Winter Weekend Getaway: Niagara Falls

  Last weekend Roberto and I decided to do a semi-spontaneous trip to Niagara Falls. We left Friday evening, and arrived to Ontario around 7:30pm that evening. Now anyone that knows Roberto and I, knows that Roberto is usually the one to plan our trips since he is much more well traveled than I am. However, this time -- I planned the trip. Well, kind of. Ha!

After seeing my cousin post on Facebook about the Winter Festival of Lights in Niagara, I REALLY REALLY wanted to go. I absolutely love the feeling Christmas brings, so I figured why not see what this festival is about.

I must admit a lot of times I see stuff on Facebook and get excited, but then when I go to the actual place it's kind of a let down. However, this trip was different. It surpassed all of my expectations and was seriously so much fun.

If you visit the website, you'll see there are several events that take place during the festival. The one that we did was the Deck the Falls walking tour. This is a self guided tour that takes place Friday and Saturday the first three weekends in December from 5pm-10pm.

While most people split up the tour into two days since there are quite a few venues to visit, it is possibly to do it all in one day -- which is exactly what we did! Your tour pass also includes vouchers for the Falls Incline and WEGO bus passes. It was $39.98, but honestly within the first four things that we did, our money was already covered -- so it was a great deal!

When we arrived Friday evening, it was about 8pm by the time we checked into our room so we just hung out, walked around, and enjoyed the fireworks that they have Friday's during the festival.

Saturday we were up fairly early. Did some more walking around, went to the casino (and lost...wah), went to the local brewery, and I finally had my first Tim Horton's experience. Later that night is when we began the tour.

I was worried about not having enough time to visit each venue and also I wasn't sure how crowded each place would be. But this was one of the most fun, yet relaxing experiences. It was also cool that we still got to enjoy a lot of the lights outside while going from place to place.

(*** If you would rather just see pros & cons of this tour -- feel free to skip to the end of this post. But, if you want to read about everything we did and what the tour has to offer, feel free to keep reading!)

 

 

We started at the Table Rock Welcome Centre. This is where we were picked up in a horse carriage to take us to the Niagara Parks Floral Showcase which was beautiful!

 

Next, we enjoyed some coffee under the stars at Embassy Suites. We sat for a bit then continued to Scotiabank Convention Centre where we received a pair of gloves (I'm sure you'll notice by some of the pictures that Roberto hardly took his off that night) and a 360 degree picture using some cool technology.  We failed at ours the first time, but luckily they let us retake it.

Our journey continued to Marriott on the Falls where we had some apple cider and butternut squash ravioli, which was so good!

Afterwards we made our way to Marriott Fallsview, which was also the hotel we stayed in. (And let me just say, the view was incredible!) There, we sampled filet from Morton's Grille paired with a wine of our choice.

 

We then walked across the street to the Radisson Hotel where we got a picture with Cosmo the Polar Bear then went straight to cookie decorating at the Tower Hotel -- which was one of my favorites. We had a little contest during this one, but ends up we tied. What's your vote on the final products?

Next, we took a picture and I tried to use my artistic skills at the air graffiti wall at Four Points my Sheraton then took another picture using a magic mirror at Hilton Hotel.

 

 
On we went to the Holiday Inn by the Falls where we enjoyed our customized hot chocolate. We had ours with Frangelico and marshmallows. SO good!

Then it was off to the Old Stone Inn -- one of the cutest inn's I've been to. It was so homey and cozy. From the outside I had no idea what to expect, but once I got inside I loved it. But the BEST part was when they took us through the hotel and out the back to an adorable courtyard with bonfires and lights where we enjoyed a specialty marshmallow drink.

From there it was off to Sheraton on the Falls to enjoy a cinnamon bun and another cup of apple cider -- only this time there was a spike to it. Another delicious treat!

And the drinks don't stop there. Next up, wine tasting at the Courtyard by Marriott. We both enjoyed Ice Wine before heading off to the last couple of venues. We continued on to Casino Niagara -- only this time we didn't lose anything, but rather received a yummy appetizer to snack on. Although it was a beer cheese with soft pretzels, (most of you know dairy and I don't get along too well) I still tried some and it was actually pretty good!

At this point I was pretty tired, but we still had on more stop -- Crown Plaza. At this point we were also stuffed from drink and samples that we couldn't drink anymore even though they had cider. So instead, we received two decent size bags of chocolate covered marshmallows and chocolate covered Rice Krispies from Hershey's Chocolate World. I have yet to dive into those. And actually writing this post reminded me of them so I may be having that soon!

I know that was probably a lot to read -- so if you're still here, I hope you enjoyed hearing about the trip! These are just some of the pictures that we took and it was fun to look back on them even though they aren't the highest quality.

So, here's a quick recap to sum this all up.


PROS:  
* Well worth the money you pay.
* Wasn't ever too crowded and was actually relaxing.
* We got to see lots of Christmas lights along the way.
* Everyone we talked to along the way is super friendly and all of the volunteers are nice and helpful if we ever had a question about where to go.
* They have an app that is good in guiding you along the way.
* It can be done in one night (5pm-10pm), but if you can do both nights it would be easier to split it up.
* Great food! Great fun!

CONS:
* When we arrived to the Table Rock Welcome Centre (which was our first stop) to catch the carriage ride, nobody seemed to know where it was. The location on the app was also leading us in the wrong direction. It was a bit hard to find and we wasted 25 minutes of our time looking, but eventually ended up finding it. Long story short, we just wished they would have fixed this on the map, but this is an easy fix!

Other than that, I highly recommend this tour -- even to visit Niagara Falls during the holiday season if you haven't already. It was one of the best weekends that Roberto and I shared and definitely got me into the holiday spirit!