I did some meticulous research on Niagara Falls at the beginning of June, and the first thing I learned was that the American side of the falls is underwhelming. Although accommodations are cheaper in the U.S. and you avoid the border crossing, I quickly discovered you need to go into Canada anyways for a proper view of the falls. So ultimately, we decided that if we were going to travel all this way, we were going to stay in Canada! I found a website called Niagara Falls Live that proved to be very helpful in selecting a hotel, among other things. I particularly found their online map helpful and basically had it memorized by the time we set foot in Niagara! The website also offered helpful hints on the pros and cons of various hotels, so after checking rates at numerous hotels and studying the map for the most advantageous location, I settled upon the Niagara Falls Hilton. The Hilton indicated it had a view of both the American and the Horseshoe Falls (which I thought may be a little exaggerated, but went along with it) and appeared to be in comfortable walking distance to some of the attractions we wanted to check out.
The hotel was the first and most important thing we booked, as the prices were doing some serious fluctuating because of the peak time of year (August/September) we were looking at. We knew we wanted to be there during the week so that we'd have the weekend back in New York, in addition to avoiding massive tourist lines. We essentially booked the entire trip around the days we could get the best deal on the hotel in Niagara, which turned out to be Thursday-Friday, August 18-19. Don't let the word "deal" fool you though - the two nights at the hotel still rang up a whopping $532 on the credit card! In addition to this being peak season in Niagara, we also selected a room with a "falls view" as opposed to "river view" and requested a room above the 22nd floor - all additional charges of course, but when you only go to Niagara Falls once in your life, you might as well do it right!
With the hotel booked, everything else fell into place quickly. We then booked our train tickets, the rental car to get from Niagara Falls to Toronto and dinner reservations at 360 in the CN Tower in Toronto for Friday evening. It was apparently smart planning to book everything, even the rental car, so far in advance because we learned that both the hotel rates and the rental car rates both increased significantly shortly before our trip. Finally my obsessive planning and itinerary-making paid off!
We then began to do a little research to find out some things we could do while in Niagara and Toronto now that the backbone of the trip was all set, and once we felt like we had a solid itinerary, we just started checking weather forecasts and packing for the trip! It was important to me to get everything planned out with directions ahead of time on this trip in particular because I knew I may not have the use of my cell phone's maps and GPS, so we'd need everything planned out as best as possible beforehand. Read on to find out about the fun (and unique!) things we lined up to do while visiting our neighbors to the north!
Thursday morning, we were up bright and early and in the Penn Station waiting area by 6:45am. I had gone to Penn Station earlier in the week to print out our tickets to eliminate one step from what was already a very early morning. Shortly after we got settled, passengers traveling to Canada were instructed to check in to customs with our passports, which was a very quick process. Ten or fifteen minutes later, we were able to board our train and get settled in for the long ride ahead of us! The train was packed, which somewhat surprised me, until I discovered how many stops were between New York and Niagara. What I thought would be a rather long, uneventful ride was certainly long, but we had the most beautiful scenery as the train followed the lush, mountainous path formed by the Hudson River all the way up through New York to the Finger Lakes region and then across the border to Niagara Falls. We had packed a lunch of chicken salad, potato salad, crackers and grapes in a small cooler, so we managed to fend off any real hunger for the duration of the train ride - yet another perk of taking a train as opposed to a plane (not having to eat airport food!).
We made many stops at cities whose names were familiar to me but I never knew quite where they were: Yonkers, Croton-on-Hudson, Poughkeepsie, Rhinecliff, Hudson, Albany/Rensselaer, Schenectady, Amsterdam, Utica, Rome, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo/Depew. I think the stretch between Yonkers and Albany was the most beautiful - rounding the curve of the river as we came into Albany probably made it seem like a much more quaint, lovely town than it actually is - it almost looked like a small European fishing town. There is also so much history along the Hudson River Valley with regards to both the Native Americans who used to live here and take their canoes up and down the river as part of the fur trade, as well as the river's namesake Henry Hudson sailing down the river to ultimately bring about the settling of New Amsterdam. An aerial view of the train's route just before the Albany station:
At a little before 5pm, we finally rolled over the border into Ontario (even passing a gratuitous "Welcome to Canada" sign which was, of course, very exciting!). After approximately fifteen minutes, we were allowed off the train and ushered into a small building to get sniffed out by bomb dogs and then show our passports and answer a few questions about why we were there. Fortunately we were one of the first people off the train - this could have been a much longer wait had we been further back on the train. We then headed out front where lots of cab drivers were waiting to take us to our hotel. The cab ride was relatively brief and included coming around a bend in the road to catch our first sighting of the falls! One of the first things that struck me (and would continue to strike me throughout the trip) was how well-manicured the little town of Niagara Falls was. There were flowers and shrubbery lining every road and surrounding every building. Niagara Falls was bright, colorful and teeming with tourists - there were moments where it almost felt like Disney World without the giant, upright rodents! Where there wasn't colorful landscaping, there were hotels and casinos and restaurants and bars with outdoor patios. It was far more touristy than I had even expected, and it made me even more relieved that we had chosen to come during the week rather than on a Saturday.
We checked in to our room on the 27th floor and were thrilled to discover our amazing view when we walked through the door! Although this was what had been advertised, it really was an incredible view, and I would recommend this hotel (and room 2717!) to anyone who truly wants a view of both falls. I suspect other hotels tout the same view, but I can't imagine that any of them were this good. The other hotel I would recommend based on location and view from what I was able to see is the Fallsview Casino, which is the tower in the center of my photo:
We quickly freshened up and walked the short distance down to Queen Victoria Park (which is really more of a walkway than a 'park,') to get a closer view of the waterfalls. The first thing we noticed that I was not expecting at all was the incredible amount of mist flying in the air hundreds of yards from the waterfalls. This would definitely not be a romantic stroll along the water before a nice dinner. I was just glad the sun was still out, hot and bright, so the mist dried off our skin quickly. We first walked to the American Falls, which were rather unimpressive when we could see how incredible the Horseshoe Falls were going to look a bit farther down the walkway.
American Falls:
Across the Niagara River where the two falls were pouring into, we could see people on the American side of the falls craning their necks around to see the falls. We had such a better view from the Canadian side; it's worth the cost of a passport if you don't have one to see the falls from this side - trust me! We made our way to the Horseshoe Falls, by far the more impressive of the two falls, where the mist seriously picked up, and we literally had to wait for the wind to switch directions before I could get my camera out to try and take photos. One of the coolest parts about the Horseshoe Falls was the huge rainbow that had formed right in front of it and was so visible that it showed up in all my photos! I guess it should be no surprise that a sunny day combined with that much mist would create quite a rainbow, but it was still such a breathtaking thing to see in person.
Not to mention, those rumors about not being able to find the end of a rainbow have been totally debunked! The end of the rainbow is a boat full of tourists:
We stood in this area for a while watching the thousands of tons of water crashing into the river and watching the tour boats going right up to the falls. If there was any question about whether or not we should fix our hair and makeup before we went on the boat the next day, this completely answered it - we were going to get SOAKED. The boat was getting much closer to the falls than I actually thought it would, and this got me even more excited for getting down into the water the next day.
Once we felt like we had taken a sufficient number of photos to capture this moment, we made our way toward the Rainbow Bridge, which is the only pedestrian walkway to cross the border and was just a short walk from Queen Victoria Park. On our way, we walked down Falls Avenue, which had no shortage of souvenir shops where we could pick up some magnets and a mug. At the recommendation of several websites I had read prior to the trip, we chose to pay for everything with credit cards. Apparently, the credit card companies will offer a better exchange rate than by paying in cash (and getting money exchanged prior to the trip just seemed like a lot of hassle for nothing). It is definitely convenient that Canada accepts American bills, but we also learned that if one does pay American cash, the change will be returned in Canadian coins - totally useless in the U.S.
We then headed into the unmanned building to get through the border:
There was a $0.50 toll to cross into the United States (I'm glad I had read about this online so was already armed with quarters, although I did notice a change machine nearby), and then we were on our way. The weather was beautiful for the nice walk over the Niagara River, and we were quite excited to discover the international boundary line in the center of the bridge! Standing in two countries:
The automobile traffic was backed up all the way cross the bridge, and we quickly discovered taking the pedestrian route across the border was MUCH faster. We made the ten minute walk across the bridge into New York, and then headed to Twist O' the Mist, an ice cream spot that had been recommended to my mom by a friend. Welcome (back) to New York:
It was only a couple blocks from where the Rainbow Bridge had dumped us into America and was easy to spot because it is shaped like an ice cream cone! Just walking the few blocks into Niagara Falls, NY, it was quite apparent this side of the bridge was dead compared to the liveliness and tourist-filled Canadian side. We each got a small cone and sat at an outdoor table on the patio of the shop. The plan had originally been for this to be an after-dinner snack, but we had wanted to get out to the falls while the sun was still out, so this pretty effectively eliminated our appetite.
We realized there was nothing else to see here in America (at least not in walking distance), so headed back across the bridge as the sun set on Niagara Falls.
I was very excited that when we crossed back into Canada, our passports were stamped - hooray! The only passport stamp of the trip, and it says United States on it...go figure. I asked the border patrol officer about the stamping, and he said they don't really stamp passports anymore between Canada and the U.S. At least I got some sort of badge of honor in the passport on this trip, I guess! On our way back toward the hotel, we stumbled upon a peaceful little garden behind the Secret Garden restaurant with stone benches and a beautiful view of the waterfalls. We sat down here for a little while to enjoy the view as the sun continued to sink behind the buildings.
We still weren't hungry, so decided to do a little more exploring and headed toward a very lit up part of the city known as Clifton Hill - "Street of Fun by the Falls." It was like a carnival and Las Vegas and a circus all at once - so noisy, and so many flashing lights!
I had been wondering what a family would do with little kids if they were staying in town for more than a day, and I definitely found my answer. There was a dinosaur-themed putt-putt course, a Ferris wheel, an entertainment/arcade complex, a haunted house and a Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum...blocks and blocks of commercialism screaming in all our faces. It had been a long day, and walking up this hill of "fun" just further accentuated our exhaustion. It was time to get back to the hotel, eat dinner and get to sleep! Of course, we were at a point where we could SEE our hotel, but it was now dark outside and the most direct route to the hotel was not clearly visible. After a little walking around in circles (literally, we were trying to get around a big tower), we did finally find a way around the Skylon Tower (an attraction we opted to skip - how many different angles do you really need to see the waterfalls from, right?) back to our hotel. We dropped our bags of souvenirs off in the room and then headed right across the street to the Fallsview Casino where I knew we'd have a selection of restaurants to grab a quick dinner at. We settled on The Famous Coffeeshop after a quick scan of the dining options on the info board and had a quick dinner of burgers and fries before retiring back to the hotel.
I'm pretty sure I was sound asleep before the lights went out!
Miles Traveled Today: 388
Total Miles Traveled: 23,043
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