Tuesday, 21 October 2014

Day Seventeen



Niagara Falls day.
The day started very grey with quite low cloud threatening rain, but let’s face it, a rainy day in Niagara Falls will beat a fine day at the office hands down every time !  We headed out via a brief stop at “the Country Chalet” and it’s “all you can eat breakfast for $6.99”, which is actually much nicer than it sounds, except the catch is that coffee is not included in “breakfast” and they clop you another five bucks each for that J  But it was still good food, and it kept us going for the whole day !!
We walked down and caught the funicular which is basically a pretty short cable car ride down to the river level, on one edge of the Horseshoe falls.  We were surprised at how close you can get to the river’s edge and the barriers that you could so easily climb over if you were trying to be famous and actually go over the falls.  Thankfully the crowds have thinned a bit at this time of year, and there was plenty of space to spread out and no jostling required to take photos.  We spent the rest of the day wandering along the river’s edge on the Canadian side of the river, and then across the Rainbow bridge and through the border to the American side of the river.  This is all easily walkable, you just need to take your passport with you and answer the usual questions about where you are going and why.  No x-raying of gear this time, we were just waved through and on our way.  We had booked a trip on the Maid of the Mist, which is a boat that takes you past the American Falls and reasonably close to the base of the Horseshoe falls.  You are given what is basically a large plastic bag to wear as a coat, to keep the worst of the spray off you.  And you need it, the spray and the wind at the bottom of the falls is pretty fierce, as you would expect.  It was a fabulous experience, great to see the falls from the river, and get an idea of the power and force behind all of that water.
After the boat ride, which was only about 20 minutes, we continued mooching along the American side of the river, right up to the opposite side of the horseshoe falls from where we started out.  I’ve probably already bored everyone to tears raving about the autumn trees, but it has made this whole trip so colourful and pretty, and although it wasn’t the reason behind chosing to come at this time of year, it has lead to some spectacular viewing everywhere we have been.  So the leisure wander had taken us about 5 hours by this point,not to mention about a thousand photos, so we turned around and started heading back.  Same old story getting back into Canada, present passports, answer a few questions and we were done.  Decided to walk home via the town this time, try and suss out somewhere for dinner.  Lots of pretty tacky “amusements” designed to keep children occupied, Guinness World Records, Wax Works Movie stars, House of Horrors, Ripleys Believe it or Not, all that sort of stuff.  Continued mooching all the way home to our motel, where it was time to sit down (first time since breakfast !) and watch the view out the window some more.
Had a very nice dinner at a place called The Keg, which specialised in steaks.  Was a great meal, steak cooked to perfection and beautifully tender (apologies to my vegetarian friends) good service, all topped off by a lovely view over the falls. We had a whiskey sour as dessert and were asked 'shall we keg it for you' where they up te whiskey content but not the price ! Hmm , hard choice but we said yes :) 

View down the Funicular track to the river& falls level

View back up the track - our hotel room is is the curve on the left

Deb getting thoroughly soaked on the river cruise up to the falls

This shows how close the 'Maid in the Mist' boats get to the falls



We really need a sign for this?

This is the bridge that can be walked between the Canadian & U.S sides.

The American falls

This shows where that last image of the American falls was taken from. You can get really close to all the falls from the US Side.

Panorama - the US falls are in the foreground

Another panorama with US falls in the foreground
Panorama with the Canadian falls in the foreground

The view from our Hotel window !

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