Leaving Niagara soon and I’m not going to lie to you, the one night has been enough. I’m not sure of the temperature here but it seems colder than Toronto. It could be for a few reasons, that the clouds have gone leaving vast blue skies that whilst look beautiful and make it sunny, also let all the cold air from above in. Another reason could be that the lack of buildings means that the wind is getting to us more and also because it is not a very busy place, many pathways are not cleared meaning that we are walking on snow which really seems to make all the difference.
Being a major tourist town, and it not being tourist season, most places are closed. We walked down Clifton hill which was full of amusement park style things, haunted houses, Ripley’s believe it or not, themed diners but they were mostly silent, apart from random noises from the haunted houses. Many shops are also closed, as well as just general attractions.
But there is one thing. It’s beautiful. Obviously I haven’t seen it in the summer when I’m sure it’s lovely and bustling but there is no way it is as gorgeous as it is right now. I’m talking about the falls specifically. We walked down along the parkway by the river admiring the way things gradually became more iced over. The fences had blunt icicles where people had snapped them off and lamp post’s icicles were bent from the wind. I thought the most amazing was the patch of trees right near the falls. They were thickly covered from top to bottom with ice and fairly often we could hear cracking and looked up the hill to see branches of ice falling down... stabbing people underneath them.
So ice everywhere and at night the falls, both the American and Canadian ones, were lit up by huge lights of all colours that changed and merged which I’m pretty sure they don’t have in summer seeing as they call it the ‘winter festival of lights’.... So my point is, it is sure to be more fun in summer when you can hang about wherever you want and things are open, but for braving the cold you get a more beautiful Niagara.
Today we forced ourselves out of the house because it seems wrong to be in a major tourist destination and stay inside. We went down to the Skylon tower and caught the lift to the top for a 360 view of the area, unfortunately today wasn’t as clear as yesterday, otherwise we would have been able to see to Toronto, but we could still see Buffalo across the US border.
A few facts that we learned – In winter only half the water travels over the falls compared to in summer. The maid of the mist is named from a native Indian story where every year a maiden was sent over the falls in a white birch canoe as an offering to the thunder god who lived beneath the falls. 15 people have been over the falls, the most recent was in 2003 where a 40 year old man went over and survived! And the one before that was a 7 year old boy in a lifejacket!
We went to lunch in a lovely restaurant where we met our favourite person of the day. Jason. He was our waiter and didn’t mind that we came into this kind of fancy restaurant to only eat the soup of the day (which was amazing!), he brought us warm, complimentary loaves of bread, and at the end of our meal, gave us directions to ‘drugs and food’. I love that you can just go up to someone and tell them that you are looking for drugs and food. Nice guy.
So the rest of the day (after getting drugs and food) has been spent in the hostel where we are allowed to stay till midnight, then we will walk to the bus station and hope our bus gets there early for our 12:50 trip, or else we will freeze to death. I figure that by staying inside, we are merely acting like locals. Not looking forward to our bus trip (which is 10 hours and has 3 changes of bus) but I am looking forward to NY. Catchya soon J
Gemma.
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