Road Tripping Canada
After a 24 hour layover in Iceland which you can read about here we finally arrived in Canada. We had flown into Toronto as it’s where Hannah’s friend Eleanor and her family lived. They had moved out to Canada a few years before and it was our first time heading over to visit them.
We planned to spend a couple of weeks road tripping through upstate New York and around Lake Ontario to Ottawa, Montreal and back through to Algonquin park before finishing our trip back in Toronto.
After arriving in Toronto we explored the local area for a few days before hitting the road and heading towards our first stop which was Niagara Falls. We arrived at the falls on the Canadian side as the Canadian - USA border is split directly down the Niagara river. Canada actually owns the famous horseshoe falls though and this is the side you want to get the boat from. The town itself has a bit of a fun fair feel to it and feels a bit cheap and carnival like. We boarded the Hornblower boat and had our cruise right up to the horseshoe falls. We were totally soaked and any attempt at capturing the experience was not going to work because of the amount of water. It’s crazy how long they can hold the boats next to the falls.
After Niagara we headed into upstate New York USA, we spent a night there and explored some of the older towns before heading back across the board into Canada. We stopped for the night at Thousand Islands, a small town but the main draw was the many islands we could take a coat cruise around. There was also a large heritage day festival going on. Guys were dressed as British and Canadian soldiers from the colonial days to celebrate the bond between Britain and Canada. The boat cruise around the islands was fun and we envied the people that had their very own little islands with their homes built on them. It looks incredibly peaceful and an amazing place to wake up each day.
Our next destination was Ottawa. We hired bikes and cycled along the beautiful canal before heading to a street BBQ festival and trying out all sorts of different Barbecued foods.
After spending some time exploring the beautiful streets of Ottawa, we left the city to head towards our most easterly destination Montreal. It was a fun drive seeing the signs start to change from English to French as we crossed the Ontario Quebec border. Montreal has a feel of a colonial city mixed with Paris. It is cool to see the old advertising painted on the sides of buildings contrast with the Notre Dame Basilica of Montreal.
Our final destination of our road trip was to head to Algonquin park. We wanted to try to see some wildlife such as bears and moose. The park is big and has beautiful camping locations around the lakes there. We stayed in one of the prebuilt yurts which was basic but comfortable.
We hired bikes and cycled through parts of the park and explored its natural beauty. While we didn't see much in the way of big wildlife it was nice to get away from the cities and enjoy the peacefulness of nature before flying back to the UK.
Canada is a beautiful country and next time we would love to visit the western more mountainous part of the country.
