water to wine

What an absolutely mind blowing day, first up..I'm shattered so I will probably come back and add more to this at some point but for now....

An earlish start to the day, picking up a car at 8am (yes that's right, me who has barely driven in the past 3 years was let loose on Canada), dive the hour and a half down to Niagara falls today not really knowing what to expect and preparing to be underwhelmed by a big waterfall....oh my god, so wrong, absolutely spectacular. All told I think I was at said waterfall for about 4 hours, just looking, finding different vantage points, taking a million photos (https://goo.gl/photos/HDz9vA6NRRm9SwQv8 )....just amazing

After that I was a bit stuck for what to do as I know there are a million tourist things in and around Niagara and I just couldn't decide, I thought rather than do the tourist trap planet Hollywood or hard rock I would head out of town a but and see what else there was to see...well...best decision ever.

I put "Niagara on the lake" (a smallish town) into the satnav and started driving, the busy city streets and neon signs of Niagara falls quickly gave way to industrial and retail areas, some quite run down...but then just as quickly that gave way to some of the most scenic, rustic, beautiful landscapes. Long winding, tree lined roads past beautiful country villages offering farmers markets, pick your own peaches and about a million happy and tanned cyclists.

After driving for half an hour or so the tree lined roads started giving way to huge vineyards as far as I could see and lots of signs for tours and tastings.... Who was I to argue.

A beautiful few hours were had in the grounds of the Andrew Peller winery, tasting some interesting, very young wines, none of the vines are over 10 years old and the wine makers are still being very experimental to find the grapes that grow best on the Niagara peninsula. Their speciality however is ice wine, an amazing desert wine picked from hardy grapes well into winter. After 3/4 samples I thought I should probably get some food on board and drink some water and so I made my way over to their bar/ restaurant and had a great pulled pork and a couple waters before jumping back in the car and doing a 2.5 hour drive out to Elmira too stay with Bev and Barb (friends of mum and grahams) who couldn't have been more welcoming and friendly and have some very cool interesting local stuff planned for me the next couple days....

Fyi I was so shattered writing that I feel asleep and just woke up 6 hours later to finish it

Edit: made a video of Niagara https://youtu.be/UBVh2DxSpbgRead more