Toronto, Niagara Falls and 1000 Islands

It's the 10th of May, time to leave Europe. After spending three weeks in France, it's finally time to take our flight to Toronto where we will spend a few months traveling through Canada. We already have a road-map for the East side and we have five weeks to reach the finish line in Halifax, NS.

We land in Toronto Pearson International Airport after eight hours of flight, spend a couple of never-ending hours to go through the immigration and finally reach the airport exit... No luck, we have some French pâté with us and need to go through customs... 30 minutes later, we are out and meet Marta, a friend of Petra's grand mother. Marta, Frank and their family will be hosting us for our two first nights in Toronto. We drive to the city, meet one of Marta's daughter Anna and have diner at Marché Mövenpick, a marketplace-style restaurant which offers a great variety of delicious plates before heading to Marta's place and meet the rest of her family.

After a good night of sleep and an yummy breakfast at home (pancakes, fruits and Maple syrup), we drive to the city center with Marta and Frank to visit downtown, the CN tower and the aquarium.

We meet Anna and Natasha in Kensington Market for some late afternoon snacks at Wanda's pie in the sky.

The day ends in Eaton Centre shopping mall where we buy a Telus SIM card 65 CAD, for unlimited text and call in Canada + 3 Gig of Data. That's expensive compare to what we can find in Europe but we are not surprised.

Sunday the 12th of May is Mother's day in Canada. We have lunch all together and Frank's mother and brother are joining us as-well! It's the first barbecue of the year!

We spend the afternoon together until late afternoon when Marta and Frank decide to help us once again by driving us to our AirBnB in the city.

It is already Monday and it's time for us to take the bus to the Niagara Falls!

You can get pretty good deals if you book the bus in advance with Megabus. Also, renting a car will give you more freedom to go around the Niagara Falls if you stay more than one day.

We arrive at the bus station two hours later. The weather doesn't look great. We are the 13th of May, it's not really busy and we head down to the Niagara Falls visitor center to get our tickets sorted (we bought them online as a package). We realize the boat to the bottom of the Niagara Falls start operating in two days, from the 15th of May... We spend our day wandering around and visiting the different attraction included in our tickets (Niagara behind the falls, Niagara Fury, The butterfly conservatory, Whirlpool Aero Car and White Water Walk). It's all pretty good and it takes a full day to do the entire tour. The Niagara Fury is a "4D" attraction with huge screens, splashing water and fake snow. We are the only two people in the room when going through it.

We take our bus back to Toronto and arrive at 10 pm. We have two days left to visit the rest of the city and a lot to do still. We have Casa Loma and the Royal Ontario Museum to visit while we spend the rest of the time wandering around downtown.

It's already time to leave Toronto. We take the bus to Kingston where we are hosted by Alan, a couchsurfing host. We arrive late thanks to Toronto traffic jam but we still manage to spend some time discussing with our host. Unfortunately, we only have one night to spend in Kingston. The next day, we rent our first car and drive around the city for 20 minutes as we have to be in Gananoque for our cruise through the 1000 islands. It's our lucky day, it's sunny and warm and we just have time to picnic in a Confederation Park in Gananoque before catching the boat.

The cruise is 2 hours and a half long. It goes from Gananoque to Boldt Castle following the United States side of the river and comes back following the Canadian side. It stays sunny all along but we spend a limited time on the deck since it's windy and we are still in May... However, being in the low season is more enjoyable as the boat is nearly empty...

Back to the shore relaxed with a smile. It's the end of our first adventure. As we walk to the car and start driving on our way to Ottawa, we realize it's the end of our first week in Canada. It was a blast. We had the best welcome thanks to Marta and Frank's family and a week full of great memories...