clifton Hill. I didn't snap too many camera-phone photos since I was really trying to have a life instead, but this is just too bloggable (even if the phone can't take great shots in the bright sun :)

If you're in the city near the old casino (Clifton Hill at the bottom, near the Niagara River), your nose has assaulted your brain and dragged you into a sugar craze at the Hershey Store. Contrast this friendly guy the the wax museum of serial killers up the lane..

The main reason we came to Niagara Falls was to get away from chores back home and relax, but we do like a bit of gambling now and then.. mostly I admit the 5c slots since we like to just see if we can figure them out (it actually tunes into my arcade and coin-operated-machine fetish), but we also get into the roulette wheel a bit since its just so ... mathematical and all. Needless to say, the two casinos cleaned our clocks but good, so we licked our wounds and headed out :P

After being doused at the wheel, we wandered around for a bit; being a bit hungry I tried some nasty looking potato chips from the US; damn, they were seriously hot, with a little flavour even. Well, as long as I could taste the flavour they had some, which wasn't long :)

After returning and resting up, Saturday found us doing chores again but I couldn't resist the lure of the annual Ribfest. We've never been, and until the last few weeks I wasn't into ribs.. but you may have noticed in an earlier blog entry how I suddenly have become ravenous for the things. The event is put on by the local Rotary Club, and apparently it occurs all over the place at different times, moving from club to club for the last hundred years. This was the Toronto event, but with another Ribfest in a few weeks, I'll have to find a bigger pair of pants :)

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