Niagaga Falls

“MASQUERADING IN A (BLUE) MACKINTOSH AT NIAGARA FALLS”

The train from Toronto left one and a half hours late, our first travel delay. We didn’t have enough time to drop our bags at the hotel on the US side and go back across the border to view the falls from the Canadian side. So we sat under the trees with our bags near the falls, and Wendy & I went on the ’Maid of the Mist’ first, and then Trev went. Long queues to get on the boat felt like we where sheep being herded in corrals, with our blue plastic bag raincoats. Later, Trev & I walked along the river to the Horseshoe Falls, to the lookout closest to the top from where the water drops 53 metres. It’s exhilarating seeing 2500 cubic metres drop over the edge per second, - we got very wet. Beautiful rainbows. Lots of people there as it was a long weekend. Most of the tourists and much of the population of Niagara Falls (USA) are of Indian descent. For some undiscovered reason, Indians have populated the country town of Niagara Falls. None of our taxi drivers could explain this phenomenon. There were full Indian restaurants everywhere.

As dusk approached we walked across the bridge to the US side. Dragging all our luggage up several flights of stairs and through turnstiles for quite a distance. US customs was the quickest border crossing yet. Caught a taxi to the motel on the outside of town, ugly place on a busy highway, but friendly Indian owners.

Whilst Wendy watched the US Open on TV, we went back to the US side to see the falls under lights. All fairly tacky with coloured changing lights on the falls and lots of food stalls (queues at the Indian ones) and cheap tee-shirts (I LOVE NY).

Whilst eating our souvlaki outside the food hall, we heard the slow chilling chords of a very talented guitarist somewhere in the air. He looked a bit like a young Bob Dylan, played guitar like Mark Knopfler and sang like Jeff Buckley. A great selection of classic songs including ‘Hallelujah‘, ‘The Wall’, ‘Angie’, ’Daydream Believer’, we couldn‘t tear ourselves away to go and see the Niagara Falls lights. He could have been playing on a concert hall stage, and all the tourists were just walking hurriedly past, not even noticing him. I gave him all my Canadian money, he was that good. Mixed in with ‘The Wall’ he changed a line to “You’re all just here to see Niagara Falls”. Highlight of the US falls by night for us.