Niagara Falls
Trip Start
Jul 24, 2007
1
2
50
Trip End
Nov 11, 2007
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Niagara Falls,
New York,
United States
Saturday, July 28, 2007
The slightly minor downfall was that I couldn't actually walk anywhere because my feet were so badly swollen that they wouldn't even fit in my flip flops and the pain was real bad. Luckily enough there was a nice friendly cab driver waiting right where the bus dropped us off and he gave me a lift to the hostel for $3 well worth it considering it probably wold have taken me at least 2 hours to walk the 10 blocks!
After debating with myself about whether I should actually see a doctor and then asking the nice Chinese lady who runs the hostel who said I definitely should. I manage to walk the 1 block to the hospital. After a 5 minute consultation and 8 steroid tablets (not all at once!) I left the ER $500.00 lighter!! Thank god for travel insurance hey!
Anyway - within about 2 hours the pain had gone and my feet has reduced their size significantly enough to allow me to get some shoes on I decided to walk the 1 mile down to Niagara to experience the first wonder of the world that I'd actually see for myself.
Niagara Town is a weird place and I definitely wouldn't recommend anyone spending too much time here although the HI Hostel is great and the lady that runs it is so friendly.
first views of the falls from the US side park
The town has a kind of ghostly feeling about it like it had a life once but now its gone. All the houses are huge 1940's style wood buildings which once were magnificent but are now run down and dirty and its really sad. Its like the heart of the town got up and walked out.The town has a massive modern casino which looks totally out of place amongst all the houses and the friendly cab driver told me the areas to avoid during the day and the night as did my friendly hostel lady!(this amounts to virtually the whole town with the map that she gave me indicating a route edging along the outskirts to get to the falls!!) The area around the falls is absolutely amazing the pictures I've seen do it no justice you really have to see it yourself. I've only seen it from the US side today which apparently is not the best side so tomorrow I'm gonna walk over the rainbow bridge into Canada.
I also never realised that the river that feeds all the three falls was so huge (Niagara river) and that the rapids which lead down to it are classed as grade 6 (on a scale of 1-5). There's a $20,000.00 fine for jumping in. Of those that have jumped in in the rapids none of them have paid because none of them have survived! The water is only 3 feet deep but it travels at 30 mile per hour so the likleyhood of being able to jump in and then change your mind are slim to none....the thought didn't even cross my mind
I went on the maid of the mist boat today to the foot of the horseshoe falls which belong to Canada. I don't have many pictures from there though because I got seriously wet even with my free Niagara falls rain mac thing but its well worth doing. From the bottom of the falls you really appreciate the volume of water that falls here, the noise in deafening and quite scary.
I spent about 3 hours on an island which is in the middle of the Niagara river which is called Goat Island climbing down the rocks where I wasn't supposed to be closely followed by a herd of Indian kids. I slipped a few times but hey what a cool way to die or not...
