An unforgettable visit to the Niagara Falls

In 2012 I had the opportunity to live for 4 months in the City of Toronto, Canada, where I studied English and shared with people from different countries, it was a great experience.

As part of this experience, I could to visit Niagara Falls, which are located approximately 1 hour and a half from Toronto.

Niagara Falls is a set of three waterfalls located between the states of Ontario (Canada) and New York (United States). The largest waterfall is located in the Canadian part, while the other two falls, smaller, are part of the United States.

I booked a tour offered by the ILAC Institute, which took me to Niagara Falls, giving me the opportunity to visit a very nice little town called "Niagara-on-the-lake".

Before entering in the town "Niagara-on-the-lake", our first stop was a winery called "Diamond States Wine & Spirits".

On this site, they gave us a tour, showing us the vineyards and their products, where the star product is a wine called "Icewine ".

Ice wine (or icewine; German: Eiswein) is a type of dessert wine produced from grapes that have been frozen while still on the vine. The sugars and other dissolved solids do not freeze, but the water does, allowing for a more concentrated grape juice to develop. The grapes must be pressed from the frozen grapes, resulting in a smaller amount of more concentrated, very sweet wine. With ice wines, the freezing happens before the fermentation, not afterwards. Unlike the grapes from which other dessert wines are made, such as Sauternes, Tokaji, or Trockenbeerenauslese, ice wine grapes should not be affected by Botrytis cinerea or noble rot, at least not to any great degree. Only healthy grapes keep in good shape until the opportunity arises for an ice wine harvest, which in extreme cases can occur after the New Year, on a northern hemisphere calendar. This gives ice wine its characteristic refreshing sweetness balanced by high acidity. When the grapes are free of Botrytis, they are said to come in "clean".

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They offered us a tasting of the different varieties of ice wine. I can tell you that in all its varieties it is an extremely sweet wine, the taste is very different from any wine I have tasted before. Actually, I did not like it and I remember it was very expensive, so I did not buy anything.

We continue on our way and enter the town. I remember that I found it a very beautiful and picturesque place.

A few minutes later, we enter to Niagara Falls.

Here you can see the American part of Niagara Falls:

And, here is the Canadian part:

I booked a tour through the "Maid of the Mist", which is a ship that travels from the American side to the Canadian part of Niagara Falls, through the Niagara River. This tour works since 1846, being one of the oldest in the world.

In the following photo you can see the Sheraton hotel:

View of the "Rainbow Bridge". This is a bridge that connects Canada and the United States. From there, rainbow can be seen because of the drops of water from the waterfalls that remain suspended in the air.

Here you can see the waterfall "American Falls" and the smaller one, the waterfall "Bridal Veil". Both waterfalls are part of the United States.

In the following pictures you can see, the waterfall "Horseshoe Falls". Most of this great waterfall is part of Canada. I can say that it is the most impressive of the three, although in the photo it is not appreciated at its maximum splendor, due to our proximity to the waterfall and the amount of mist it generates.