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 :)
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View down the Funicular track to the river& falls level |
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View back up the track - our hotel room is is the curve on the left |
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Deb getting thoroughly soaked on the river cruise up to the falls |
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This shows how close the 'Maid in the Mist' boats get to the falls |
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We really need a sign for this? |
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This is the bridge that can be walked between the Canadian & U.S sides. |
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The American falls |
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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. |
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Panorama - the US falls are in the foreground |
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Another panorama with US falls in the foreground |
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Panorama with the Canadian falls in the foreground |
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The view from our Hotel window ! |
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