Fanshawe Pioneer Village

Another interesting thing that I did while I was in Canada was visit Fanshawe Pioneer Village. It shows you how the pioneer settlers to Canada lived in the earlier years. Many of the buildings were originals which have been moved to this location for the display. Here are some of the photos I took.

A house:

A classroom:

Purple Hill Loyal Orange Lodge, complete with orange trimmings and lilies.

A loom place:

There was a printing press building which had the blocks that they used to use for printing. Here is an example of a what’s-it-called with the blocks in it ready for printing.

Lastly, better not be naughty, or you might end up in the stocks!

Horse-riding

Rebekah and her family live on a farm and have a few horses there, so one day I had a ride on one of the horses, Caliber. Rebekah taught me how to gently direct him to go where I wanted him to go. Here are some photos of me riding Caliber.

Ska-Nah-Doht village

Rebekah and I visited a replica of what a traditional Iroquois village would have looked like years ago. The Iroquois were one of the tribes living in Canada before white settlement.

The village is surrounded by a big fence to keep intruders out.

Many people would live in these long houses.

Me in the entrance of one of the long houses – I’m a bit too tall for the doorway.

Here is the inside of a house.

I found a mortar and pestle and posed with it. Not the right size for making our village specialties like menaga and gogii. The Iroquois probably used it for grinding grain.

A bridge, which was a little bit bouncy when crossing over it.

Downtown Niagara Falls

There’s an area in the town of Niagara Falls which is called Clifton Hill and it is the main touristy street. It has lots of family amusements like the museum of Guinness World Records, Ripley’s Believe it or Not, mini golf, mazes and so on. There are also several eating places and some shops with lots of Niagara Falls souvenirs that you can buy.

Being a good tourist, I posed in the statue of a fat body outside the Guinness World Records place.

This photo shows you a part of the very commercialised and tourist strip at Clifton Hill.

There is a big wheel that you can take a ride on and get a nice view of the falls from it. We didn’t go on it though, we went up Skylon tower instead for good views.

Skylon tower isn’t in the Clifton Hill area, but here’s a photo of it anyway, so you can see what the tower we went up looks like.

Bird Kingdom

We also went to Bird Kingdom when we were at Niagara Falls and enjoyed seeing birds and taking photos of them. I have so many photos, it’s hard to choose just a few to share with you. Here are some of the better ones:

There were some other areas where there were reptiles and other creatures, so I got this photo of a turtle in that area.

Butterfly Conservatory

When we were at Niagara Falls we also went to the Butterfly Conservatory where there was thousands of butterflies kept in a very large enclosure. We spent a long time in there just looking and trying to get great photos. The following are some of the best photos I got – don’t ask me to tell you what kind of butterfly each one is though! (Remember to click on the photos to see them bigger!).

Nik Wallenda tightrope walk over Niagara Falls

We were lucky enough to be at Niagara Falls to see Nik Wallenda do his tightrope walk over the falls on Friday 15 June 2012. It was a very special event, and lots of people came to watch it.

Here are some of the crowds that were near us:

We had been walking all day and wanted to sit down while we waited a few hours for the walk to start, so we found a spot at the top of a grassy hill in front of an inflatable ad which we could lean our backs against.

We were also sitting right under the spot where the lights shine out on to the waterfalls, and not far from Skylon tower, which is on the right in this picture.

Here’s my photo of looking upward at the rays of light. The squiggly lines are the moths that were flying around in the lights.

Now for the tightrope walk! Here are some photos that I took (click on them to see them bigger).

Niagara Falls

I had a great couple of days at Niagara Falls. It was amazing seeing the falls for myself and I had fun doing all the touristy things with Rebekah.

Me with the falls in the background:

Here are some photos of the falls:

We went up Skylon tower and took some photos from up there:

There are two main waterfalls at Niagara which you can see in this photo. The one on the left is called the America falls, and it is on the US side of the border, and the one on the right in this photo is called Horseshoe Falls, and it connects between the US and Canada. All of the other photos in this blog post are of the Horseshoe Falls a bit closer than this photo.

One of the tourist activities we did was go for a ride on the ‘Maid of the Mist’ – a boat which goes right into the misty spray of the waterfall. You can see the boat right in the mist in this photo, just starting to turn back, as this is about as close as it goes.

Here’s me on the boat, all wrapped up in a disposable raincoat heading towards the falls:

Rebekah and I together as we head back away from the falls:

Another tourist thing we did was ‘Journey Behind the Falls’. We went down an elevator and into a tunnel behind the falls and we could hear the thundering roar of the water going down, which was pretty amazing. We could also walk right out onto a platform behind the fall, so we could get pretty wet from the spray and covered up with these yellow disposable raincoats. Here’s me looking great in my raincoat!

This is one of the spots where you could safely take a photo behind the falls without getting your camera wet. I took a video on my camera here where you can see the water going by. I will post it for you to see when I get back to Australia.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more happy snaps from my time at Niagara!