Niagara Falls Travelogue Part 1
I'm going to separate the travelogue into three parts, one for each day we were there, mostly because it's pretty long. I'll cut it so it doesn't clutter your friends pages and if you don't want to read it you don't have to. I know I have people reading my journal that aren't on my friends list, so I wont friends lock it.
G wrote this, Like I said before, I do pictures, he does the write ups.
So without further ado...
Niagara Falls - Friday October 21, 2005
Before I begin, I just want to announce that Donna and I are embarking on a worldwide tour to end drought conditions in severely affected areas. We plan on visiting the Sahara, Mongolia, Afghanistan, West Texas, and other third-world nations. Because, goldangit, everywhere we go, it rains. I swear. Williamsburg? Rain. New Orleans? Rain. Florida? Rain. And if we find an especially hard drought to crack, I'll invite my mother to a baseball game. There is no immovable object against that kind of force.
Actually, it's only fair that we got rained on. After all, we were going to a place known for enormous amounts of falling water. It just happens that this time, not all of it was coming from the river. And it was October, and my aforementioned mother had a hurricane bearing down on her, and she didn't even get to see a baseball game first. And what the heck, it's been raining up here for the past month anyway. So I'm sure we had it coming.
So we went to Niagara Falls for the weekend. Niagara Falls is a bit of a one trick pony, so you can actually do a lot of it in one weekend. It's only a little more than 7 hours from Boston, so, having left at 8:30, we got in a little bit before dinner. You can actually see the plume of mist from the falls for several miles as you approach it, which was confusing to me. I seem to have the basic assumption that all rivers flow south, and I was confused that I could see the plume but not the falls, approaching it from the south. But, much to my surprise, the Niagara River flows north at that point (going from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario).
The plume of mist is actually a more or less permanent effect of the falls, and you can immediately tell which way the wind is blowing by what's wet and what's not. It comes entirely from the energy of the waterfall hitting the basin surface, and isn't a temperature effect or anything else. The churning air lifts the spray several hundred feet into the air, and is apparently sometimes called the dragon because of the turbulent images it can convey. The plume of mist is also really only a part of the Horseshoe Falls - the geography of the American Falls keeps the spray generally much lower.
There are only a pair of bridges between the US and Canada near the falls - the Rainbow Bridge right below the falls, and the Whirlpool bridge a few miles further downstream (near the redoubtable Souvenir City) - and the vast majority of tourists in either direction use the Rainbow Bridge. There used to be another bridge, the Honeymoon Bridge, but it was destroyed by ice jams back in the '30s. Anyway, in October, the trip across the border is really quite fast. Just make sure you know the answer to such difficult questions as, "Where are you going, and how long will you be in Canada?" I had to defer to Donna, because hey, I'm just along for the ride.
Out hotel was the Marriott Fallsview. Now, just about everything within a half a mile of the falls is called Fallsview, whether or not you can see across the street, let alone the actual falls; but the Marriott actually has an excellent view of the falls. It's possibly the best in town. You can see our hotel in this Google satellite map: it's the curved building in the center of the picture. Anyway, once we got to our room, we were somewhere between stunned, delighted, and ravenous, so we looked out the window at the magnificent view for a little while we unpacked, and then headed downstairs to look for the first restaurant that caught our eye.
Now, the place that caught our eye, Tony Roma's, had two major features going for it: it was immediately across the street from our hotel, and it served ribs. Ri-i-i-i-i-ibs. Donna is a great fan of ribs, and these did not disappoint. I had a decent pulled pork sandwich and a tasty Rickard's honey brown ale, but Donna reports that her ribs were exquisite, beyond even how delicious real food tastes after 7 hours in a car living on munchies.
Now, speaking of being in a car for 7 hours, some time around Albany, as Shattered played on the radio, I suddenly wondered who the four members of the Rolling Stones were. I knew Mick Jagger, Keith Richard and Ron Wood, but I couldn't for the life of me come up with the fourth. To make matters worse, I thought Ron Wood was the drummer, so I was trying to come up with the name of the bassist, which I actually already had. For the next 4 hours, I ran through every plausible three-letter combination in my head to try to jog my memory of what either his first or last name was. I failed. I could see the man, I could hear his playing, I just couldn't come up with his name. And no, I could not bring myself to just stop wondering. It became my quest. Finally, in desperation, I asked our waitress at Tony Roma's. She had no idea. She asked the manager, the maitre d', the cook, the thief, his wife and her lover, and none of them knew either. We left in dejection. Well-fed, happy and contented dejection, mind you.
So we dropped into the little gift store (of course, the words "we dropped into the little gift store" can be placed between any two paragraphs in this travelogue) for a few minutes, and as we came back out and went to leave, we heard, from across the bar, one of the waiters say, "Charlie Watts." It was as though we were struck by lightning. We had finally found our salvation. Somehow the entire restaurant had become interested in this question, and one young waiter knew the answer that delivered us all. Charlie Watts. The drummer. Hallelujah.
Ahem. Anyway, we had had an early dinner, so we decided we would spend some shoe-leather and see what was around. The hotel sits up a very steep hill from the falls, which accounts for its unobstructed view, and at the edge of that hill runs a meandering path called the Fallsview Walk. This runs around the front (or the back, if you prefer) of the Fallsview Casino, and provides, predictably enough, some nice views of the falls. We headed off that direction, becoming vaguely aware that it was chilly out. But at least it hadn't started raining.
Anyway, we started walking, and we kept walking until we got all the way over to Clifton Hill. This was a good mile away through at least one deserted and dark parking lot, and especially on a cold and windy October night, this was either an achievement or just plain dumb. But we did manage to find what I most crave in any new city: miniature golf. Anyway, Clifton Hill Road, which is amazingly steep, runs from the top of the hill down to the riverside, and is one of the main routes down to the falls' main attractions. It's also the cheesy neon district of Niagara Falls, where you can find wax museums, video arcades, Planet Hollywood and the Hard Rock Cafe, and all manner of other silly attractions. Sadly, it photographs better than it presents in person, so we never really went into anything that didn't have a public washroom. Oh, yeah, they're called washrooms in Canada, not rest- or bathrooms. But nothing was really compelling.
But we did drop into the Dinosaur Park miniature golf course, which wasn't terribly exciting, but got me my fix. There was another course right next door, but it was being torn down, alas. And actually, there's an Incredible Hulk 9-hole indoor course over on Falls Ave., but by the time we found that on Saturday, we were cold, wet, and sorely longing for our hotel room, so we left it for some future trip.
So there we were, standing in the middle of Clifton Hill, getting colder by the moment, looking back at the mile we have to walk to get to the hotel, and began to notice a nearly complete lack of taxis. There was a dizzying array of buses, but we had failed to arm ourselves with any information about routes, schedules, or prices, and we held no Canadian currency. So we resigned ourselves to the long walk back.
Of course, our relationship has a history of long walks in the cold. Way back on our second date, to Salem for Halloween, I fondly recall us sitting, huddled together on the train platform, our feet not quite numb from the cold, saying to each other, "You know what they say: cold hands, cold feet..." And then there was the episode in Brookline with the puddles of slush. Anyway, suffice to say, it follows us like rain.
A note about money in Niagara Falls: the official currency is nominally Canadian, but every place we went also took US bills. Many things were marked with two prices, many registers had two displays and two drawers, and even the miniature golf course had a conversion chart on the wall. Most of the clerks would advise us what the charge in US dollars would likely be when the credit card statement came through, too. Of course, the exchange rate you got for cash transactions was whatever random number they picked, and you were as likely to get Canadian quarters as American when getting change from a US bill. There were any number of currency exchange kiosks, but the best rates for cash came from the casinos. The best rates of all come from the credit card companies, so if you can, that's the most effective way to pay for things.
Anyway, after most of a long walk back to the hotel, we came to the Fallsview Casino itself (which we had walked past on our way out), and the Galleria Mall which it's connected to. This wonderful confluence offered us the triple benefit of shopping for souvenirs, exploring the casino, and warming our feet. And our feet were quite ready for that. So we went in, bought playing cards, entirely too much fudge, plus trinkets, pins, and other goodies, since that's what tourists do.
In the middle of the Galleria, by the way, is a giant blue water sculpture (it's not quite a fountain, not quite a sculpture) that looks like something right our of Willy Wonka's factory. I wish we'd brought the camera to film it in motion, but it was amazing to see. Not that it moved, but it flowed and tumbled and lived. Alas, we hadn't bothered with the camera, since outside pictures at night aren't usually useful. Plus, the casino allows neither cameras nor cell phones, so it would have proven an inconvenience.
Interestingly, the entrances to the casino from the mall were manned with security people checking IDs. We're used to American casinos, where the door security is just watching you as you pass, and stopping only the most obviously inappropriate people, even at Atlantic City, with its direct access from the boardwalk. But here, the majority of people were being asked to provide proof of age, and a quick peek into any bags being carried to check for, presumably, those cameras, among other bits of contraband. I had wisely stashed my cell phone in my jacket, and turned it off, so they just checked our licenses and bags, and waved us in. Alas, I guess we just didn't look young enough. Besides, it wasn't a great hardship, and we could understand wanting to keep the teenagers out. The legal age in Canada for drinking and debauchery - I mean, gambling - seems to be 19 in the south and east, and 18 in the north and west. And I must say, there's a qualitative difference between the 19-year-olds we saw there and the 21-year-olds we see at Foxwoods.
We ventured into the Fallsview Casino, wondering, among other things, how they handled quarter slots, with the two similar currencies floating around. It turns out that, for paper money, the machines accepted only Canadian, which was reasonable, and easily distinguished from US paper. But for all the coin slots, they used tokens, simply avoiding the whole question of distinguishing coins. You bought the coins with Canadian currency, but all of their cashiers would exchange between the two currencies with ease, and at a decent rate ($.86 US = $1 CDN; only the credit card was better, at $.8422).
So we burned an hour or so there and eventually decided it was time to get back to the hotel. This was probably only 10pm or so, so it was a comparatively early night, but we had some things to look forward to in the hotel. You see, not only do they illuminate the falls with giant, colored spot lights at night (and they have a fireworks display we managed to miss the entire weekend), but our room had the one feature that is absolutely de rigueur in Niagara Falls hotels: a hot tub (though, alas, not heart-shaped). Cold, sore, and tired, we were drawn to that tub like gravity. Ahh, happy muscles...
We actually got a good, long look at the illuminated falls as we waited for the tub to fill. They have banks of powerful spot lights on the opposing shore from the American Falls, and somewhere to the Canadian side of the Horseshoe Falls. They change colors every minute or so, including going all white occasionally. We learned later in the weekend that the Bridal Veil Falls was being periodically illuminated pink to commemorate Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We took a good number of pictures that came out surprisingly well.
If you don't know, Niagara Falls is actually two (or three, depending on how you count) separate falls running roughly north, with Canada to the west, the US to the east, and islands between them. The Canadian side looks down on Horseshoe Falls, which is what most people think of when they picture Niagara. It falls into a fairly deep basin, and comes down mostly straight, with the top table rock extending out over the rest of the cliff, which has worn away backwards. The eastern bank of Horseshoe is Goat Island, a moderately large island with tourist facilities, paths, and forests. It's American territory, so we didn't get there until much later. On the other side of Goat Island is the American Falls (with the Bridal Veil Falls as a small offshoot on the Goat Island side), which, rather than falling into a deep pool, tumbles down ledges onto a big pile of rocks - the result of innumerable rock falls over the years. Important safety advice: when going over the falls in a barrel, make sure you turn left and go over the Horseshoe Falls, not the American Falls on the right...
Anyway, we had had a long day with lots of sitting, followed by lots of walking, and we were quite ready to turn in for the night. Which we promptly did.
More to come...
Friday's Pictures
G wrote this, Like I said before, I do pictures, he does the write ups.
So without further ado...
Niagara Falls - Friday October 21, 2005
Before I begin, I just want to announce that Donna and I are embarking on a worldwide tour to end drought conditions in severely affected areas. We plan on visiting the Sahara, Mongolia, Afghanistan, West Texas, and other third-world nations. Because, goldangit, everywhere we go, it rains. I swear. Williamsburg? Rain. New Orleans? Rain. Florida? Rain. And if we find an especially hard drought to crack, I'll invite my mother to a baseball game. There is no immovable object against that kind of force.
Actually, it's only fair that we got rained on. After all, we were going to a place known for enormous amounts of falling water. It just happens that this time, not all of it was coming from the river. And it was October, and my aforementioned mother had a hurricane bearing down on her, and she didn't even get to see a baseball game first. And what the heck, it's been raining up here for the past month anyway. So I'm sure we had it coming.
So we went to Niagara Falls for the weekend. Niagara Falls is a bit of a one trick pony, so you can actually do a lot of it in one weekend. It's only a little more than 7 hours from Boston, so, having left at 8:30, we got in a little bit before dinner. You can actually see the plume of mist from the falls for several miles as you approach it, which was confusing to me. I seem to have the basic assumption that all rivers flow south, and I was confused that I could see the plume but not the falls, approaching it from the south. But, much to my surprise, the Niagara River flows north at that point (going from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario).
The plume of mist is actually a more or less permanent effect of the falls, and you can immediately tell which way the wind is blowing by what's wet and what's not. It comes entirely from the energy of the waterfall hitting the basin surface, and isn't a temperature effect or anything else. The churning air lifts the spray several hundred feet into the air, and is apparently sometimes called the dragon because of the turbulent images it can convey. The plume of mist is also really only a part of the Horseshoe Falls - the geography of the American Falls keeps the spray generally much lower.
There are only a pair of bridges between the US and Canada near the falls - the Rainbow Bridge right below the falls, and the Whirlpool bridge a few miles further downstream (near the redoubtable Souvenir City) - and the vast majority of tourists in either direction use the Rainbow Bridge. There used to be another bridge, the Honeymoon Bridge, but it was destroyed by ice jams back in the '30s. Anyway, in October, the trip across the border is really quite fast. Just make sure you know the answer to such difficult questions as, "Where are you going, and how long will you be in Canada?" I had to defer to Donna, because hey, I'm just along for the ride.
Out hotel was the Marriott Fallsview. Now, just about everything within a half a mile of the falls is called Fallsview, whether or not you can see across the street, let alone the actual falls; but the Marriott actually has an excellent view of the falls. It's possibly the best in town. You can see our hotel in this Google satellite map: it's the curved building in the center of the picture. Anyway, once we got to our room, we were somewhere between stunned, delighted, and ravenous, so we looked out the window at the magnificent view for a little while we unpacked, and then headed downstairs to look for the first restaurant that caught our eye.
Now, the place that caught our eye, Tony Roma's, had two major features going for it: it was immediately across the street from our hotel, and it served ribs. Ri-i-i-i-i-ibs. Donna is a great fan of ribs, and these did not disappoint. I had a decent pulled pork sandwich and a tasty Rickard's honey brown ale, but Donna reports that her ribs were exquisite, beyond even how delicious real food tastes after 7 hours in a car living on munchies.
Now, speaking of being in a car for 7 hours, some time around Albany, as Shattered played on the radio, I suddenly wondered who the four members of the Rolling Stones were. I knew Mick Jagger, Keith Richard and Ron Wood, but I couldn't for the life of me come up with the fourth. To make matters worse, I thought Ron Wood was the drummer, so I was trying to come up with the name of the bassist, which I actually already had. For the next 4 hours, I ran through every plausible three-letter combination in my head to try to jog my memory of what either his first or last name was. I failed. I could see the man, I could hear his playing, I just couldn't come up with his name. And no, I could not bring myself to just stop wondering. It became my quest. Finally, in desperation, I asked our waitress at Tony Roma's. She had no idea. She asked the manager, the maitre d', the cook, the thief, his wife and her lover, and none of them knew either. We left in dejection. Well-fed, happy and contented dejection, mind you.
So we dropped into the little gift store (of course, the words "we dropped into the little gift store" can be placed between any two paragraphs in this travelogue) for a few minutes, and as we came back out and went to leave, we heard, from across the bar, one of the waiters say, "Charlie Watts." It was as though we were struck by lightning. We had finally found our salvation. Somehow the entire restaurant had become interested in this question, and one young waiter knew the answer that delivered us all. Charlie Watts. The drummer. Hallelujah.
Ahem. Anyway, we had had an early dinner, so we decided we would spend some shoe-leather and see what was around. The hotel sits up a very steep hill from the falls, which accounts for its unobstructed view, and at the edge of that hill runs a meandering path called the Fallsview Walk. This runs around the front (or the back, if you prefer) of the Fallsview Casino, and provides, predictably enough, some nice views of the falls. We headed off that direction, becoming vaguely aware that it was chilly out. But at least it hadn't started raining.
Anyway, we started walking, and we kept walking until we got all the way over to Clifton Hill. This was a good mile away through at least one deserted and dark parking lot, and especially on a cold and windy October night, this was either an achievement or just plain dumb. But we did manage to find what I most crave in any new city: miniature golf. Anyway, Clifton Hill Road, which is amazingly steep, runs from the top of the hill down to the riverside, and is one of the main routes down to the falls' main attractions. It's also the cheesy neon district of Niagara Falls, where you can find wax museums, video arcades, Planet Hollywood and the Hard Rock Cafe, and all manner of other silly attractions. Sadly, it photographs better than it presents in person, so we never really went into anything that didn't have a public washroom. Oh, yeah, they're called washrooms in Canada, not rest- or bathrooms. But nothing was really compelling.
But we did drop into the Dinosaur Park miniature golf course, which wasn't terribly exciting, but got me my fix. There was another course right next door, but it was being torn down, alas. And actually, there's an Incredible Hulk 9-hole indoor course over on Falls Ave., but by the time we found that on Saturday, we were cold, wet, and sorely longing for our hotel room, so we left it for some future trip.
So there we were, standing in the middle of Clifton Hill, getting colder by the moment, looking back at the mile we have to walk to get to the hotel, and began to notice a nearly complete lack of taxis. There was a dizzying array of buses, but we had failed to arm ourselves with any information about routes, schedules, or prices, and we held no Canadian currency. So we resigned ourselves to the long walk back.
Of course, our relationship has a history of long walks in the cold. Way back on our second date, to Salem for Halloween, I fondly recall us sitting, huddled together on the train platform, our feet not quite numb from the cold, saying to each other, "You know what they say: cold hands, cold feet..." And then there was the episode in Brookline with the puddles of slush. Anyway, suffice to say, it follows us like rain.
A note about money in Niagara Falls: the official currency is nominally Canadian, but every place we went also took US bills. Many things were marked with two prices, many registers had two displays and two drawers, and even the miniature golf course had a conversion chart on the wall. Most of the clerks would advise us what the charge in US dollars would likely be when the credit card statement came through, too. Of course, the exchange rate you got for cash transactions was whatever random number they picked, and you were as likely to get Canadian quarters as American when getting change from a US bill. There were any number of currency exchange kiosks, but the best rates for cash came from the casinos. The best rates of all come from the credit card companies, so if you can, that's the most effective way to pay for things.
Anyway, after most of a long walk back to the hotel, we came to the Fallsview Casino itself (which we had walked past on our way out), and the Galleria Mall which it's connected to. This wonderful confluence offered us the triple benefit of shopping for souvenirs, exploring the casino, and warming our feet. And our feet were quite ready for that. So we went in, bought playing cards, entirely too much fudge, plus trinkets, pins, and other goodies, since that's what tourists do.
In the middle of the Galleria, by the way, is a giant blue water sculpture (it's not quite a fountain, not quite a sculpture) that looks like something right our of Willy Wonka's factory. I wish we'd brought the camera to film it in motion, but it was amazing to see. Not that it moved, but it flowed and tumbled and lived. Alas, we hadn't bothered with the camera, since outside pictures at night aren't usually useful. Plus, the casino allows neither cameras nor cell phones, so it would have proven an inconvenience.
Interestingly, the entrances to the casino from the mall were manned with security people checking IDs. We're used to American casinos, where the door security is just watching you as you pass, and stopping only the most obviously inappropriate people, even at Atlantic City, with its direct access from the boardwalk. But here, the majority of people were being asked to provide proof of age, and a quick peek into any bags being carried to check for, presumably, those cameras, among other bits of contraband. I had wisely stashed my cell phone in my jacket, and turned it off, so they just checked our licenses and bags, and waved us in. Alas, I guess we just didn't look young enough. Besides, it wasn't a great hardship, and we could understand wanting to keep the teenagers out. The legal age in Canada for drinking and debauchery - I mean, gambling - seems to be 19 in the south and east, and 18 in the north and west. And I must say, there's a qualitative difference between the 19-year-olds we saw there and the 21-year-olds we see at Foxwoods.
We ventured into the Fallsview Casino, wondering, among other things, how they handled quarter slots, with the two similar currencies floating around. It turns out that, for paper money, the machines accepted only Canadian, which was reasonable, and easily distinguished from US paper. But for all the coin slots, they used tokens, simply avoiding the whole question of distinguishing coins. You bought the coins with Canadian currency, but all of their cashiers would exchange between the two currencies with ease, and at a decent rate ($.86 US = $1 CDN; only the credit card was better, at $.8422).
So we burned an hour or so there and eventually decided it was time to get back to the hotel. This was probably only 10pm or so, so it was a comparatively early night, but we had some things to look forward to in the hotel. You see, not only do they illuminate the falls with giant, colored spot lights at night (and they have a fireworks display we managed to miss the entire weekend), but our room had the one feature that is absolutely de rigueur in Niagara Falls hotels: a hot tub (though, alas, not heart-shaped). Cold, sore, and tired, we were drawn to that tub like gravity. Ahh, happy muscles...
We actually got a good, long look at the illuminated falls as we waited for the tub to fill. They have banks of powerful spot lights on the opposing shore from the American Falls, and somewhere to the Canadian side of the Horseshoe Falls. They change colors every minute or so, including going all white occasionally. We learned later in the weekend that the Bridal Veil Falls was being periodically illuminated pink to commemorate Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We took a good number of pictures that came out surprisingly well.
If you don't know, Niagara Falls is actually two (or three, depending on how you count) separate falls running roughly north, with Canada to the west, the US to the east, and islands between them. The Canadian side looks down on Horseshoe Falls, which is what most people think of when they picture Niagara. It falls into a fairly deep basin, and comes down mostly straight, with the top table rock extending out over the rest of the cliff, which has worn away backwards. The eastern bank of Horseshoe is Goat Island, a moderately large island with tourist facilities, paths, and forests. It's American territory, so we didn't get there until much later. On the other side of Goat Island is the American Falls (with the Bridal Veil Falls as a small offshoot on the Goat Island side), which, rather than falling into a deep pool, tumbles down ledges onto a big pile of rocks - the result of innumerable rock falls over the years. Important safety advice: when going over the falls in a barrel, make sure you turn left and go over the Horseshoe Falls, not the American Falls on the right...
Anyway, we had had a long day with lots of sitting, followed by lots of walking, and we were quite ready to turn in for the night. Which we promptly did.
More to come...
Friday's Pictures