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Although we've found that it's hard to get to some national parks in the USA, such as Yosemite and Death Valley, it was thankfully much easier to get to Niagara Falls on the Greyhound, with the falls being only a two hour journey from Toronto. What better excuse, then, to sample another country and get another passport stamp to add to the collection.
First we had to tear ourselves away from Chicago, which left us wishing that we had planned to spend a week there, not just a couple of days. The night bus to Toronto was surprisingly bearable, however, as an indulgent cocktail in a bar apparently frequented by George, Brad and Matt aided our sleep the whole way across the border.
Toronto is called little Chicago by many (probably mostly Canadians) and although the skyline is nowhere near as spectacular as its American cousin, it does have the CN Tower and the usual big city accompaniments to make the trip more than worthwhile. We then spent the first couple of days getting our bearings and sampling the odd restaurant and Abercrombie shop, before heading off to see the spectacular Niagara Falls on our third day.
Unlike our Grand Canyon trip, we were rightfully able to use our Greyhound passes to get to the falls, instead of having to use an expensive tour company as in Arizona's canyon. We were further encouraged to learn that the Canadians don't charge an exorbitant fee just to get into the national park, as the Americans seem to, so as well as seeing one of the most spectacular falls in the world, we also had a surprisingly cheap day - always a bonus in my book.
The falls were phenomenal, as you'd expect, but a little less grand than I'd imagined - not quite on the scale of the Grand Canyon but nothing else is, I guess. You could also see all the tourists on the American side of the falls; we'd definitely made the right choice to come across to Canada, we thought, as we had prime views of both the American Falls and Horseshoe Falls.
The view was made even more spectacular as we could see all the famous Maid of the Mist tourist boats venturing into the spray below; so we quickly made our way down to join the queues waiting to get soaked by the awesome power of the falls. A short wait and we were soon out on the boats, with our 'souvenir' rain macs, entering the mist along with hundreds of other tourists on the boat. We managed to elbow our way though the American families and Chinese tourists and found a great spot from which to capture our snaps.
After drying off, we thought we'd then try to venture 'Behind the Horseshoe Falls', but being school holiday season, the next opportunity involved a two hour wait. 'Sod this,' we both thought, and headed back to Toronto to enjoy our final night.
Kev
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