It was late April, but felt like late June. Encouraged after a long, hard winter by highs in the mid-20s, weekend visitors were pouring in.
They crowded the shops, fingering British woolens and eyeing bone china, boarded horse-drawn carriages, scanned menus, queued for ice-cream cones, sat at outdoor tables and sipped wine.
Credit cards emerged, as if from hibernation. Entering the Prince of Wales hotel, I overheard one couple ask if it was too late for afternoon tea, a sumptuous spread served there in elegant surroundings at $32 a head -- and up.
The Prince of Wales was full. So were two nearby sister properties, Queen's Landing, which gets a lot of corporate and convention business, and the Pillar and Post, which had four weddings scheduled that day.
Recession, I thought? What recession?
Should you be tempted to give the finger to the economists, financial advisers and media gloom-and-doomers and spring for a getaway, keep Niagara-on-the-Lake in mind.
It's a remarkably pretty town, with street after street of the sort of imposing houses and carefully tended gardens displayed in glossy magazines.
There are no high-rises, thanks, I was told, to a bylaw limiting building height to three floors.
Flower-stuffed planters brighten Queen Street, the main drag, and benches so you can give those shopping bags a rest.
There's an unmistakable air of prosperity -- no vacant storefronts, no litter, no panhandlers.
The many historic plaques and markers remind us of Niagara-on-the-Lake's special place in our history -- capital of Upper Canada in 1792, site of the first provincial parliament and of our first newspaper.
From Queen Street, stroll down King Street past the statue of John Graves Simcoe, first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, that sits in a lovely park named for him.
Three blocks later and you're at the junction of Lake Ontario and the Niagara River. That's Fort Niagara across the way, on the American side. Hard to imagine that war was once waged where you're standing.
There's enough to see and do in and around Niagara-on-the-Lake to justify several getaways. Here are three of the most popular:
- Wineries. There are scores of them; watch for signs as you approach the town.
- The Niagara Parkway. Winston Churchill saw it in 1943 and called it "the prettiest Sunday afternoon drive in the world." You can also cycle or walk along the Niagara River Recreation Trail, which stretches 53 kilometres from Fort George National Historic Site, in Niagara-on-the-Lake, to Fort Erie.
- The Shaw Festival, dedicated to the works of George Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries. There are three theatres and a season that runs April to October.
All this is 2 1/2 hours from London, making the town well suited to an overnight getaway.
I visited Vintage Hotels' three CAA/AAA four-diamond properties. Each has a new package, available until October, that includes one night's accommodation. Phone 1-888-669-5566 to reserve. Here are the packages:
- Queen for a Day, at Queen's Landing, an imposing, Georgian-style hotel on the river, offers a three-course dinner in Tiara Restaurant and a horse-drawn carriage ride.
- Wine-lovers' Getaway at the Pillar and Post features a pass for a winery tour and $100 credit to a vinotherapy spa treatment at 100 Fountain Spa, chosen North America's No. 1 spa in 2008 by Spas of America.
- Totally Tea, at the elegant Prince of Wales, includes afternoon tea and $100 credit towards spa treatments.
Dining tip: One of my best meals in a while was put together at Queen's Landing by young Trevor Ritchie, gold-medal winner in the 2009 Ontario Challenge Cooks competition for apprentice chefs.
