Family, Niagara Falls, and Toothache in Ontario

by Aug 28, 2014100 Things, Canada, North America, USA2 comments

After saying goodbye to our families, we caught the red eye to Toronto to see Matt’s ex manager who recently moved back there from London and had a third baby. Little did I know, the rental car was tiptronic and I put it into the wrong drive. After a few minutes of wondering why the heck the car was revving so much, I figured out we were in 1st and needed to change out of the manual mode.

Eventually, we sorted the car out and we were on the road! We had one wrong turn thanks to getting used to the GPS but eventually we made it. We got to see their new house and had a walking tour around the neighbourhood. The nearby park had an awesome view of the city.

Overlooking Toronto

Can’t remember who’s great idea it was to drive to Paris after an all night flight later the same day, but that’s what we did. Someone else (me) also had the brilliant idea to not add a second driver to our rental car to save some money. We ended up stopping for lunch at Montana’s and I knew there was no way I was going to be able to finish the drive without a nap. Luckily, there was a little grassy hill next to the parking lot so we slept there for an hour or so before continuing on our way to Paris.

Paris is where my Dad was born and grew up and a lot of my family still lives there. I knew this was likely to be the best chance of seeing them again and for Matt to meet them – my last visit was nearly 11 years ago! My uncle and aunt offered to let us stay with them for the night and Uncle Andy played tour guide for us as we drove around town. I love Paris, it’s such a cute place and I love seeing the places my Dad grew up.

Overlooking Paris ONT

Overlooking Paris ONT

Later that evening, we went to my cousin Meghan’s for a family BBQ where I got to see most of my cousins, my Aunty Kathy, my nephew, and my eldest sister. It was such a good evening spending time with them, I just wish we had more time!

The next morning we kicked off our pseudo honeymoon by driving to Niagara Falls. I say that because we plan on having a proper honeymoon next year although the plans are still forming.

One thing I haven’t mentioned was that I had horrible toothache the week before we left for our honeymoon. I won’t go into the horrible details but after 3 trips to the dentist, one to the emergency room, not being able to eat, and copious amounts of antibiotics and painkillers in the span of 7 days, the problem still wasn’t 100% fixed and just got worse as this trip progressed. I managed to keep most of the pain away thanks to the far superior painkillers available in North America but it was getting to be a bit much at this point.

I managed to suck up to enough to drive across the border to hop on the famous Maid of the Mist. My Dad took me to the Falls years ago but this was Matt’s first time and neither of us had been on the Maid.

The border

Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls

It was an incredible experience but if you’re staying on the Canadian side there is a company that leaves from that side. While crossing the border back into Canada, we figured we’d stop by the duty free to pick up some champagne to celebrate. Turns out you can only get duty free if you’ve been out of the country for more than 48 hours and they wanted to charge us $65 for the champagne plus $40 in taxes! We found a bottle store near our hotel and ended up getting the same champagne for only $50.

Definitely confirmed that duty free is rarely worth it.

Since it was our pseudo honeymoon, we decided to splurge on a hotel room with a Falls view. And yep, it was totally worth it! This was the view from our room on the 12th floor:

Can even see the little US side of the falls from here.

Not a bad view from our room...

After a nice dinner out, we were treated to a fireworks show over the Falls.

Fireworks over Niagara Falls

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a drama free night. My tooth had decided it was over playing nice and from my experience the only thing that could sooth it was to hold ice cold water over it continuously (yeah, a bit weird I know) and to remain upright both of which do not make for a good sleep. Knowing the next afternoon I’d be going to the land of seriously screwed up health care, I had to make a visit to the dentist to see what the heck was going on. I managed to find one close by that opened at 7am and they thankfully saw me straight away.

They couldn’t see anything wrong (maybe it was all in my head….see what I did there) but gave me a prescription for another round of antibiotics anyway. After picking it up (along with some last minute candy to add to my stash to bring back to London) from Walmart, I made my way back to the hotel to wake up Matt, pack up, and drive to Buffalo to catch a flight to our next and final stop on our Epic Wedding Trip, New York City.

[jetpack-related-posts]