Niagara falls do not suffer from that
shrinking of things you saw in childhood. The diminishment of the
world as you get bigger, so it gets smaller, both physically and
spiritually. They were larger than I remembered, more majestic. The
kind of thing you see a hundred pictures of but still impresses with
the freshness of a first time. There's a giant fall on the US side,
which from the Canadian side you get a great full on view of and then
an even more giant horseshoe fall on the Canadian side, which is like
at the border line, on the point between the two.
A new thing we did this time was to
take a boat at the foot of the falls. This was pretty spectacular.
The boat doesn't go far/for long. They just drive in, turn around
drive out. But you got close enough that the spray watered your face
and leaked into your emergency poncho. Because of the turn around
both sides of the boat got the closest best view—in fact everywhere
on the boat had a good view. In between the falls was a massive sea
gull rookery I never knew existed but was its own beauty. And at its
top moment you were so close the steam blinded you and you tried to
look up but there was only a limitless wall of steam.
We got to stay at the falls for 2 ½
hours which was still too short but probably enough. The rest of the
tour we got to try icewine (too sweet) at a winery, went to the
little town of Niagrara on the lake (cute town but we didn't get to
see the lake :( I did put a maple leaf in my hair). It had all the
worst excesses of a tour though, trying to upsell you, herding
everyone on and off the bus to have identical experiences, etc. Still
it came out about the same price as the train over so it seemed worth
it.
We doubled down after that and went up
the CN tower, where we had dinner at the top. There were many awesome
views of Lake Ontario, as well as the city, and we could see the
neighbourhood where we were staying. Looking down was one of the best
bits as it's so high. I had also forgotten the glass floor area which
was super scary, even as you watched children frolic all around you
without harm. Still awesome.
That day was huge, and we kind of died
out on either end of it, dinner at a french bistro the first night
and flying out the next day to New York.