Niagara Falls - Canada

  I was quite excited about visiting Niagara Falls since I have wanted to come here for as far back as I can remember. Unfortunately, the day I arrived it was pouring rain. You may think, heck you are going to see falling water anyway? Well, atleast that's what I tried to tell myself. But as you can see from the photo above, it just wasn't the same. But I set out to make the best of it. My first stop was to the Journey Behind the Falls. You take an elevator down and then proceed through these halls behind the falls and peer at the water through the end of the hall. I found this somewhat disappointing as you just see a wall of water. Here's a photo:
 
After that I headed up the river to go on the Maid of the Midst. Now this is a must!!! First you don a blue rain poncho that they provide like these fellow voyagers:
 
Then you get aboard this sturdy boat and head right in front of the Horseshoe Falls! Oh it's magnificent. It's wavy and you get sprayed with water from every direction!!! Just don't wear fancy shoes or masacara, which I haven't done since I left San Diego so I was all set!
  
Here's some interesting facts:
Did you know that during a summer daylight hours an incredible 34 million gallons (154 million litres) of water flows over the brink of the falls every minute! That's enough to fill 1 million bathtubs.
In fact, Niagara carries 20% of the world's fresh water flowing from 4 of the great lakes!
Weird thing is that all the toilets in town flush very poorly. Is there a connection?? Maybe because hearing all that falling water people have to go more and therefore more toilets are flushing on average. Just a theory.
Next I headed down the tourist strip. And when I say tourist, I mean the most touristy place I've seen other than Vegas!
  I've never seen so many wax museums in a 3 block area! There's Ripley's Believe if or Not Wax Museum, Rock Legends Wax Museum, Criminal Hall of Fame Wax Museum, Guiness World Records Wax Museum and Louis Tussard's Wax Works. Wax museums are only to be matched by scary places. There's The Haunted House, The Fear Factory, Frankenstein's Haunted Place, Dracula's Haunted Castle and Screams House of Horrors. One boasts that 76,000 people have chickened out and ran out before going all the way through! Another has 3 levels each with its own scare rating. One good thing was that there's a Hard Rock Cafe. The Hard Rock has been generous enough to provide me free meals throughout my trip. You should eat there!
 
However for sleeping, I recommend you stay along River Road in one of the many B&B's. I stayed in the Backpackers Hostel. It's a great old house, built in 1896, with a friendly staff. That's it above. I rented a private room - that's it below.
 

Plus, its close to Queen St. where you can buy anything you need at Dollar And run by Sensa - a great German woman who dresses up like Santa around Christmas. Or maybe it's Mrs. Claus. Anyway, she sold me an umbrella and some deoderant. Here she is with her friend Jim. Sorry its out of focus but they were such great people I needed to include them!
  


The next day I awoke to a clear sunny day. Just in time to see this before I left town.