Sunday, June 13, 2010

A Little Bit of Canada

A few days ago (4, to be exact), I returned from a trip to New York. I meant to make this post days ago but I've been busy. It was a relatively short trip, just 6 days long, but I had such a great time! Why? I spent the weekend on a tour bus to Toronto. Well, that's not the awesome part. The awesome part was getting to be on the road and see all sorts of great things. It was my first trip up to Canada!

The tour was a 3-day bus tour. We drove from New York through New Jersey then Pennsylvania and again through New York (upstate) before arriving in Ontario where we saw Niagara Falls at night. Niagara at night: beautiful. No picture could ever do it justice.


Before arriving to Ontario, we didn't spend a full day on a bus. Well, we did a little. We made a few stops: food, bathroom, museum. Oh? Museum! We went to the Corning Museum of Glass where just about everything was made of glass. People have made suck incredibly interesting things over the centuries. Did you know that glass wasn't always transparent?


Left: a number of pretty little glass bowls.
Right: the painting in the background: Not a painting. It is, in fact, made of glass. Many small shards of glass put together to make something that looks like that. No paint involved in the making of this at all.



The museum is such a large place that I couldn't even spend much time looking at all the different things that were made in the varying centuries. There's a lot of history behind glass and the makings of it. And I got to see a 15-minute live show of a guy making glass (the modern way). It was pretty cool.


On our first morning in the beautiful city of Niagara Falls, we went, of course, to Niagara Falls. We took a walk along the road (probably about a mile-long) and I got so many nice shots of the falls. We also went on the Maid of the Mist and were drenched under the water of the falls. There truly is no better way to experience the magnificence of the falls than to be right there in front of them. No words could describe the majestic presence of this beauty of nature. 


We then got to eat lunch in Skylon Tower where we also got to see the falls and a great deal of Canada from above. After all this, we headed for Toronto. It was about a 3-4 hour drive with one bathroom break.


One can't go to Toronto and not visit the ever grand CN Tower. I got to see more amazing views from Canada from an incredible height and stood, walked and took pictures on the glass floor. That was pretty cool. Following that, we went on a boat ride over Lake Ontario where I got to see a great view of the city's skyline. Dinner was consumed in Chinatown and we got to sleep in a rather fancy 4-star hotel that night: Delta.

The 3rd (and final) day of the tour: 1000 Island boat tour. Unfortunately, it was a rainy and chilly morning and I wasn't able to get any nice photos of the different islands we passed by. There are over 1000 islands that sit in Saint Lawrence River. Had the windows not been covered in raindrops, I would've enjoyed the view. But nature can't be helped and I had a lovely time, regardless.

The ride to New York was about 7 hours with a couple of short breaks. I was sort of sad that the tour was coming to an end for 2 reasons: Canada is such an amazing place and I would've loved to see more of it (one day, I will); and I had an amazing tour guide, King Kong. He was definitely one of the nicest, funniest, most engaging tour guide I've ever met.

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I won this vase (above) at the Corning Museum of Glass. We were given tickets when we entered to watch the live show. Unfortunately, I couldn't bring it home because our suitcases were already filled. =( So, I left it with my Uncle in New York. I don't win anything! So this was a big deal. And I also had to sing a song on the bus because I was Ms. Lucky. I was caught off guard with it so I had forgotten to let my Mom record it in my shock. How unfortunate!

1 comment:

Mario said...

The vlog is very cute - very cute indeed.