Anyone who knows me, knows that Australia Day is one of my favourite public holidays. It is not celebrated on a date I support, but the concept of having a day to celebrate the country we call home is definitely supported by me and usually celebrated with gusto.
When Qantas made its final change to our flights we unexpectedly landed in time to be here for Canada Day, which was a happy bonus to an annoying change of itinerary! It left me to work out where to be for the extra 2 nights and of course the first night was hardly worth wasting any money on, more than a bed, hence the airport hotel.
After that I was just looking for somewhere between Toronto and Niagara Falls as we already had a booking there. Being a public holiday, the other consideration was price. Dang, it was an expensive bonus day to find a bed for the night. I finally settled on an AirBnB in Hamilton that seemed reasonable. It is kinda half way so will make journey to the falls quick enough.
We woke early in our airport hotel not able to sleep in. The complimentary breakfast was ‘meh’ but filled a spot and we got on our way. As Toronto is built on the shores of Lake Ontario, we decided to find the water first and then skirt the lake to Hamilton.
We drove through some pretty swanky lake front estates. The houses were bloody mansions and it was hard to fathom the wealth that lived there. Would have loved a tour… despite all the fancy houses, wondering down the street without a care in the world was a coyote with a raccoon in its mouth!
We stopped here and there along the lake taking in what Wayne described the lake that was an ocean. We arrived in Hamilton first scouting out our accommodation.
Hamilton is an industrial port on the lake. From my limited research on what was happening on Canada Day, the park on the lake was the spot. We headed there next. It was early and they were just setting things up. We spotted some push bikes so hired one each and went for a ride along the lake. It was an easy flat ride, which was good, these were not e-bikes!
Google said we should visit Dundurn Castle, so we parked our bikes (which led to one them continuing to charge me for time not used) and hopped back in the car to find this castle. It was not open for tours, but we walked around the outside and it was underwhelming as far as castles went, but we ticked it off the list.
The other thing I found in my research was that Hamilton was riddled with micro breweries. So began the brewery crawl. I think in the end, we drove to 3, walked to 2 and ubered to another 2. In the midst of crawl and before the driver had too many, we found lunch which served up the best caesar of my life. A drink with a burger as a topper – what??
Jetlag was hitting us hard after our feast and Wayne needed to be not driving anymore so we checked into accommodation, passed out for a bit, struggled to wake up and force the reset but did. The crawl continued. We walked back to the park but decided a park full of people and food trucks was not our scene and staying awake to 10pm for the fireworks was going to be a struggle. We have seen fireworks before so the crawl continued….
Our night ended in a very empty Irish Pub next to a park. We ordered last meals of the night and ended with last drinks of the night before they closed. The icing on the cake to close out our crawl was that the park let off more fireworks than our show would and it felt like we had a private viewing with front row seats in an empty pub.
I don’t what Canada Day should be, but ours was quite the adventure. We went to sleep happy and glad to be here. O Canada!
My Happy Travels 