Niagara Falls, Part I
We celebrated a second honeymoon by default, simply by spending last weekend at Niagara Falls.
While getting ready early Saturday morning, I felt a vague sense of foreboding about the drive ahead. Instinctively, I prepared myself for an interminable slog. We'd be crawling our way out of the city, mile by aggravating mile. But then I remembered: we don't live in Seattle anymore! We can fly right out of town and get there by lunchtime!
That is, of course, weather permitting. It required every inch of the trip to outrun the massive storm system churning along in exactly the same direction we were driving. At times we had a mere drizzle, but mainly we got that steady, never-ending downpour typical of November in Seattle, when it rains non-stop for days at a time. Although we hardly saw any traffic on the way, the inclement weather added about a half hour to our outbound journey. (Still, we spent less than four hours on the road; and our return trip Sunday evening only lasted 3 h 15 min-not bad for 210 miles (335 km), at least 30 (48) of them off the freeway.) Naturally, we arrived just ahead of the leading edge of the oncoming stacks of stratonimbus, so the moment we got out of the car we got to re-experience the whole thing, except this time it was the storm that was moving and not us.
We'd made reservations at the Ramada Niagara Falls, USA (formerly a Travelodge), within easy walking distance of all of the American Falls and the Rainbow Bridge over to the Canadian side. Now, when I picture a Travelodge I see a two-story motel arranged in a blocky horseshoe surrounding a parking lot packed with station wagons. Our hotel could not have been more different: an imposing 11-story brick edifice strait from the Depression. It would have looked right at home in Manhattan. Once it would have been magnificent, a symbol of hope in troubled times. But time and indifferent upkeep have taken their toll: while the place was clean and in working order, it had a distinct faded, run-down aura.
Still, compared to the rest of the city on the American side of the river (with one huge exception, as you'll soon see), our digs were a gleaming, ultra-modern palace. Directly across the street was a 15-story brick office building, completely gutted, knee-deep in rubble, and without a single window to block our view of scarred interior walls and ceilings. A large banner at about the fifth floor read "For Lease." I opined that they should have added, "Light Fixer-Upper." Next door we found an abandoned convention center in the 1970s Ultra-modern style, walls entirely composed of (miraculously intact) glass. From what we could see on the way in, the rest of town wasn't doing any better, except....
Above this sea of squalor towers the glittering massif of the Seneca Niagara Hotel and Casino. It's the tallest, and by far the most eye-catching, structure on the New York side of the Falls. The Seneca Nation has recreated, down to the smallest detail, a piece of the Las Vegas Strip in the heart of this crumbling metropolis-and it seemed just as out of place as you'd expect. After we were done touring the Falls on Saturday we took a quick tour of the casino, just out of professional interest. We approached it from the west over a wide, gracefully-arcing footbridge over a large space that clearly doubled as parking lot and concert venue. (The Beach Boys are playing there on August 20, and it's a free show.) I learned later the explanation for some of the odd structural quirks: the casino had risen, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of the Niagara Falls Convention and Civic Center. A walk around the main casino floor reinforced the analogy to the ritzy new Strip hotels. To our amazement, we found the betting minima too rich for us! Ten dollars a hand for blackjack? Eek! Nevertheless, the place was doing a brisk business and, by all indications, was raking in a fortune.
One might expect that the addition of this fantastic money-maker would revitalize the poor, depressed city. However, the bleatings of millions of Reaganites notwithstanding, trickle-down economics never has helped those in need, and the Seneca Niagara Falls appears pretty-well self-contained. I fear that the people staying there are the type who would far rather drive the half mile to the Falls than walk it, and so are less likely to drop much cash into the local economy. Nevertheless, the free concerts sound like a positive move, and the place may provide benefits not immediately apparent to the casual tourist.
In contrast, everything in Niagara Falls, Ontario had the same healthy shine as the Seneca Casino. All day long the glass-walled hotels and apartment buildings on the Canadian side twinkled invitingly at us from across the river. The Canadian city boasted two casinos as large and opulent as the American one, and yet neither particularly stood out against the city's skyline. But that story really belongs to the second day of our vacation.
Before I start in on our perception of Niagara Falls, a little bit about local geography. At the end of the last Ice Age, when Lake Erie was liberated from the tyrannical polar icecap, the Niagara River began to cut through layers of sedimentary rock formed way back during the Silurian period (430-390 million years ago). (You can read more about the Ice Age geology of the Niagara River area here.) Since then the major waterfall has been receding upriver, but has kept its majestic height, because atop the layers of shale and sandstone is a stratum of harder dolomite that forms the upstream riverbed. Churning waters undercut the dolomite layer, forming an overhang that eventually tumbles down into the maelstrom, starting a new cycle of erosion (see here for a diagram).
The result is a group of waterfalls (three of them, if you count Bridal Veil Falls as separate from the American Falls) at the top of a long gorge between vertical cliffs some 200 feet (60 m) high. Talus slopes of rubble at the feet of the cliffs run diagonally down to the banks of the river. So evenly layered are the cliff faces that on one or two occasions I mistook them for brick walls. On closer inspection (such as we enjoyed during a climb up the hill behind Table Rock Point, Ontario) a bounty of little fossil shellfish may be observed in the sandstone.
My very first exposure to the Falls was completely different. Kathy is an old Niagara Falls veteran, and a bit jaded; but I craned my neck looking out our hotel-room window to catch a glimpse of the river plunging over the brink of the American Falls, and the twin columns of mist billowing upward from behind the cliffs. With the window open we could easily discern the constant roar of falling water. Isaac Asimov once remarked that, while he found Niagara Falls spectacular by day, he was distressed to realize, after hours of fitful sleep, that nobody turns the waterfalls off at night. He must have been staying closer to the Falls than we were, but from our distance they would make a nifty white-noise maker for someone who might need a little relaxing help falling asleep.
Everyone I'd spoken to about our vacation insisted that all the good views would be found on the Canadian side of the river. Sure enough, all the magnificent panoramic vistas, encompassing both major waterfalls and Great Gorge to the north, were only available in Ontario. Nevertheless, I found my favorite close-up viewpoints our first day, in New York. Two of the "must-see" attractions are also found in the USA.
The first is the old classic, Maid of the Mist. I'd known about the famous boat (boats, actually-at least seven of them) since I was a first-grader, having read a book about the natural wonders. (It may have qualified, back then, for the Seven Wonders of the Natural World, but only one waterfall, Victoria Falls in Africa, makes the consensus list today.) The Maid of the Mist departs from both banks of the Niagara downstream of the Falls; so why am I specifically recommending the American embarkation point? The answer is simple. New York gets such a small fraction of the Niagara Falls tourism, the lines are far shorter in the good ol' U.S. of A. We got on the very first boat after we bought our tickets.
Pretty much everyone in the world knows something about the Maid of the Mist, so I won't go into any detail. I was surprised, however, by the architecture of the American Falls. The water descended only about two-thirds of its height in one leap, and then cascaded down the rest of the way through a network of small channels through a jumble of huge, flattened blocks of dolomite. Here the dynamic nature of Niagara Falls was the most evident. In the 1960s, the Army Corps of Engineers undertook a study to determine the feasibility of removing the talus at the base of the American Falls and to assess whether this monumental project would "preserve and enhance the beauty" of the waterfall. In the end it was decided to leave the American Falls completely undisturbed, but over the five months of the study the water was completely diverted, leaving the precipice high and dry.
We continued past the American Falls toward the cul-de-sac lined by the white, aqueous curtain of the Horseshoe Falls. As our boat slowly approached the center of the semicircle described by Horseshoe Falls, we could hear the engines straining harder and harder just to keep us from being flung downriver in the runoff spinning away from the base. Eventually, the tumbling, roaring waters surrounded us on three sides. Where the thunder was the loudest, mist completely obscured the fall. The effect was most disconcerting, like hearing a train thundering directly toward us, but not being able to see it. We remained there, awe-struck, for several minutes, and then the MotM turned left flank, treating us to an unusual view of a sandstone wall rushing past us sideways as the current swept us downriver.
That was a good bit of fun, but I found our next American adventure even more intense and enjoyable. When someone tells you that you're about to embark on the "Cave of the Winds Tour," you might think it reasonable to expect to encounter a cave somewhere along the way. On the contrary, the closest we came to actual spelunking was to descend some 175 feet (53 m) in an elevator whose shaft had been quarried though the Silurian sediments, and strolled down a short, damp tunnel to the riverbank. For some reason the NY Park Service touted this subterranean journey, which took us maybe two minutes to complete, as a major feature. In fact, they named the entire activity after it, which is like calling the Iditarod the "Anchorage Dogsled Race." And to make matters worse, the elevator and shaft are the least entertaining part (though the fact that all tunneling had been done without power tools redeemed them somewhat).
We'd been issued diaphanous plastic ponchos for the Maid of the Mist tour. These ponchos had saved us from some dampness, but nothing I haven't accrued on twenty bike rides to work during the spring. At Cave of the Winds we received a poncho and a pair of rubber sandals. Clearly we were to expect a whole new level of wetness. We walked a few yards downriver to a wooden catwalk that ascended toward the base of Bridal Veil Falls, an offshoot of the American Falls. On our way up we passed hulking moss-covered boulders, glistening in the ever-present mist, and visited some of the tiny waterfalls where the water sifted down through rubble left over from previous migrations of the cliff face. Twice the path took us through the spills: the wooden floor of our trail turned to a metal and rubber grating to let the water through, and we sloshed our way through. Having grown up in the mountains, I expect river water to be near freezing, but the runoff from Bridal Veil falls was surprisingly warm, about the temperature of the air, and refreshing as it splashed against our feet, like a water massage. Soon we came to the observation platform at the very base of the 80-foot (24-m) waterfall, named the Hurricane Deck. We learned why even before we finished the climb: a good portion of Bridal Veil Falls strikes a tilted mesa of dolomite and sprays straight outward, generating a gale-force wind. We leaned into this blast of air and mist and attempted to shout our delight at viewing a major water fall from the inside to each other, utterly failing to get any words across but understanding each other nonetheless. An extension of the Hurricane Deck led even deeper into the splash zone. It was impossible to face the falls that close in-the fresh-water pressure against my contacts stung my eyes horribly-so I slowly backed my way in amongst deafening concussions and a virtual tsunami and made myself a part of Bridal Veil Falls, and thereby came to appreciate how water can quarry through solid rock. It certainly had no trouble getting through me. I battened down all the hatches, but not well enough. Even a waterproof poncho can't resist bucketsful of water pouring down from above; the liquid seeped through the interface between plastic and skin, thoroughly soaking the clothing beneath. Only two stripes under my arms stayed even remotely non-saturated.
Some wag had nailed up a large NO SMOKING sign on the railing of the Hurricane Deck, which we missed seeing close up-and no wonder, what with the lashing winds and gouts of water flung at us at near sonic speed. We could easily read it from the Canadian side, and in fact, that's where we first noticed it, studying the little ants in yellow ponchos shouting and laughing hysterically in the spray. All the boardwalks beneath Bridal Veil Falls are rebuilt every year without power tools. You can see why: it would be just like running the hair dryer while taking a bath.
We returned to the upper story of the park utterly waterlogged. While Kathy got an ice cream, I wrung out my shirt, hair and eyeballs. That helped, but I still felt a bit chilly in the wind. It was getting along toward dinnertime, so we completed our circuit around Goat Island. At the western extremity of Horseshoe Falls, right on the US-Canadian border, is a viewpoint inexplicably named Terrapin Point. From there we could gauge the depth of the water going over the brink in different parts of the waterfall by their color: white at the top indicated a diaphanous sheet, while various shades of jade green suggested thicker layers making the plunge before breaking up into milky streamers. The rest of the island wasn't exceptional, though it did offer some impressive views of the rapids above the Falls. We could look upstream where the river is so wide that a good portion of our horizon was onrushing water with nothing else visible but sky. This imposing view gave us a little thrill of excitement and fear, as if we were facing an imminent catastrophic flood but knew it was all a dream.
Both of us were fading quickly: we barely stayed awake through dinner. The Ramada had an Indian dinner buffet on site that answered our dining needs so perfectly that I was tempted to ask whether they served chocolate muffins for breakfast, as well. It struck us as kind of odd at first, but we did see enough tourists of Indian descent to support an Indian restaurant, and in fact a large proportion of the hotel staff were Indian as well. (Never thought I'd leave a hotel in the morning and overhear maids conversing in Hindi.) It soon became evident that the food was authentic: all the dishes were spiced about tenfold as heavily as we expected. Not knowing about the fire within, I attacked the varied dishes with my usual calm efficiency. After about two minutes, the heat caught up with me. I had to ask Kathy if she would check whether my eyes were bleeding.
Kathy crashed and burned right after dinner. I managed to stay up until about 11:30 by starting up a Dr. Pepper IV and reading The DaVinci Code.
Intrepid souls seeking Part II need look no further than here.
While getting ready early Saturday morning, I felt a vague sense of foreboding about the drive ahead. Instinctively, I prepared myself for an interminable slog. We'd be crawling our way out of the city, mile by aggravating mile. But then I remembered: we don't live in Seattle anymore! We can fly right out of town and get there by lunchtime!
That is, of course, weather permitting. It required every inch of the trip to outrun the massive storm system churning along in exactly the same direction we were driving. At times we had a mere drizzle, but mainly we got that steady, never-ending downpour typical of November in Seattle, when it rains non-stop for days at a time. Although we hardly saw any traffic on the way, the inclement weather added about a half hour to our outbound journey. (Still, we spent less than four hours on the road; and our return trip Sunday evening only lasted 3 h 15 min-not bad for 210 miles (335 km), at least 30 (48) of them off the freeway.) Naturally, we arrived just ahead of the leading edge of the oncoming stacks of stratonimbus, so the moment we got out of the car we got to re-experience the whole thing, except this time it was the storm that was moving and not us.
We'd made reservations at the Ramada Niagara Falls, USA (formerly a Travelodge), within easy walking distance of all of the American Falls and the Rainbow Bridge over to the Canadian side. Now, when I picture a Travelodge I see a two-story motel arranged in a blocky horseshoe surrounding a parking lot packed with station wagons. Our hotel could not have been more different: an imposing 11-story brick edifice strait from the Depression. It would have looked right at home in Manhattan. Once it would have been magnificent, a symbol of hope in troubled times. But time and indifferent upkeep have taken their toll: while the place was clean and in working order, it had a distinct faded, run-down aura.
Still, compared to the rest of the city on the American side of the river (with one huge exception, as you'll soon see), our digs were a gleaming, ultra-modern palace. Directly across the street was a 15-story brick office building, completely gutted, knee-deep in rubble, and without a single window to block our view of scarred interior walls and ceilings. A large banner at about the fifth floor read "For Lease." I opined that they should have added, "Light Fixer-Upper." Next door we found an abandoned convention center in the 1970s Ultra-modern style, walls entirely composed of (miraculously intact) glass. From what we could see on the way in, the rest of town wasn't doing any better, except....
Above this sea of squalor towers the glittering massif of the Seneca Niagara Hotel and Casino. It's the tallest, and by far the most eye-catching, structure on the New York side of the Falls. The Seneca Nation has recreated, down to the smallest detail, a piece of the Las Vegas Strip in the heart of this crumbling metropolis-and it seemed just as out of place as you'd expect. After we were done touring the Falls on Saturday we took a quick tour of the casino, just out of professional interest. We approached it from the west over a wide, gracefully-arcing footbridge over a large space that clearly doubled as parking lot and concert venue. (The Beach Boys are playing there on August 20, and it's a free show.) I learned later the explanation for some of the odd structural quirks: the casino had risen, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of the Niagara Falls Convention and Civic Center. A walk around the main casino floor reinforced the analogy to the ritzy new Strip hotels. To our amazement, we found the betting minima too rich for us! Ten dollars a hand for blackjack? Eek! Nevertheless, the place was doing a brisk business and, by all indications, was raking in a fortune.
One might expect that the addition of this fantastic money-maker would revitalize the poor, depressed city. However, the bleatings of millions of Reaganites notwithstanding, trickle-down economics never has helped those in need, and the Seneca Niagara Falls appears pretty-well self-contained. I fear that the people staying there are the type who would far rather drive the half mile to the Falls than walk it, and so are less likely to drop much cash into the local economy. Nevertheless, the free concerts sound like a positive move, and the place may provide benefits not immediately apparent to the casual tourist.
In contrast, everything in Niagara Falls, Ontario had the same healthy shine as the Seneca Casino. All day long the glass-walled hotels and apartment buildings on the Canadian side twinkled invitingly at us from across the river. The Canadian city boasted two casinos as large and opulent as the American one, and yet neither particularly stood out against the city's skyline. But that story really belongs to the second day of our vacation.
Before I start in on our perception of Niagara Falls, a little bit about local geography. At the end of the last Ice Age, when Lake Erie was liberated from the tyrannical polar icecap, the Niagara River began to cut through layers of sedimentary rock formed way back during the Silurian period (430-390 million years ago). (You can read more about the Ice Age geology of the Niagara River area here.) Since then the major waterfall has been receding upriver, but has kept its majestic height, because atop the layers of shale and sandstone is a stratum of harder dolomite that forms the upstream riverbed. Churning waters undercut the dolomite layer, forming an overhang that eventually tumbles down into the maelstrom, starting a new cycle of erosion (see here for a diagram).
The result is a group of waterfalls (three of them, if you count Bridal Veil Falls as separate from the American Falls) at the top of a long gorge between vertical cliffs some 200 feet (60 m) high. Talus slopes of rubble at the feet of the cliffs run diagonally down to the banks of the river. So evenly layered are the cliff faces that on one or two occasions I mistook them for brick walls. On closer inspection (such as we enjoyed during a climb up the hill behind Table Rock Point, Ontario) a bounty of little fossil shellfish may be observed in the sandstone.
My very first exposure to the Falls was completely different. Kathy is an old Niagara Falls veteran, and a bit jaded; but I craned my neck looking out our hotel-room window to catch a glimpse of the river plunging over the brink of the American Falls, and the twin columns of mist billowing upward from behind the cliffs. With the window open we could easily discern the constant roar of falling water. Isaac Asimov once remarked that, while he found Niagara Falls spectacular by day, he was distressed to realize, after hours of fitful sleep, that nobody turns the waterfalls off at night. He must have been staying closer to the Falls than we were, but from our distance they would make a nifty white-noise maker for someone who might need a little relaxing help falling asleep.
Everyone I'd spoken to about our vacation insisted that all the good views would be found on the Canadian side of the river. Sure enough, all the magnificent panoramic vistas, encompassing both major waterfalls and Great Gorge to the north, were only available in Ontario. Nevertheless, I found my favorite close-up viewpoints our first day, in New York. Two of the "must-see" attractions are also found in the USA.
The first is the old classic, Maid of the Mist. I'd known about the famous boat (boats, actually-at least seven of them) since I was a first-grader, having read a book about the natural wonders. (It may have qualified, back then, for the Seven Wonders of the Natural World, but only one waterfall, Victoria Falls in Africa, makes the consensus list today.) The Maid of the Mist departs from both banks of the Niagara downstream of the Falls; so why am I specifically recommending the American embarkation point? The answer is simple. New York gets such a small fraction of the Niagara Falls tourism, the lines are far shorter in the good ol' U.S. of A. We got on the very first boat after we bought our tickets.
Pretty much everyone in the world knows something about the Maid of the Mist, so I won't go into any detail. I was surprised, however, by the architecture of the American Falls. The water descended only about two-thirds of its height in one leap, and then cascaded down the rest of the way through a network of small channels through a jumble of huge, flattened blocks of dolomite. Here the dynamic nature of Niagara Falls was the most evident. In the 1960s, the Army Corps of Engineers undertook a study to determine the feasibility of removing the talus at the base of the American Falls and to assess whether this monumental project would "preserve and enhance the beauty" of the waterfall. In the end it was decided to leave the American Falls completely undisturbed, but over the five months of the study the water was completely diverted, leaving the precipice high and dry.
We continued past the American Falls toward the cul-de-sac lined by the white, aqueous curtain of the Horseshoe Falls. As our boat slowly approached the center of the semicircle described by Horseshoe Falls, we could hear the engines straining harder and harder just to keep us from being flung downriver in the runoff spinning away from the base. Eventually, the tumbling, roaring waters surrounded us on three sides. Where the thunder was the loudest, mist completely obscured the fall. The effect was most disconcerting, like hearing a train thundering directly toward us, but not being able to see it. We remained there, awe-struck, for several minutes, and then the MotM turned left flank, treating us to an unusual view of a sandstone wall rushing past us sideways as the current swept us downriver.
That was a good bit of fun, but I found our next American adventure even more intense and enjoyable. When someone tells you that you're about to embark on the "Cave of the Winds Tour," you might think it reasonable to expect to encounter a cave somewhere along the way. On the contrary, the closest we came to actual spelunking was to descend some 175 feet (53 m) in an elevator whose shaft had been quarried though the Silurian sediments, and strolled down a short, damp tunnel to the riverbank. For some reason the NY Park Service touted this subterranean journey, which took us maybe two minutes to complete, as a major feature. In fact, they named the entire activity after it, which is like calling the Iditarod the "Anchorage Dogsled Race." And to make matters worse, the elevator and shaft are the least entertaining part (though the fact that all tunneling had been done without power tools redeemed them somewhat).
We'd been issued diaphanous plastic ponchos for the Maid of the Mist tour. These ponchos had saved us from some dampness, but nothing I haven't accrued on twenty bike rides to work during the spring. At Cave of the Winds we received a poncho and a pair of rubber sandals. Clearly we were to expect a whole new level of wetness. We walked a few yards downriver to a wooden catwalk that ascended toward the base of Bridal Veil Falls, an offshoot of the American Falls. On our way up we passed hulking moss-covered boulders, glistening in the ever-present mist, and visited some of the tiny waterfalls where the water sifted down through rubble left over from previous migrations of the cliff face. Twice the path took us through the spills: the wooden floor of our trail turned to a metal and rubber grating to let the water through, and we sloshed our way through. Having grown up in the mountains, I expect river water to be near freezing, but the runoff from Bridal Veil falls was surprisingly warm, about the temperature of the air, and refreshing as it splashed against our feet, like a water massage. Soon we came to the observation platform at the very base of the 80-foot (24-m) waterfall, named the Hurricane Deck. We learned why even before we finished the climb: a good portion of Bridal Veil Falls strikes a tilted mesa of dolomite and sprays straight outward, generating a gale-force wind. We leaned into this blast of air and mist and attempted to shout our delight at viewing a major water fall from the inside to each other, utterly failing to get any words across but understanding each other nonetheless. An extension of the Hurricane Deck led even deeper into the splash zone. It was impossible to face the falls that close in-the fresh-water pressure against my contacts stung my eyes horribly-so I slowly backed my way in amongst deafening concussions and a virtual tsunami and made myself a part of Bridal Veil Falls, and thereby came to appreciate how water can quarry through solid rock. It certainly had no trouble getting through me. I battened down all the hatches, but not well enough. Even a waterproof poncho can't resist bucketsful of water pouring down from above; the liquid seeped through the interface between plastic and skin, thoroughly soaking the clothing beneath. Only two stripes under my arms stayed even remotely non-saturated.
Some wag had nailed up a large NO SMOKING sign on the railing of the Hurricane Deck, which we missed seeing close up-and no wonder, what with the lashing winds and gouts of water flung at us at near sonic speed. We could easily read it from the Canadian side, and in fact, that's where we first noticed it, studying the little ants in yellow ponchos shouting and laughing hysterically in the spray. All the boardwalks beneath Bridal Veil Falls are rebuilt every year without power tools. You can see why: it would be just like running the hair dryer while taking a bath.
We returned to the upper story of the park utterly waterlogged. While Kathy got an ice cream, I wrung out my shirt, hair and eyeballs. That helped, but I still felt a bit chilly in the wind. It was getting along toward dinnertime, so we completed our circuit around Goat Island. At the western extremity of Horseshoe Falls, right on the US-Canadian border, is a viewpoint inexplicably named Terrapin Point. From there we could gauge the depth of the water going over the brink in different parts of the waterfall by their color: white at the top indicated a diaphanous sheet, while various shades of jade green suggested thicker layers making the plunge before breaking up into milky streamers. The rest of the island wasn't exceptional, though it did offer some impressive views of the rapids above the Falls. We could look upstream where the river is so wide that a good portion of our horizon was onrushing water with nothing else visible but sky. This imposing view gave us a little thrill of excitement and fear, as if we were facing an imminent catastrophic flood but knew it was all a dream.
Both of us were fading quickly: we barely stayed awake through dinner. The Ramada had an Indian dinner buffet on site that answered our dining needs so perfectly that I was tempted to ask whether they served chocolate muffins for breakfast, as well. It struck us as kind of odd at first, but we did see enough tourists of Indian descent to support an Indian restaurant, and in fact a large proportion of the hotel staff were Indian as well. (Never thought I'd leave a hotel in the morning and overhear maids conversing in Hindi.) It soon became evident that the food was authentic: all the dishes were spiced about tenfold as heavily as we expected. Not knowing about the fire within, I attacked the varied dishes with my usual calm efficiency. After about two minutes, the heat caught up with me. I had to ask Kathy if she would check whether my eyes were bleeding.
Kathy crashed and burned right after dinner. I managed to stay up until about 11:30 by starting up a Dr. Pepper IV and reading The DaVinci Code.
Intrepid souls seeking Part II need look no further than here.