As many of you are already aware, my loving husband is currently out of work. Thus he's been looking, and this past week we were flown to Ontario for two days in the Niagra region so he could go to an in-person interview for a job as a maintenance engineer at a recycled paper mill. The company was nice enough to fly us both out there, rent us a car and hotel room, so they could interview Glen and we could both see the area to see if we liked it enough to move there.
Strangely enough, Niagra Falls was never really on my list of stuff I wanted to see. I'm not sure why, I guess I just figured one waterfall is as good as the next and I didn't feel the need to go out of my way to see that one. But more about that later. We left on Monday morning at noon, right after I had gotten off a night shift. Which was mistake number one. I didn't get any semblance of sleep so I felt awful pretty much the entire day. We landed in Hamilton at midnight local time and made it to the hotel about an hour later. So we finally got to bed around 3 am local time.
Glen had to be up for the interview the next day at 1 pm, so I got up a bit early to use the treadmill in the hotel. I had finished my book the day before (Race to Dakar-which is fantastic, by the way, and I definitely recommend it for anyone that's into endurance sports or motorcycles) and neglected to bring a new one, so I was hoping there was a bookstore within walking distance. Fortunately, I found out that the Brock University campus was about a block away from the hotel. And where there's a university, there's a university bookstore. It only took me about half an hour to find the bookstore on campus. After that, I walked up to a the Glenridge Quarry, which was right across from the hotel. It used to be a quarry, then they used it as a landfill, and now they've converted it to a cute little park with some trails. So I went wandering around the park for a while. That's where the picture at the top of this post came from.
Once Glen came back from his interview, we headed over to Niagra Falls. And I gotta say, it's pretty impressive. Most people will say the falls are amazing, but not a lot of people mention how huge the river is that feeds it. It's gigantic! For me, the sheer size of the river that leads up to the falls is almost as impressive as the falls themselves. And there's not just Niagra falls to see, there's also a huge waterfall off the American side the the canyon that's also impressive. And there's tons to do in the little area around the falls, too. My Mom told me before I left that it's a lot like Vegas, and she was right. Only a little bit smaller. There are arcades, haunted houses, adventure parks, even a giant ferris wheel. You could spend a good couple days (and an ever better amount of money) just wandering around. We didn't do much there, since it was getting a little late and we only had a couple hours, but we still enjoyed ourselves.
The next morning the jet lag caught up with us big time. The company Glen was interviewing with had set us up with a realtor who was going to take us around and show us the different areas of the different towns, and we were meeting with her at 10 am the second day. So we had to get up a little earlier to get breakfast, plus I got up even earlier to go for a jog that morning. I actually ended up getting up around 7, which I might add would be 4 am Pacific time. I barely managed 45 minutes jogging, which is really abnormal for me, and which is also how I knew I was unbelievably tired. At one point I even fell asleep in the realtor's car. Glen was really tired too. And just when we were getting used to the time change, we had to be up at 5 am the next morning to be in Hamilton for our flight home. I might add that's 5 am local time, which would be 2 am Pacific time. You wouldn't think that 3 hours would make that big a difference, but when you're working on almost no sleep the day you leave, then throw in a 3 hour time change, well, it doesn't end well. The day we came back, I slept pretty much the entire day. I honestly thought I'd be okay given that I work really weird hours that include night shifts, but I guess even I'm not immune to crazy time changes. Next time I go on a trip with a time change of more than an hour, I'm definitely factoring in a day for jet lag.The realtor was very nice, and took us around the areas she thought would be good for us to live in if we were to move there. He driving was a bit scary, though. Especially when she answered her cell phone while explaining something to us and driving at the same time. We thought she might kill us all, but we somehow made it out alive. The houses in that area are all brick. Seriously, if you have a house with only vinyl siding, you're the odd one on the block. It's crazy. And because of the brick, all the houses seem to look incredibly grand. They aren't necessarily that big or fancy, they just look it because of the brick. And the columns. Lots of the houses have columns. It's really quite pretty, it just seems really super fancy because that's not what we're used to.
The second day, after the realtor dropped us off at the hotel, we went out to explore a little bit more. Glen wanted to see the locks on the Welland Canal. We managed to see one of the bridges lift up to let a ship through, which was pretty cool. The whole bridge deck lifts straight into the air to let the ship go underneath. The lock was even better. The ship can just barely fit into the lock, and when they start letting the water in, it raises pretty fast. I wasn't expecting to be impressed by the lock, but the whole operation was actually quite impressive. And fast, too. It only took about 20 minutes for the whole thing.
One thing I noticed while we were down there was was that there's a serious lack of hills. I thought Saskatchewan was flat, but at least they have to occasional rolling hill. Out near Niagra Falls it's pretty much totally flat. Lots of vineyards, too. We were expecting that, since everyone was telling us it was wine country before we left. But there really are a lot of vineyards. We didn't manage to visit any, though. And you can get anywhere in about 15 minutes once you figure out the roads, because there are tons of highways and freeways. But figuring out the roads is the hard part. They don't build any of the roads straight. And none of them face north/south. Glen and I took about 10 minutes in the car the first day discussing which way north was. We found out the second day we were both wrong. It's funny how turned around you get when you don't know what direction you're facing.
Overall it's actually a pretty nice area. Though I think if we decided to move there, I would miss the hills and mountains. It sounds odd, but I think the flat landscape might make me crazy. We haven't heard anything from the company about the job yet, but the day we got back we found out that the place that owns the mill had filed for bankruptcy protection. I guess we'll see. We haven't really made any decisions yet, but don't worry, I'll let all my avid readers know when we finally get something figured out. So stay tuned for more news and my next big adventure!
