Cycling Niaraga-on-the-Lake
Darlene and I stole a weekend away together in Niagara-on-the-Lake for our sixteenth anniversary a week or so ago.
Niagara-on-the-Lake is a very walkable village, with excellent food, and a very nice atmosphere. We started off with dinner at Zees Grill on the patio, followed up by “Born Yesterday” at the Shaw Festival. The play was wonderful (first play for me in about twenty-five years), and very well presented. It has been called the ‘gem of the festival’, and I think we would support that assessment. It was recommended by our B&B hosts, who had seen it three times.
We spent our second day cycling through the surrounding wine region, with tastings at Peller Estates, Reif Estate Wineries , Ravine Vineyard Estate Wineries, Coyote’s Run Winery, and Marynissen Estate Wineries. My panniers managed to pick up four bottles of ice wine, and four varieties of red, among other odds and ends. I tihnk our favourites were Coyote’s Run and Ravine – there are over twenty wineries in the area, so you could make a career out of this if you were ambitious.
We had a late lunch at Olsen Foods at Ravine, run in partnership with Anna Olsen of the Food Network. Amazing food.
Some forty kilometers and six hours after we left, we returned to rest our weary legs at our B&B. We spent two nights at the Merlot House Bed and Breakfast. Excellent food, and beautiful rooms. Highly recommended.
Dinner Friday night was at the historic Angel Inn. The Angel Inn, (along with half the places we visited in the area) was burned by the Americans in the War of 1812 – and then we had go to Washington to return the favour - but I digress….
We ended up with a nightcap at The Irish Harp pub (Guinness of course) to wrap up a long and busy day.
Next day, we wrapped up with a morning of shopping, one last lunch at Olsen Foods, and then back to King City for Sean’s first hockey practice of the season.
Best of all, this all took place at the tail end of the best weather of the whole summer (and yes, this was in the third week of September).
Definitely earned some brownie points for this one 
(I missed a men’s league hockey game for the play, no less, and withstood the associated abuse.