CANADA
Niagara Winter Celebrate the season in charming Niagara-on-the-Lake BY NANCY DUNHAM
I
THINKSTOCK
feel like royalty — or at the very least a blue blood — as my husband and I sit at a dining room table in the Prince of Wales Hotel in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada, about a 30-minute drive from Niagara Falls. Lucky for us, the crisp, white-cloaked table is near a picture window facing the street, so we can watch a young couple — their linked arms suggesting newlyweds — scurry out the Victorian hotel’s gleaming wooden doors and toward a dark horse tethered to a white, gold-trimmed carriage. The scene is so charming I almost don’t hear my husband teasingly ask if I’m enjoying myself. I smile in response. Of course I am, but I’m a bit embarrassed. Growing up in western New York State, I visited the Falls so frequently I thought I knew every inch of the area. It took the curiosity of my Indiana born-and-bred husband to take me north of the Falls where we found a world full of pubs and tearooms and wineries and shops — all seemingly plucked right out of Cambridge and set near the Niagara River. Many longtime residents concede the area, home to the internationally known Shaw Festival Theatre, is a bit
144 GO ESCAPE | WINTER 2016