Canada - Niagara Falls

Day 4 - Friday 30 August

Today was our big, exciting trip to Niagara.  We took a bus from Toronto bus station (strangely our bus actually parked outside on the road but that's Megabus for you) and off we trundled towards the falls.

The bus station at Niagara is a short hike from the falls.  Our first views of the Niagara River showed how icy turquoise the waters were.  We passed under the Rainbow Bridge, one of the border crossings to the United States.

Oooh, look.

Once under the bridge and round the corner the vista opened up.  The falls in centre shot are the American Falls.  On the left of these (as you look) is a green viewing platform.  From here, those on the American side can peer out, but I suspect they can't view the Horseshoe Falls.  The Horseshoe Falls are to the right and what most people probably refer to when they say 'Niagara Falls'. 

First stop, coffee with a view.

From here we could see lots of yellow caped tourists walk down to the foot of the American Falls to get duly soaked and squealy-delighted in equal measure.  They looked like yellow ants.

We decided to reccie the Horseshoe Falls in anticipation of our boat ride later that day.

There were rainbows all over the place, as you'd expect.

And we could see how close in the tourist boats took their passengers.  The red decked boats were actually red-caped voyeurs and from the Canadian side.  The blue enrobed tourists were from the US side. 

We stood at the head of the falls and marvelled at the power of the water as it plummeted over the edge.  Quite awesome and scary at the same time.

Right, time to get wet.  We took a funicular down to the river and shuffled onto our boat. Red capes of course.

Dry Riona.

We sailed to the base of the American Falls, waved at the yellow people, and got spray in our hair.  We then turned towards our main goal.  We stood near the front and as we travelled watched the birds skim the water in front of us.

The boat nudged its nose as close as was safe into the Horseshoe Falls.  We spent 2 or 3 minutes just getting rained on by the largest natural power shower I've ever been near.  We laughed, screamed and dripped.

We headed back to base via the American Falls.

Soggy but thrilled with our tiny adventure.

We went to dry off, shop, have a drink and then walked back up to the Horseshoe Falls.  We knew they'd be illuminated (Riona had wisely suggested a late bus back) so we chatted and watched the sun set.

Once dark we hung around and eventually the falls were lit.  I liked the Canadian colours on the Horseshoe.

And the American colour scheme on the American Falls.

It got quite showy after a while, although we had to leave to catch our bus back to Toronto.

Here endeth Day 4.