mychai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Day #5: JP takes a big dose of Niagara Whew! I don't have much time to write. I had such a blast today. I woke up at around 7:30, got showered and dressed, and walked down to the hostel lobby to meet up with the crew of total strangers that I would spend my whole day with. It is a day trip to Niagara Falls that the hostel has put together. Ten people piled into a bus and headed an hour and a half towards the American border. I was the only American among three German girls (one of whom I will write about in a bit), a French married couple, a guy and a girl from England who had been previously not introduced, a guy from Japan (named Tommy... I suspect that wasn't his real name), and a guy from New Zealand. It was an eclectic crowd, and I was proud to be among them. We got to Niagara at around 10:00am after a relatively quiet trip. I walked to the falls to snap a few shots when the German girls asked me to take pictures of them. One looked like a fuller version of Claire Daines. She was a kewl girl. And real talkative, too. I hung around the German girls for pretty much the whole day. One is studying linguistics in Montreal and has an interest in English literature. Considering my major, we had a lot to talk about. The other girl is in law school. I mentioned I have been thinking about going on to law school after I finish my English degree, so we had stuff to talk about as well. Don't laugh. Just because I haven't written in here about my considerations of going on to law school doesn't mean I haven't thought about it. We spent three hours in Niagara Falls, and that was about as much as I could handle. The actual falls were gorgeous, albeit nearly completely frozen over. But just beyond the falls were the most gaudy, tacky, God-awful display of tourist capitalism one could ever imagine. They had a WWE Museum, haunted houses, Ripleys Believe It or Not Museum, more T-shirt shops than you could shake a stick at, Frankenstein everything (I couldn't figure that out, either...), and just the most crap piled into one area than you could possibly imagine. Spending three hours at Niagara was about as much as my nerves could handle. We then went to a small town about 20 minutes away called Niagara on the Lake. It was a quaint little town with cute buildings and a well-planned downtown. It was still overly touristy, but it was at least not nearly as tacky. We stopped there and had lunch. I had a cream of mushroom soup. It was deeee-lish on such a cold day. Did I mention Niagara was pretty frozen over? Yes? Well, it is that cold up here. After lunch, our tour guide took the ten of us to a winery where we proceeded to drink lots of wine. They have this wine called ice-wine. It is like drinking pure alcoholic nectar. Extremely sweet, extremely good, and extremely "heartwarming." We got back at the hostel at around 5:30 in the evening, and I was quite tired. I got the first German Girl's email address. Since she lives in Montreal, I told her I would try to contact her while Nicole and I were up there. She said she would show us a good time. Whatever that means. When I got back, Nicole was just finishing cleaning up. I had spent enough money for the day and wasn't in the mood to spend more dough at a restaurant. So, we went to the store and bought some spaghetti fixin's. Except the noodles had bugs in them. Since I didn't feel like running back to the store, I just washed them off before boiling. I threw the rest away. It was a good dinner. The two of us ate a full meal for under $4 American. Can't beat that. I think we will play board games and just relax tonight. I'm the one who is tired of walking for a change. Oh, and if she mentions something about Scrabble and how she lost miserably, then it is because she is a sorry looser and has nothing to do with me being a crappy speller. Quill should be spelled with one "l". Ok. I'm out of time. Tune in tomorrow. 8:05 p.m. - Sat., Mar. 22, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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