Princess on the Road

During the planning of this trip, I wasn’t sure that I would be seeing the ‘real’ America as almost every destination I stop at is a major city and I really wanted to see a bit of the regional areas.  But with Niagara Falls on my itinerary, I needn’t have worried…

 

Why?  Well, Niagara Falls is a bit of a dump.  The actual Falls and the surrounding State Park are very pretty but the township of Niagara Falls is actually a little rough – and not just around the edges.

 

The first clues were while I was travelling on the Amtrak – for the most part it was all the pretty green scenery like that of the photos in my last post.  But then as the train got closer to Buffalo, the area was starting to look a little sad.  The houses that lined the streets, probably once quaint, were run down and in need of some serious TLC.  And there didn’t seem to be anything to do or see – no shops, no people, no touristy stuff.  And everything was really spread out, so the place seemed kind of sparse – quite the contrast to New York City.  Things didn’t improve at Niagara Falls either – the streets were all but deserted with the same dreary looking houses.  As part of trip research, I had read reviews that the Canadian side of the Falls was much better to visit but by better I didn’t realise that meant not a shithole.

 

The hostel where I stayed was actually a three storey house – the first floor was the kitchen and living areas with steps to the basement that had been coverted into a second bathroom and the second floor was the guest rooms and the main bathroom.  There were four guest rooms - three were two bunk bedrooms (so four beds all up) with one for females, males and co-ed, and the fourth room was a two bed private room.  Carroll, the owner, lived on the third floor.  Although the house was clearly quite old, Carroll had it clean and tidy, and guests were free to relax throughout the rooms and have full use of the kitchen. 

 

On Sunday I decided to go for a walk to the Falls despite some unfortunate wet weather.  Carroll’s place was actually a fair bit further from the State Park than I realised – it takes a good 30 minutes of brisk walking to get to the Falls and since I’m not into walking quickly fast, it takes me about 45 minutes.  It was a strange walk because the place was so deserted – I think I saw about 3 people while walking to the State Park.  Once at the Falls, there were a lot more people but hardly as many as I had expected.  I did a fair bit of walking around the Park and saw a lot but I had to dodge the rain most of the day by waiting around in the various gift shops and bus shelters.

 

 

 

 

So you can follow the rest of the post here is a quick Niagara Falls geography lesson; open the link:

http://www.niagarafallslive.com/Niagara_Falls_Interactive_Map.htm

First, there is the Niagara Gorge through the middle of the photo (where all the water is).  The right side of the Gorge in the photo is the US side, the left is the Canadian side.  The bridge across the Gorge is the Rainbow Bridge – for traffic and pedestrians, it is one of several US/Canada border crossings.  On the US side near the Rainbow Bridge is the American Falls, which are wide and flow the height of the Niagara Gorge.  On the right of the American Falls is the Bridal Veil Falls.  They are a bit hard to pick out because they just look like part of the American Falls, but if you look at the picture carefully, you will see a square-ish, light coloured area next to the American Falls and then a little bit of waterfalls on the other side of the square-ish area – the little bit of waterfalls is the Bridal Veil Falls and the square-ish area is actually Luna Island where there is a viewing platform that you can have an up-close view of the Falls and get wet while you’re at it.  The Falls in the bottom right corner of the photo are the Horseshoe Falls, sometimes called the Canadian Falls.  The Horseshoe Falls are perhaps the quintessential image of Niagara Falls and so-called because they are shaped like a horseshoe.  Finally, on the US side, between the American Falls and the Horseshoe Falls is Goat Island.  Goat Island is actually an island, although it is difficult to see in the photo because you don’t see the other end.  This is a big chunk of the State Park and there are walking paths that go the whole way around Goat Island.

 

So, Sunday evening two new guests arrived – a girl from England, PommieGirl and a Japanese lady, Jappy.  PommieGirl was in a bit of tizz as she had come from another hostel further up the road that she wasn’t impressed with.  Apparently, she had requested a single private room only to find the ‘private’ room was actually with the two male owners of the hostel.  She also said there was no female showers but the owners had said she was welcome to use their shower.  One of the owners had also offered her a private tour of the area with him as her personal ’tour guide’.  So she decided not to stay and one of the local taxi drivers was kind enough to bring her to Carroll’s place.

 

Carroll suggested I take PommieGirl and Jappy down to the Falls since I had already been down there and knew the way as fireworks were on that evening at 10pm.  So once we were all rugged up (it was a little chilly) we headed off to watch the fireworks about 8.30.  Jappy had an enormous shoulder bag with her that looked kind of heavy, and since she was pushing 70 years of age, PommieGirl offered to help carry it.  Jappy said she was fine – she was a photographer so had a lot of equipment and was used to carrying it around.  Once down at the State Park, we went to Luna Island, as Carroll had recommended it as the top spot for fireworks.  The Falls are illuminated in the evening by spotlights from 8.30 to midnight, so even if you arrive after dark, you can still check them out.  Since this was the first time PommieGirl and Jappy had seen the Falls, naturally they wanted some happy snaps.  Jappy sets down her enormous carry bag and I had imagined she would pull out this massive SLR with tripod and the mother of all telescopic lenses – but no, she pulled out a pocket-sized digital camera.  I couldn’t believe it.  Fucks me what she had in that bag.

 

Fireworks were right on time and Carroll’s recommendation was spot on - Luna Island was a good spot as the fireworks were right in front of us.  After fireworks, we headed back to Carroll’s place via Twist of the Mist – an ice cream place that has the yummiest and most massive serves of ice cream ever.  Jappy couldn’t eat all hers and had to chuck it.  Loser.

 

Next day, PommieGirl decided to tag along with me back down at the State Park while I did all the touristy stuff.  First stop was the Cave of the Winds.  After we got our free rain coats and special thongs, we were taken on an elevator down through the rock of the Gorge to the bottom of the American Falls.    There is a bunch of  stairways and ramps built at the bottom of the American Falls and you can literally stand in the Falls as the water thunders over the edge.  It is the coolest thing I have done so far.  I was almost tempted to do it again it was so much fun.  Next was a boat ride on the Maid of the Mist.  Compared to the Cave of the Winds, the Maid of the Mist is snooze-worthy but I got some good photos of the Falls.  The boat goes past the American Falls and all the way up to the bottom of the Horseshoe Falls.  You get a little wet but nothing compared to the drenching at the Cave of the Winds.  On the way back to Carroll’s place, we stopped by the Niagara Aquarium.  It was a sorry excuse for an aquarium so we did it over in about 45 minutes.

 

 

 

 

Over the course of the day, I got to know PommieGirl a little better.  And the girl has problems.  She is pushing 30 years of age and has previously travelled to Australia and India.  She is currently on a 12 month round-the-world ticket which will take her to the US, South America, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and Asia.  She’s about a week or so into it and is seriously contemplating packing it all in and going home.  Stupidly, she let her boyfriend talk her into just planning her trip as she goes and she has found that winging it kind of sucks.  Although I wouldn’t really know because I’m a pro and I actually research and organise shit.  So I got to listen to her spend the next couple of days stressing about where she was going to go and what to do and where to stay and how to get there and how much it’s going to cost and blah blah blah all the crap she should have taken care of prior to getting on a plane.  She was also a bit tight with money.    I thought this was really funny because winging it will always cost you more – transport and accommodation prices especially tend to rise the later they are booked.  Plus the cheaper stuff always goes first, leaving the expensive stuff as the dregs.  It was also kind of annoying because whenever she bought something she would do a quick conversion to pounds, which was always in her favour due to the USD/GBP exchange rate (and pretty much every other exchange rate around the world, which makes travel very cheap if you’re a pom) and yet she would still whinge.   She would also ring her boyfriend and mother (both are in England) pretty much every day, which would have cost a shitload.  Unbelievable.  She also really sucks at packing.  She has this massive backpack thing that can only be opened at the top – so if there is something at the bottom of the bag she needs, she has to pull everything out.  For this reason, most of her shit stayed out and all over the room we shared over the course of her stay.  She didn’t bring a laptop, which is no biggie because a lot of people don’t, but let’s not forget she is winging it and having internet access is pretty helpful.  So naturally she spent hours hogging Carroll’s ancient laptop, that was so old it would crash whenever someone tried to use Facebook.  And after seeing my little gizmo, she has now decided to buy a laptop while she is in New York.  She did, however, remember to bring three (not one, not two but THREE) bottles of sunscreen – because you know, you can’t buy it in America so better bring plenty with you.   

 

 

 

 

The following day, PommieGirl decided to go it alone since I wasn’t interested in hiking the various trails around the Niagara Gorge but we met up later in the evening on the Canadian side of the falls.  Crossing the Rainbow Bridge is pretty straight forward – once you get to Canada, you go through immigration where they ask you a few questions before stamping your passport and sending you on your way.  The Canadian side is a bit different to the US side – you may have noticed all the high rise buildings in the photo.  There is a park and walkways similar to the US side but it is much more commercialised, and while the surrounding neighbourhoods are not as rough-looking as the US side, I don’t think it is as nice.  And the gift shops were beyond tacky – I tried really hard to find something nice as a souvenir of my brief visit to Canada but no such luck. 

 

Peace out.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 10:43 am and is filed under USA Trip '09. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.