We went to Niagara Falls last summer. In case you are geographically challenged as is my youngest daughter, they are our foreign neighbor to the North. Therefore, you need a passport and have to go through a border crossing. We had to wait in a fairly long line of cars to get across.
Okay, it wasn't really anywhere near this bad. I mean c'mon, it was to get into Canada, not Disney. It still was a wait so I came up with a game to pass the time. We tried to think up funny things you could say to the border patrol agent to get pulled aside and searched. Some of the winners were . . .
(in a flirty voice) "So what's a guy gotta' do to get a body cavity search around here?"
"Hypothetical question. If you were going to hide a body, what national park would you use?"
"What's the going rate for handy's up here?"
"Wow, we made great time! Say, we've got 26 Gatorade bottles of piss back there. We were wondering if you could get rid of them for us. Frankly, we're kind of sick of looking at them."
"So we were just wondering what your gun laws for convicted felons are like over here?"
This game lasted us until we were the next car up to go through. I reminded Andi to get serious and put her straight face on as we didn't want to seem weird. We needed to brush off all of the thoughts from the last 45 minutes. Our turn.
"Good day sir. Are you bringing any alcohol across?"
This is the part where all of the sudden I couldn't string a sentence together to save my life. I completely choked. This is what came out of my face hole.
That's right. I just shouted random words at the guy with pauses in-between them. After his weird look subsided, he then asked me . . .
"So where you headed?"
Okay Corey, get it together. You can save this big guy. This should be easy. You've only been planning this vacation for months. Let's see where are we going? Well, the agent was now met with this face.
That's right. He got a full 5 seconds of me blankly staring at him like he had just asked me the square root of 7569. Andi finally took pity on her idiot husband and saved the day by blurting out "Toronto!" You know what, no more questions. I'll just drop my britches. You get your glove. Let's get this over with so we can be on our way. Surprisingly, he just chuckled at the moronic American and let us pass. I think he figured I was too dumb to be a real criminal. This was our first time to Canada and I have to say that I was very surprised when we got across and people's heads didn't split in half when they talked and their cars didn't have square wheels.
I really need to quit taking my cultural expectations from South Park. Now to show you some of the things we saw on the trip. We started at the CN Tower in Toronto.
We took the elevator with the glass bottom floor up to the viewing area. Andi was thrilled (uh, maybe not) and even more thrilled in the viewing area when I pointed out to her that she was inadvertently standing on a glass floor (uh, maybe not).
Well while we are making Andi happy, now might be the time to tell her that we paid extra to go up in the Skypod or that tiny little ball 33 more stories up from the big viewing area.
They they say you can feel the building sway from up there! In fact, there is a giant pendulum to show you.
Here is me up there. I'm surprised Andi could open her eyes long enough to take the picture.
She was a trooper though. So much so that I should have booked this for us.
Hal, clean up, jumpsuit #3. I even got to check off a bucket list item by eating real poutine in Canada as opposed to our bastardized version we make at home. You have to love a culture that takes something already delicious (French fries), adds cheese curds and then dumps a bucket of gravy over the whole thing.
"C'mon Canada. What, am I training for the Olympics? Slap some fried chicken and a piece of cake on there!"
After that health plate, we toured Toronto's famous castle Casa Loma. It is featured in movies such as X-Men, Cocktail and Hannibal to name a few. We had a great time as you are allowed to just wander around yourself through the rooms and up in the turrets. Be forewarned, there is no air conditioning though. You can read about the castle here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_Loma . Here we are up on top.
"Ah, it's nice to be out in the 97 degree air to cool off."
There is even a wax museum at the end. Most of the figures were decent but I always enjoy more the ones that aren't quite so flattering. For instance, here is Halle Berry.
Kind of looks more like Jimmy Smits. Remember him?
The castle was cool but next was the highlight of the trip and the reason we came, Niagara Falls. First, we went behind the falls and I have to say that I was a little underwhelmed. For all that you could tell, you could just as easily have been looking at a cruise ship emptying it's cruise worth's of margarita pisses.
The real fun was taking the Maid of the Mist boat tour. They give you a giant body condom to slip on and you get up close and personal with the American and Canadian side of the Falls.
They tell a story about a 7 year old boy that in 1960 went over the falls accidentally only wearing a life jacket and a swimsuit and survived unscathed. Meanwhile, I almost drowned in the wave pool at Noah's Ark Waterpark at the Wisconsin Dells because I didn't have a tube and got out of sync with the waves. Luckily, I made a last ditch lunge for a little girl in a tube and survived.
Finally, we ended our trip back across the border (made it this time without incident thank you very much) in Buffalo, New York. We ate at the Anchor Bar which is supposedly the home of the Buffalo wing. We got the pasta. Nah, we got the wings. I was just shittin' and later I really was shittin'. Ever wipe with an ice cube? Here they are in all of their deliciousness.
The last stop before heading home was to see the house that the Goo Goo Dolls lead singer Johnny Rzeznik (try to spell that sumbitch without Google) grew up in. He is one of Andi's favorite artists and he apparently was not too hard to focus the 'ol peepers on back in the day.
Just think. He might have written Iris sitting on this porch while dodging drive-by bullets. This was a mural that was close by.
On a side note, I got Andi tickets for Christmas to see them in concert at a very cool venue (Saint Louis Music Park) in Maryland Heights, Missouri. There is truly not a bad seat in the place. Here is very short video from that night of Johnny singing part of "Name." I just had shoulder surgery or I would have been tossing the 'ol Fruit of the Looms on stage.
I will just finish this with him playing "Iris" in the pouring rain in this, his home town. He may need to pick up a 3rd grade textbook at some point, though, and re-read about electricity and water. Sure makes for an awesome video though.
No comments:
Post a Comment