5 Tips for Niagara Falls and Toronto on Bikes (Ep 14: Full time RV Family)

We don't know if this is a toll road or the border. It's confusing. Let's see. Thank you. We're through the Canadian border. It was like passing through the Mexican border. Couple of questions. No, no, no. Straight on through. No big deal. So now we're headed into an RV resort somewhat near Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. And then we're going to leave Ginger there. Get a good night's sleep. Wake up tomorrow morning. Spend all day Sunday in Niagara Falls. Come back to Hamilton, go to sleep and then pop over into Toronto on Monday morning. And then I've got a conference call on Monday. So we're going to take care of that and then head up into Montreal. And we're going to practice our French like I did when we went to Zion. Zion! We need to go to Zion! Did you see that? Ninety eight cents for gas, for fuel. I should have for as cheap as possible, but at the last minute, I just thought ****, 80 is so cheap, ****, 8 is so cheap for 89. I might as well put in better gas. You wanted to be a big spender? Big, big baller. Be the fuel baller. Be a fuel baller? That's what you wanted? That's what I wanted. OK. Yeah. I'll tell you what, I mean, a little bit of a little bit of the marketing got to me, you know, 87 said bronze. I didn't want bronze. I almost went for the V-Power Nitro Plus. Is it bronze, silver or? This was a saving moment. I know, I know, I blew it. And you went for the upsell for no reason. I did. For no reason. I did. I did. You hold this, I'll go to the... Wait a second. Wait, what's happening? Wait a second. Oh, it's liters, not gallons. It's liters. We're all excited for nothing. Oh, man, is it more? Should have occurred to us a little sooner, though, that we're in Canada. Of course, it'd be liters instead of gallons. Duh. Ridiculous. It went from great and amazing to terrible. It went from like, oh, my gosh, we're getting fuel. It's 73, 72 cents a gallon. To me going on to Google and looking up how many liters in a gallon. Look, don't make fun of me. I don't immediately know how many liters are in a gallon, but I looked it up. 3.785. 3.785, so that's $85 plus 50. Well, hold on. That's $130 for this fuel, for this tank of gas. Carson just got changed at the store. Look at these. Look at these $5 Canadian. That's a that's fancy. And so anyway, they said that they smell like maple syrup. I think they just like watching Americans smell their money in the parking lot. That's what I think. Yeah, they do. They smell like maple syrup. First, we fell for the 98 cents a gallon and now we're smelling $5 bills. It says Jumps and Plunges. On October 24th, 1901, a 63 year old, 63 year old Michigan schoolteacher, Annie Edison Taylor, became the first person to go over the falls in a barrel as a publicity, a publicity publicity stunt. And she survived bleeding, but otherwise unharmed. A 63 year old woman teacher inside of a barrel from Michigan. It says 18. No, 1901. 1901. Yes. Wow. Soon after exiting the barrel, she says, No one ought to ever do that again. OK, as you can see, we're here at Niagara Falls. Let's play a little game of expectations versus reality. Expectations of Niagara Falls and reality of Niagara Falls. One of the things that we've learned on this trip is that the trip or the destination pales in comparison to the actual trip itself. I mean, what we do on the trip is awesome. And we get to certain destinations and they're absolutely must see. You can't come all the way out here and not see Niagara Falls. But then when you get here, you you see all the tourist traps and you see all the people and all the chaos and the parking and everything that goes with it. And you realize it's important to look at the big picture of having fun, just getting down here and all the stuff that goes with this trip and not putting all your stock in the destinations, because most of the destinations you get there and you're like, OK, cool. So moving on. What's for dinner? Mark and Tori tips and tricks. Take three. Niagara Falls edition. OK, so what we've got here. Let me start with tip number one is don't forget your polarizer. I've got a polarizer for this camera. And had I had it, the blues of the falls would have been even bluer. The waterfall would have showed up in the mist. Polarizers just make for great photography. And I wish I would have had one. All right. Tip two. And there was a rainbow. All right. Tip two. There are a lot of people like a lot of people. There are a lot of people. So you probably can't park anywhere near the falls at all. So you will probably want to bring tennis shoes, sneakers. And it's also really humid. So you probably don't want to wear a jacket and jeans. Tip three. There's lots and lots of things to do down here, lots of social things to do. Now, we didn't do very many of them, but you could look in advance to find out that there's this big sky tower. And if you were to go eat there, I think the ride up there is is free. So there's that to do. There's like indoor skydiving. There's the boat that you can grab a poncho and go out there under the misty boat. There's that to do. And then we saw on the Canadian side and the American side, there's you can take, I guess, this elevator down to the river floor and you can go hike out around and you can actually hike through the falls. That looked pretty cool. We came very close to doing that, but we didn't. All right. Tip four. Tip four. There's pretty much only hot dogs, ice cream and really expensive water here. So you might want to pack yourself a lunch. You could go sit in the shade, have a picnic or eat before you come. OK, then tip five. We heard the Canadian side was much better. It is. And I think overall it is. But, you know, looking across at the American side, you know, they've got some good stuff going on there, too. You can walk right out where the water is coming off and you can see a little bit of the fall. So certainly whatever side you're on, you can you can make the most of it. There is a lot more of the falls that you can see from the Canadian side. So I can see they would have a, let's say, better reputation, so to speak. But I think they're both I think they're both great. OK, so it's one fifty three now and we're headed to Toronto. What's the ETA? Fifty six minutes. We'll be there by four, three o'clock. That's awesome. No, I just need to figure out where we're going to ditch this trailer, get on our bikes and start exploring Toronto. I want to go eat Toronto, see Toronto. OK, we have a plan now. We found this parking lot in downtown Toronto near this marina. We parked Ginger here and then we needed something to do. We needed some sort of like purpose, something, some sort of mission. So then Trish got the idea of riding our bikes to the Toronto sign. So I looked it up and it is a 22 minute bike ride from where we are right now to the big Toronto sign at Nathan Phillips Square. So that is the plan. And then after that, we'll find out where you're going to have dinner and then where we're going to spend the night on our way to Montreal. I'm forcing myself to film right now. I'm so afraid I can hardly think. Trish says, where's your backpack? And literally I turned white. My wallet's in there. Phone and keys are in there. I immediately got on my bike and went back to the corner where but I have absolutely I went back where I did. I never took my backpack off once. Back to the RV so I can get my laptop up so that I can track my phone, which, by the way, has three percent battery. Amazing, I can't even think. Oh, my God. I'd rather I'd rather be embarrassed that I forgot to bring my backpack than be embarrassed about how it magically was stolen off my back by a professional backpack thief. That was a good lesson for so many for so many reasons. Oh, my God. Yeah. So we just take the 401. This is the 401 all the way up. I think maybe Belleville or Kingsington because all the way up here and Montreal is like here. All right, well, let's make it at least Belleville tonight. And then and then while I'm driving there and then while I'm driving, maybe you can find a place to park. Yeah. So we just need to get on and we'll just boondock in Belleville and then we'll get started tomorrow morning somewhere and we'll get on the road again. Yeah, because I don't take an hour. Yeah. And then tomorrow I can work in the car because I got things I got to do. We're back at the car now, and that was an awesome time. The bikes have are the bikes not completely essential for exploring. They are if there is a single most valuable tool for exploring a city. Walking is unacceptable. It just takes too long. It just takes too long. I mean, I mean, unless you completely know a transit system. But how are you supposed to know that the second you get in somewhere? How many miles do you think we rode today? Twelve. At least when you ride through a city like Chicago and now Toronto, if you feel like you really know the city because you just cover so much ground. So that was other than the backpack scare. That was that was awesome. Dinner was awesome. Big thumbs up to the owner of that place. Exceptional service. So cool. Great food. Very convenient. Big, big thumbs up. We just turned Carson into a sushi lover today. That's right. Carson now says he does shrimp tempura and California rolls. So that's borderline. That's borderline sushi. But that that opens up a lot of possibilities for us. So anyway, so so thank you, sir. Now we have to figure out where we're going to sleep tonight. And it's eight forty five. It's interesting to me that our ability to not know what the plan is to figure things out like that time is shrinking. Like it used to be like, all right, well, we're leaving in a month and we don't have our reservations for August. And this was like five. This was like four months ago. Now it's like, hey, we're leaving and we don't know where we're going to be like next week. And then that turned into tomorrow. And somehow on day 68, it turned into, hey, it's eight forty five. Where are we going to sleep tonight? And we've also learned that some of the best things happen, happen serendipitously. They happen because it's like, hey, let's go eat there. Oh, let's go do that. There's just there's no expectation. And so whatever happens is. Although I do suggest if there's like one or two main things you want to do in a city, just wrap your day, whatever happens around those two things. Yeah. And let everything else kind of fall into place. Yeah. OK, let's get on the road and find out where we're going to sleep. Say say to you, say to you, say to you. Break it down by syllable. Say no. He's telling you to say. Oh, which means it's delicious. Say to you, say to you, say to you, say to you. She took down this word and hear it one more time. OK, let's go. And oh, oh, oh. This is followed by who? Why? Which in French is see again. Who? Why? Altogether, that makes all of us, which is translated as. I think they're going to love us. Of what? Of.