The Skywheel at Niagara Falls deserves another mention.

First, at 9.90 (plus tax) for an adult and $5.99 (plus tax) for a child, this is certainly not an expensive ride. Especially when you consider how great a ride it is.

The Skywheel is open all year and is 53 metres or 175 feet tall. There are 42 gondolas that allow you to ride in comfort. Air conditioned in summer, and heated in winter. Of course the view of the Falls (all of them) is really spectacular and if the weather is clear, you can see for miles around.

If you want to see the colours of Niagara Falls at night, along with the glitter and lights of Niagara Canada and Niagara USA, be sure to ride the Skywheel at night.

It takes between 10 and 15 minutes to travel the Skywheel all around, so you’ve got lots of time to take pictures and enjoy the scenery.

You can see the Skywheel from almost every corner of Niagara at the Falls, so giving you the exact address is unnecessary. But, it is located on Clifton Hill.

Off the top. I am not a gardiner, but I do appreciate what gardiners do and that is even more so when it’s at home.

My wife is a gardiner. I took this picture the other day of one of her Lotus flowers in bloom. Even I have to agree that it is beautiful. So I thought that you might want to see what blooms in Niagara Falls in the summer. Of course you will see hundreds of thousands of flower while visiting. The Niagara Parks Commission will see to it.

For those visiting Niagara Falls, two or three additional days in Toronto is a must. After all, if you came from afar, you need to see it all.

Toronto is filled with history, great things to see and of course lots of tall buildings.

I suggest you stay downdown. That’s where the action is, and the history. After all, it started in the downtown area and expanded to the suburbs. There are a lot of hotels in the expanded downtown, so your dollar choice is wide. Staying in the downtown core also means you have access to great city transportation. Third largest city transportation system in North America (behind New York City and Mexico City).

But it also means you can use the handy jump-on and off sightseeing tour buses. In another post I’ll go into some of the sights that I suggest when touring Toronto.

Living at the border, and conducting tours on a regular basis, I am often asked about bring guns into Canada. The general rule is, don’t.

But the more complete answer is as follows:

* You may bring a hunting rifle or shotgun and up to 200 rounds of ammunition into Ontario Canada as a visitor, but you must be 18 years of age or older to do so and the firearms must be for hunting or competitions use.

Click here for the rest ..;

Another tour today. Seven folks from Holland, Australia, England and Russia. Quite the group. We had a lot of fun. Weather was supposed to be rainy, but turned out sunny and mostly bright all day. So much for the weather reports.

As usual, we made a stop at one of the wineries so the group could have a taste of ice wine. None had even heard of it. So today we stopped at the Ice House Winery where they only make ice wine. Really nice place in Queenston, on the way to Niagara-on-the-Lake, a must see stop on my Niagara tours.

Anyway, they are serving slushie ice-wine. Something really different. You can’t buy it, but you can taste it at the Ice House. I tried a bit and man, was it refreshing. It was just plain good!

So, next time you are heading for Niagara-on-the-Lake, be sure to stop by the Ice House Winery and try some ice wine, and while there take a taste of their ice wine slushie. It’ll make you want to buy a slushie machine for home.

Picture taken from the Ice House Winery website.