Wawa, Ontario: a hub for Eastern European culture, founded on the immigrants drawn from Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and other points in between. Who would ever have expected?
Perched on the edge of town, Northern Lights is a beautiful motel just off the highway that hides countless secret treasures for the lucky visitors who spend a night on their way elsewhere or all summer to decompress. A standard holiday motel with rooms stretched along the property is anything but. Beautifully landscaped grounds create a private oasis. Rooms face out over the wooded north country slopes down towards a glistening lake and, beyond, the changeable waters of Lake Superior itself. Hiking trails that lead to waterfalls and beaches thread through the forest below.
The beau and I recuperated from an extremely busy July over the last weekend in Wawa, though we stayed at the outstanding High Falls cabins. Our next trip, we intend to make a reservation for at least a night at the Northern Lights. As much couples oriented as family friendly, this is a place where the famed hospitality of central and eastern Europe lives on. We spent a memorable early evening in the company of at least five other tables watching the last hours of the Opening Ceremony for the London 2012 Summer Olympics in the Northern Lights dining room.
The setting was spectacular, but nothing was quite comparable to being seated at a table, turned towards the bar with elderly couples, a daddy and 5-year-old daughter having a dinner date, and a host of families enthralled by the sheer enthusiasm and awesome delight of Ban Kee-Moon -- leader of the UN, South Korean virtuoso, friend of PSY -- clutching a corner of the Olympic flag and beaming like a little boy. We watched the procession of musicians and dancers amusedly while making our orders from the expansive menu of Hungarian and Polish favourites. It was, if nothing else, absolutely enthralling.
The owners also run the restaurant, and their charm, grace, and friendliness resonated with us immediately. We were blown away by the quality of the food and the hospitality shown to us, even though we weren't guests in one of the rooms. Didn't matter: we treated like family, right down to asking how our vacation was going, how we enjoyed Wawa, if we wanted any suggestions where to go. They enthusiastically recommended the hiking trail up to High Falls and Silver Falls. We were given directions on how to find a powdery Lake Superior beach, the shops in town worth seeing, and a sly grin that the apple crumble concoction for dessert was really out of this world. Sly salesmanship, maybe, but also honest: that apple dessert just about put me into a food coma and left a big grin on the beau's face to match Ban's.
Northern Lights has so many personal touches it's impossible to identify them all. We watched grandparents kick around a ball with their young grandson, found a secret hot tub snug in a little lake-facing niche, and walked around the parking lot afterwards. The gardens of wildflowers and faerie houses are charming to the nth degree. I can't wait to stay here at some point because the themes of the rooms are beautiful as I've heard.
Most of all, the prices are very reasonable. You cannot think to go wrong with dinner at the restaurant, and a night over here rather than pushing on for some budget, dull motel in the Soo. Take a chance to enjoy the back country in all its splendour and the hospitality of Wawa in a way that few places have left any more.
Well worth every penny. read more