Niagara Falls Day-Trip

Jess decided that to welcome us to Canada, she would take us to an ice hockey game in Buffalo, New York (thanks Jess!) - to get there we needed to hire a car, so we decided to make a day of it and visit Niagara Falls while we were on the road!


It was about 150km away from our hotel in downtown Toronto - about 1.5 hours drive.  The whole place was really beautiful and we were really lucky with the weather!

The view in one direction towards the Rainbow Bridge (between Canada and the US) and the American (not as cool) Falls.

The view in the other direction towards the Canadian Horseshoe Falls.  That's a boat, hanging around in the spray there - it looked pretty cool so we decided to take a ride on the boat....

They gave us ponchos to wear due to the whole spray thing... Stephen had some issues getting into his...

I don't have many pictures from on the boat because it was pretty much raining on us from all directions due to the spray, which isn't good for your camera.  This is the American Falls taken from the boat.

Stephen modelling how wet we got on the boat trip - under the ponchos we were fine, but our arms and our pant legs and shoes that were sticking out of the bottom were saturated!  Well... everyone except me, wearing my Gore-Tex shoes :P  Hooray for dry feet!

The view from the top of the Canadian (Horseshoe) Falls.  The amount of water going over was phenomenal, and you really need to see it to get it - apparently it's at summer flow at the moment, which is the biggest.  

Electricity here is called "hydro", and it caused us some initial confusion - "monthly unit rental fee does not include water and hydro - uhhh, aren't they the same thing?".  Apparently Ontario's electricity is generated by Niagara Falls!  The name of the company is "Ontario Hydro" as in hydroelectricity, which now explains it!  

After Niagara Falls, it was time to cross the border into the United States to see our first Ice Hockey game in Buffalo NY!