Niagara Falls, NY / Niagara Falls, Ontario

Today I got up and wandered over to the Washington Market with Becky and Judy. It took us a while to find it - silly us, we thought it was an actual market, when it turned out to be a shop! What were we thinking??? We bought some breakfast and I got some food for butties. I made some lunch bakc at the hostel then we got the 11.15 bus to Niagara Falls, about 30 mins away. Driving through Buffalo was weird. It's really just a dead town - really dirty and dingy!

Once at Niagara we got off the bus and wandered over. I was expecting the whole gorge to be the falls, but in fact there's just three waterfalls make up Niagara Falls - the American Falls, the Bridal Gap Falls (I think) and the Horseshoe or Canadian Falls. We wandered over to Goat Island - great views of both falls on the American side from here, and wlaked over to the Cave of the Winds. Here you can get an elevator to near the base of the falls and can walk right next to it. There used to be a cave there where you could go behind the falls, but that unfortunately collapsed in the 1920's or 30's. We had to don yellow ponchos and their own sandals and we still got wet on the 'Hurricane Deck'!

Next we went over to 'The Maid of the Mist' boat trips, and got wet even further as we took the boat ride to the Horseshoe Falls, the same trip that Bruce Almighty is on at the beginning of the film! The spray was so strong we got soaked everywhere that our blue poncho wasn't covering! "Ladies and Gentlemen... This... is Niagara Falls!"

I left Becky and Judy here to ring home. She had just been watching Bruce Almighty - how weird is that!

Then I did some souvenir shopping and got some ice cream before walking over the Rainbow Bridge to Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. The view from the Canadian side was considerably better, well worth the stamp in my passport - hee hee! My feet were hurting so much by this point though that I didn't spend to long there before wandering back to get the bus back to Buffalo. Becky and Judy were at the bus stop though, which was good! I didn't have to go back alone!