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Date: 7th September 2006
We got up early this morning as we needed to go and find the hostel we were being picked up from by Moose Tours to visit Niagra Falls! It was a backpackers hostel called 'Global Village backpackers' we found it quite easily using our impressive orientation skills! but as we got there realised we hadn't brought some vital things eg, sun cream, insect repellant towels etc haha, so we had to do a quick mission back to our hostel. We realised that the place we were staying at wasn't as good as this hostel, as they had infomation on tours and things to do/see in Toronto where ours didnt so we knew the kind of place we wanted to stay in next. We had a 1.5 hr journey to get to Niagra, our bus was full of young travellers like us and I got chatting to couple of nice girls Lisa and Georgina. We got to the falls and were given just over an hour to explore around the area. We started off by taking lots of photos of the horse shoe falls (which are the falls on the canadian side) we were close to these. I went a bit snap happy but there's no change there really! The falls are amazing though, and I'm so glad I had the chance to see them, they are so breathtaking and its hard to believe how big they are! It was quite hard to take good shots of them tho as there is so much mist being sprayed from the pressure of the falls! We did the tour of 'Behind the falls' also which was fun as you go down in a lift, get given yellow ponchos and come out onto an area to the left of the falls half way down them you get soaked when standing on this outside bit from the mist spray but its such a laugh! We also walked down two tunnels where there are two large viewing points where all you can see is the water falling down as you are directly behind them, which is cool to see and listen to!
We then got picked up by our tour guide where he then took us to the point where you get on the 'Maid of the Mist' boat. This is so worth doing if you ever get to see Niagra, you get given blue ponchos and the boat takes you right along side the American falls and then up fairly close to the main horse shoe falls! The American falls aren't as big as the canadian falls but are still amazing and worth seeing! We were all stood at the front of the boat so could barely see a thing because of all the spray we all got really soaked haha! The tour then took us to the Ontario Winery, this was cool as we got to try Ice wine and I had never heard of this! Its basically when they leave the grapes in temps at approx -10 C until late Jan, so that when the wine is extracted only the part that ferments to alcohol comes out as the rest is frozen, meaning it is very concentrated giving the wine a very sweet taste - was Yum but very expensive!
Next stop on the tour was the famous Brock monument - statue of a Canadian war hero, and from this point you could see over the Niagra river, the right side being the Canadian side and the left being the American side! Next stop on this tour was the Whirlpool rapids, this is the end part of the lake, after the falls, where the water is flowing too fast creating a big whirlpool effect was cool to see and take pics of. The aero car that goes over the top of the Whirlpool was closed but looked like it would have been fun but scary. We headed back to Niagra falls and on the way past saw the Hydro-electricity power stations where 60% of the water from the river is taken to before hitting the falls and used as electricity they were huge! We had a couple of hours to spend around Niagra, its really strange coz right near these beautiful falls is this touristy strip with lots of amusements and restaurants (quite tacky) reminded us all of Butlins or Blackpool, and doesnt look good being next to such an amazing natural wonder of the world! But us three, Lisa and Georgina all went for food and took a wander round this area. Me and matt headed up the Skylon tower just as it got dark to view the falls from the top. Skylon tower is huge observation tower near the falls has similar characteristics to the CN Tower but isn't as high. Was such a cool view from the top and at night the Falls are lit up so that was nice to see from up there! It was hard to capture good photos from up there though too many lights for our cameras to capture so they did come out little blurred but a photo would never capture what they are really like you just have to see for yourselves! Me and matt ended up being late back to the tour bus nearly missed our ride back which could have been really annoying haha we were running back so fast that matt hit his leg on a bollard eek painful but we made it just! After this trip we got dropped off at one of the hostels which as the closest to ours, before heading back we popped into this bar near us called "Good Tymez". Ended up being such a laugh in there, met this Canadian guy called Gary who was such a funny guy, and also met the owner of the bar Andrew, we got a drink on the house which was cool! Got really drunk for the first time away haha! The Gary guy had us all in fits of laughter he was such a character. They warned us about where we were staying and said not go any further than we are as it gets quite dangerous further out the city, but we knew we had to be on our guard whereever we were. The walk home was bit scary I could hear this bike cycling really close behind me so I turned around and this black girl on the bike said "Don't worry girlfriend, I ain't gonna rob you", I was bit shocked then she said "Don't ever look at anyone like that on George Street" So I said "Sorry am just drunk" and she cycled off, have no idea how I looked at her but it freaked us all out a bit!
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