Day 233 - Over the border

Buffalo

What's he doing at Niagara Falls?

Today we visited Niagara Falls, which are about an hour's drive from where we are staying. From our place in Angola we took the scenic route as far as we could along the edge of Lake Erie, past mansions on huge properties with great lake views. It is still a bit strange to see that most people don't have front or even side fences between their neighbours, it was only the biggest houses that had a gate and a fence.

We started with US side of the falls and walked around the state park, before visiting the observation deck and the boat platform to get closer views of the falls.

After that we walked across the bridge to the Canadian side of the border, where the view of the falls was spectacular, especially as it had turned into quite a beautiful day. As we walked along the promenade by the river to admire the view the number of people grew, it was getting super busy. We later found out that it was a public holiday in both the US (Columbus Day) and Canada (Thanksgiving).

After the falls we walked up into the town of Niagara Falls (the Canadian one) to see what that was like, it was one of the most overtly commercial places we have ever visited, it was like an amusement park, with a row of garish chain restaurants and tourist attractions - we are so glad we decided not to stay near the falls!

On the way back into the US we each had to pay 50 cents each to go through the turnstiles into the immigration area - one of the most ridiculous instances of needing to pay to enter a country, since going the other way into Canada cost us nothing, and the machine ate K's money and she ended up jumping over the barrier anyway!