Niagara FALLS.

Tuesday:
Woke up in Niagara Falls. Had booked a hotel for the night. Nice enough and lovely hosts, but I much prefer airbnb.

Decided to do Niagara tour things. Now, Niagara Falls is on two sides of a gorge, with the river running through it. One side is Canadian, one side is American. For some reason, I didn't realise that the Canadian side had a boat trip, so I made NN1 trot over the bridge to the States to take the trip. It cost use $1.25 each to leave Canada and a heap of questions to enter the States. As NN1 noted, 'when you're entering the States they want to know all your details, where you're staying, how long for, your relationship, where your parents are (his, not mine), when you're entering Canada they just say, "Welcome to Canada, enjoy your stay." !'

 In the Maid of the Mist they give you a plastic blue poncho. Canada's Hornblower boat trip doles out red ones.

 We posed.

 The water is a beautiful aqua colour (color?) Complete with rainbow.

 And there's a fair bit of mist. Actually, both countries have a falls. Canada has the authentic, beautiful and much photographed Horseshoe Falls.

The US has their own falls which they 'enhanced' in the early 1900s by dynamite blasting the rock edge away. They did this to have their own falls.

This is a JayFact (more on this later)

The US falls.

Mist-erious.

 How did he get so tall?
Mist-ery.

Who is that?
Mist-er.

Actually this is a picture taken after we got off the boat. In the US side you can walk up and get right alongside the falls. You can't actually see anything. I just pointed the phone and pressed the camera button as my eyes squinted through the copious 'rain' . They are pretty impressive, these falls.

Soaked legs that ponchos don't cover.
Mis-sed

 We walked around the state part on the US side and took more pics.

 Afterwards I put my good and faithful trainers to rest. I felt a sense of gratitude for all their hard work, canoeing and waterfalling.

The river pre-falls..

 The bridge between the two.

 How to be in two countries at once.

Then it was on to Niagara. We'd arranged to meet the Canadian family we met on the canoeing trip for the evening. We were really looking forward to the get together and mooched round Niagara in anticipation beforehand.

Strangely, Niagara is like a cross between Rhyl and Blackpool. Though possibly sunnier and definitely mistier.

They have a ferris wheel and a load of arcades. I persuaded NN1 to try an arcade with me.

He was VERY disappointed to learn that you couldn't win money, just tokens.

We spent $5.
We won 30 tokens.

I wondered what we could've won.

This...

 Three plastic soldiers. BOOM!

 To cheer ourselves up, we went to hang with the dinosaurs.

 'T-Rex excitedly discovers there is a ferris wheel in town.'

The albino bison. He was stuffed.

 Officially smallest road legal car in the world.

 Falls in the evening.

We met up with the family. They treated us and took us to a fantastic burger place called The Works. We had the works. Then we took the kids on the fun fair. I bought three kids' tickets with three activities on each. Still reeling at the 5 dollar cost for three plastic soldiers NN1 did me proud and sauntered, shuffled, shimmied his way (along with the girls) to a total of about 14 activities (with only 9 pre bought). They did a load of stuff..

 Going into the maze of mirrors.

 Trying the laser maze.

Finally, we saw an upside down house. Our lovely Canadian family gave us a sack full of goodies and a lift back to the hotel. Jay told us loads of facts about the falls, the US, Canada, crisps, squirrels... He's full of Jay Facts. We learnt loads. What a great day.