A torrent of water

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.