Day 29 - Let's Do It All Again - From The Canadian Side This Time!

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Today was an ambitious day, but we knew that going into it, so it was even better than our expectations. We wanted to make sure we were well rested, so we slept in a little and headed back to the Third Street Retreat for breakfast around 8:30. After breakfast, we headed over to the Niagara Falls Visitors Center a couple of blocks away in search of the free trolley. There is a free trolley that runs about every half hour from the Visitors Center near our hotel to the furthermost tip on the peninsula at Old Fort Niagara.The plan was to take the trolley to Fort Niagara, tour around, and ride the trolley back to the hotel, stopping at a couple of the sights along the way. We had a tour similar to yesterday's except from the Canadian side and at twilight, so we had to be back to the hotel at 5:00. This also meant that we should eat before we left, as the tour will probably only stop for a few minutes for a quick bite.

After breakfast, we headed over to the Visitor Center, spoke to the lady and downloaded the Trolley App on my iPhone. This gave us real time locations of the three trolleys running at any given moment.By the time we sorted all this out and we were on the trolley on the way to Fort Niagara it was 10:00. At first the trolley driver was funny and nice, but then another passenger got on board who was evidently a local and did War of 1812 re-enactments at Fort Niagara for fun. The two of them went off on a racist discussion about chines tourists, and people being allowed in the country who couldn't speak English, and building highways without exits in the black neighborhoods to keep them from traveling out. It made us both a little uncomfortable, and another couple who we had been talking to earlier were looking uncomfortable also. When we arrived at Fort Niagara, I said something to the other couple and they were relieved that we were uncomfortable also.

Fort Niagara was a different kind of fort compared to what we were used to seeing. The main building was designed to look innocuous, and nothing like a fort at all, since the Iroquois were uncomfortable having a fort in their midst. In addition, it was originally built by the French, taken over and buildings added by the British, and even though the US declared Independence from Britain in 1776, it wasn't until 1796 that the British agreed to turn the fort over to the Americans. The Fort had fallen into disrepair in the mid-1800's when, after the building of the Erie Canal, it was no longer strategic, and was mostly restored from the 1920's to the 1930's and is currently maintained as a non-profit. Surprisingly, it is not a National Monument, or associated with the National Park Service in any way.

We watched the obligatory 20 minute movie on the history of Fort Niagara and then a volunteer tour guide gave us a guided tour. It had begun to rain a little as we arrived, and as the tour went on, the rain began to pick up a little. It never really rained hard enough to stop us from touring the fort, but by the time we finished at about 1:00 we were re-thinking our afternoon plans. We had originally planned to visit the historic town of Lewiston as our next stop, and have lunch on the Lewiston Waterfront. But now that it was raining, Lewiston was not sounding such a good idea and we began checking for things we could do indoors. The 2 good ones were the Powerplant Vista or the Castellani Art Museum. We had really wanted to do both, but we didn't want to be late getting back to the hotel, so we picked the Castellani Art Museum.

The Castellani Art Museum surprised us, we knew it was small and associated with Niagara Falls College, but it turned out to be free, had mostly Contemporary Art, and had some interesting pieces. It took us about an hour to go through the museum, we left a donation, and hopped the Trolley for the ride back to the hotel. By now it was 2:30, and we really wanted to get back and get something to eat before the 5:00 tour. It was after 3:00 when we made it back to the hotel, and after making sure that our phones and the camera were charging, we headed over to the Third Street Retreat for an early dinner. I had the tuna melt on rye and Jody had a chicken wrap. Mine was delicious, and Jody was a little disappointed in hers, so she filled up on french fries. It was after 4:30 when we got back to the hotel, but we had plenty of time to be down in the lobby before 5:00.

Ross, our driver showed up promptly at 5:00 and he was quite a bit different from Carl, our driver yesterday. While he wasn't as funny as Carl thought he was, Ross was more businesslike and had a lot of information about the local area and the attractions. Today's tour takes place on the Canadian side of the gorge, so our first step was crossing he bridge into Canada and clearing customs. It was fairly easy, but they did make us all get off the bus, walk into the customs building and meet with a border agent. When it came our turn, I tried to go up to the agent with Jody, but the agent had Jody come up, and motioned to me to stay back. He asked her a few questions, and let her go on ahead, and when I came up all he said was "Same story as her?". I just said yes and he let me move along also. Much easier than when we crossed over to visit Diane in Chatham-Kent a few days ago.

Ross took us up the road and explained some of the geography of the area, and pointed out some of the features of the Canadian side, but the first thing we noticed is how much better the falls look from the Canadian side. You can really see the American and Bridal Veil Falls, and we were much closer to the Horseshoe Falls from the Canadian Side. After pointing out some of the Canadian side features, we headed for our first stop on the tour -The Journey Behind the Falls. Of course, they gave us ponchos so we wouldn't get too wet, but it wasn't nearly as wet as Cave of the Winds or Maid of the Mist that we took yesterday. The attraction is basically 2 of the original tunnels from the old powerplant that exit behind Horseshoe Falls. So when you come to the tunnel end, you can actually see the backside if the Horseshoe Falls waterfall. It was loud and pretty cool. In addition, there was an observation platform right next to Horseshoe Falls and that's where we really needed the ponchos and the mist was really strong and water was everywhere.

After exiting the Journey Behind the Falls, we were given about 20 minutes to wander around observing the falls from the railing. This is where we got some of our best pictures, and this is where we were really able to appreciate the difference between the American and Canadian sides. After our visit to the falls, we made a quick stop at a souvenir shop where there was stuff to buy, and also sandwiches if we were hungry. Others were starving, but we had already eaten, so Jody just had a Gatorade and I had an ice cream. We also found a couple of good Canadian t-shirts. We only had about 20 minutes at the Souvenir shop when we found ourselves heading downstream to the Niagara Whirlpool, this time from the Canadian side, and the perspective is certainly different, with the gorge more apparent from the Canadian Side. We could also see the remains of railroad tracks at the bottom of the gorge where rail service used to be offered but had to be abandoned in the 1930's due to too many rockslides.We could also see the Aerial Tram ride across the whirlpool up close and it looked even scarier to us.

After the Niagara Whirlpool we headed further downstream to where we could see the American Powerplant Vista from across the gorge and it looked much more impressive from the Canadian side. There was also a Canadian powerplant across from the American one, but we couldn't see much as it was on the same side. We continued a little further downstream to the Botanical Gardens, which I am sure are beautiful, but we only saw the Floral Clock, which was nice, but we have an almost identical one in Orlando at Leu Gardens that we have seen many times. By now it was getting close to darkness, so we headed over to the Skylon Tower. This is an observation tower, similar to the Seattle Space Needle with a rotating dining room at the top, and with elevators on the outside so we could view the falls on the way up and down. The view from the elevator was excellent, and I was so involved in taking pictures on the way up, that I momentarily forgot my fear of heights.

We reached the top just as it was getting dark, and the falls are lit up at night. The lights alternate from white to red to blue to green and the view is spectacular The observation tower is open with a large format screen so it is easy to take pictures. It was a bit windy in spots, but the view made it all the more worthwhile. There was a line for the elevator down, but it moved fairly quickly and we were back at the bus at 9:40 as planned. It had not been quite dark enough to take great pictures while on the observation platform before we had to leave to get in line for the elevator ride down, but I had a spot right by the window facing Horseshoe Falls so I was able to snap some spectacular pictures on the elevator ride down. The last stop on our tour was the Duty Free store. We didn't have much interest in Duty Free as we don't drink, and we see them all the time when we cruise. But the real reason for going to the Duty Free store is that it is an excellent place to view the fireworks and when the fireworks are done, there is a special lane from the Duty Free store parking lot directly to the bridge to the US so we could beat the post fireworks traffic back to the US.

The fireworks were awesome! They were set off right above the colorfully lit Horseshoe falls and made for a spectacular display. The Duty Free traffic trick worked perfectly, also. Right after the fireworks ended we drove down the special lane and we were the third bus in line to cross into the US. We still had to exit the bus and show our passport this time to a US border agent. This guy never even asked either of us a single question. They just looked at our passports and told us we were all set so we got back on the bus. By 10:30 we were in the hotel lobby, heading back up to our room.

It was really an outstanding day! I'm also very glad we took the Canadian side tour. After taking the American tour yesterday, I was concerned that the Canadian tour might be redundant, but no tour of Niagara Falls would be complete without seeing the falls from both sides of the gorge. It also gave us a chance to see what the Canadian side looked like. In some ways, it could be any American city, in other ways, it's just different. Tomorrow is a scenic ride up the coast of Lake Ontario. The weather report is looking like it might rain, we hope not, but we haven't melted yet!

0.0 Miles Today

4333.4 Miles Total

0.0 Gallons Today

106.633 Gallons Total

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