Visit to the most powerful falls

in North America - thats how Wikipedia describes Niagara Falls!

Yeah I had the chance to visit the famous Niagara Falls! What an experience it turned out to be!

We had our first stop at a village named ‘Niagara on the Lake’. It was a small town with tourist gift shops, coffee shops etc on the street. Next we went to a farm shop where they were selling fresh orchard picked fruit, homemade jams and preserves etc.

Next we saw this - a botanical clock - another tourist attraction here

From there we went to a spot where the Niagara river forms a pool of water down a valley. There was a cable car which went across the gorge. Here is the view

From there we went to the falls. The first view itself is amazing!! When we reached there, while still in the car, we spotted a rainbow; caused by the mist which rises high above and out of the falls.
A little note here: I had imagined the falls to be much larger than what I saw – maybe because of all these talk you hear but of course they are amazing – one of the natural wonders and not to be missed.

The best part is since we are on the Canadian side, we can actually be at the 80% side of the falls and experience the horse shoe from the top. The US side of the falls is about 20% and is flat where as the Canadian side is C shaped. We can experience it from the table top on the brink where it falls and gives you a very different feeling. Then we took time to explore the walkway along the river – the falls, the surrounding area, and walk on the ridge along the river. Some of my observations: You can really hear a huge roar from the water falling at this height. Also the mist rises very very high above. You can feel the mist as if it is rain while you are up at the horseshoe itself.

The next touristy thing we did was take a boat ride called ‘Maid of the Mist’. This boat takes you from one side of the river to a place very near the falls where there is a huge column of mist. That experience is awesome. You can feel the chilly water of the falls on you and get the feeling of almost going into the falls. Everybody is given flimsy raincoats which is actually of not much use since there was a lot of wind and we got wet anyways.

That is some experience. (We were lucky here as from next week the maid of the mist boat ride will stop. It will start getting too cold to go that close to the falls. )
Do I need mention I had a great time there?
Needless to say I was clicking throughout the day. Some of the pictures I have included here, some go in my Picassa and some more on Flickr.