Everyone knows about the magnificent and awe-inspiring Niagara Falls. But very few have heard about Niagara-on-the-Lake, a beautiful 19th Century town, at around a 30-minute drive from the falls, on the Canadian side.
We visited this place in December, just after Christmas. By ‘we’ I mean, me, my husband, and our two grown-up daughters. Let me share some details of our trip that may help if you are looking to visit anytime.
How we got there
We hired a car and drove down from Toronto. We left around 11:30 a.m. and it took us about 1 hour 30 minutes to reach Niagara-on-the-Lake. It is a comfortable drive through smooth roads. We played road-trippy songs and enjoyed the drive.
Where we stayed
We were booked into this charming little bread and breakfast, Antique Slumber. And boy, is the name apt! The house has been in the Fowler family for more than a hundred years. Each and every nook and corner has a story to tell. And the décor has been so carefully designed that it really makes you feel you have travelled back in time.
This cottage has a common living room and dining area. There is one bedroom at this level and two bedrooms upstairs. Each of the bedrooms have an attached bath. The hosts, Cathy and Colin Fowler, live on the premises and have re-purposed the basement into their apartment.
Since we were four of us, we occupied the entire top floor. The bedrooms were designed so beautifully with sloping roofs and pretty windows. There were also these cute little heaters designed to look like a tiny fireplace with glowing embers. But my favourite was the armchair near the window with the reading lamp and the footstool. This spot just invites you to put your feet up and sit with a book while you sip on a cup of hot coffee or a cool glass of wine, on a cold winter night.
But the feather on the cap was definitely our amazing hosts, Cathy and Colin. They kept a clean house and cooked these amazingly delicious and sumptuous breakfasts.
But more than all this it was the stories they shared. After breakfast, sitting at the table, with a never-ending supply of hot coffee, Colin enthralled us with stories about this town. The anecdotes ranged from pranks he played in his childhood to how Cathy and he brought up their children here. We actually lost track of time. This was slow tourism at its best, exactly how we like to holiday.
What we did
After checking in we walked around town. When I say ‘around town’ I mainly mean the main street. Once you turn onto this street, you can be forgiven for thinking you have walked onto a film set. Not kidding! With cute little ice-cream stores, souvenir shops, boutique cafes, and restaurants on both sides, this street literally felt like a set of some Hallmark Christmas movie.
The pretty little cottages along the side streets with their Christmas decorations just added to the charm of this small town.
The next morning, we had booked a wine tasting tour at the Peller Estates Winery. Niagara-on-the-Lake is a world-renowned wine destination and the heart of Ontario's wine culture.
Our tour began with a glass of sparkling wine. We then made our way to the Estate vineyard to learn more about the unique growing region that is the Niagara Escarpment. We then descended to their underground barrel cellar where we savoured another tasting of their wines among 300 wine barrels.
But the highlight of this tour was the igloo-like lounge, the 10 Below Ice wine Lounge. At this lounge, constructed out of a mammoth 13,607 kilos of ice and kept at a frosty 10º below zero (the ideal temperature for harvesting Ice wine grapes), we sampled Peller Estates liquid gold – their famous Ice wine.
Typically, 95% of the ice wine grapes are harvested in Niagara-on-the-Lake, mostly because this is where the larger growers have vineyards, and those growers have their own presses crushing most of the ice wine juice that large wineries process into ice wine, which is then exported all over the world.
In the evening, we signed up for a ghost walk! Yes, you heard that right. Apparently, Niagara-on-the-Lake has the dubious distinction of being Canada’s Most Haunted Town. We joined this amazingly curated traditional ghost tour, featuring well-crafted stories around real history and ghosts. We were so immersed in that experience that we forgot to click pictures.
Back to Toronto
As we left this charming little town with promises to be back again, we decided to drive to Niagara Falls for a look. But it was extremely foggy and misty and we could not get a good view. Still looked gorgeous though.
As we could not spend much time outside in the cold, we decide to drive back. But at the last-minute thought of taking a detour into the outlet mall there and ended up spending a couple of hours shopping for good bargains.
And that is how we spent 2 nights at Niagara-on-the-Lake and came back refreshed. Highly recommended!
