With only one week in Canada I had decided that you can’t come to Canada and not see the Niagara Falls so worked in a 2 night excursion from Toronto to go and see the world famous waterfall.
The sad thing is I looked at it and went is that it? Terrible I know, but having just come from Iceland and the likes of the Gullfoss waterfall, sadly Niagara Falls had lost some wow factor. It is still impressive and still an amazing natural wonder but if you’re really into waterfalls Iceland is the place to go!
Unlike basically all other tourists I did not do the boat ride at the bottom cause I didn’t really get the draw. I stood next to Niagara and experienced the spray up close from the top without needing to fork out a fortune to get drenched on a boat.
The odd thing about Niagara Falls as a town is the whole setting seems to be in a weird contrast. At the end of town where my hostel is based is a sleepy little suburb of little wooden houses with painted front porches. At the waterfall end it seems more like a poor mans Disneyland. The town is simply filled with knock off arcades and tacky souvenir shops as far as the eye can see. This was not something I was expecting but most of my planning had surrounded the falls themselves and not the accompanying town.
On the upside there is plenty of budget fast food restaurants and if you’re on the hunt for some low priced generic souvenirs then this is the place to stock up. Another big draw for a lot of visitors seemed to be the Hershey’s Chocolate World which seemed to simply be a large and expensive chocolate shop.
Niagara Falls is definitely still worth a visit and hopefully I’ll head back again to see the light show at night that I was simply too tired to hike to this time.