Canadians can clearly give Americans a run for their money in the kitsch department. Among the attractions: the Criminals Hall of Fame, one of six wax museums Ripley's Believe It or Not!, where you can see an eight-legged buffalo for free in the foyer, but you'll have to pay $8 for the shrunken human head from Ecuador ($4 for kids ages 6 to 12) a 250-game arcade haunted houses and more cheap souvenir shops than you can shake a refrigerator magnet at. On a busy summer afternoon, teeming with travelers, it takes on a carnival atmosphere. The Rainbow Bridge pours visitors into Canada at the base of Clifton Hill, neon-lit and filled with quirky museums, amusements, and fast-food joints. side? A measly 2,000 hotel/motel rooms in downtown Niagara Falls. dollars-and most of all, there's a whopping 14,000 rooms to choose from, with a new second casino and another 1,000 rooms being added within a year. The Canadian side also offers a favorable exchange rate-prices in this story are in U.S. You'll find biking/walking trails, restaurants, wading pools, historic sites, and gardens. Since 1885 the Niagara Parks Commission (877/642-7275, ) has maintained about 4,250 acres of riverside parkland along the 35-mile route from Fort Erie (across from Buffalo) to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. For a view so close you'll feel the spray, head to the Table Rock viewing area at the brim. On the Canadian side you get a full-frontal gawk at the three major sections of the falls. From the Rainbow Bridge, on either side, it's less than a 30-minute walk to parkland viewing platforms within feet of the crashing cascades of water. citizens, a passport is preferable to enter Canada, but if you don't have one you can use a photo ID and birth certificate.) Both towns are fronted by parkland along the river's edge. (The long lines at the border, a result of 9/11, have diminished. The two small cities face each other across the Niagara River, less than a mile apart, and the tourist districts are linked by the Rainbow Bridge, which you can drive or walk across. Be a traitor to the U.S.? Yes: The American side may have decent state park facilities, but the tiny downtown of Niagara Falls, New York, is somewhat derelict and abandoned, even on a summer holiday weekend and despite the presence of a large, year-old casino in the former convention center. You'll want to head straight to the Canadian town of Niagara Falls, Ontario. Year-round there's the dramatic nightly illumination of the falls, and on the Canadian side, from November 22 to January 20, the Winter Festival of Lights-with more than a hundred light displays, parades, and fireworks. Some smart travelers prefer the dead of winter, when mist frosts the trees and giant chunks of ice create spectacular formations at the base of the falls. The decision to visit in the off-season doesn't diminish the experience Mother Nature never turns off the tap. From late autumn to early spring, prices plunge. But there's a lot more plummeting in Niagara than a million bathtubs of water every minute. People still feel the need to illegally fling themselves over the falls, not so much in barrels (the survival rate is just 66 percent), but by Jet Ski with a rocket-powered parachute (that guy didn't make it either). Newlyweds still come to Niagara-the local tourism board gives away about 14,000 free certificates and discount booklets to visiting honeymooners each year-but nowadays you're apt to find more families in the summer, and seniors and gamblers throughout the rest of the year. Ever since Napoleon's younger brother, Jerome, honeymooned with his Baltimore-born bride here in 1804, Niagara Falls has been synonymous with heart-shaped tubs and dreamy gazes into the mist. Welcome to the tawdriest, tackiest street in (otherwise subdued) Canada. A few steps to the left, others filed into a museum featuring wax figures of famous serial killers, and kids headed into a hokey year-round haunted house. Twenty feet away, a 10-foot-tall alien with huge eyes and long fingers handed out flyers for the Alien Encounters wax museum. A couple dashed out into the street, and by the time the light changed they had plopped their four-year-old son on the woman's lap, taken a "happy snap," grabbed the kid, and retreated to the sidewalk. One Sunday morning on Clifton Hill, a street on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, a middle-aged woman with waist-long blond hair pulled up to a traffic light on her Harley.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |