That 70's Vacation - Niagara Falls

We were advised to skip the "historical road" to Niagara Falls and to take the highway to the bridge to Canada. Pretty quickly, we found ourselves on the bridge and waiting in the Canadian Immigration lines around 10:30AM that Saturday morning. 

It used to be possible to cross into Canada with just your driver's license as ID, but they since tightened those rules and require an official passport.

Luckily, we could pay for the bridge tolls with our New Jersey EZ-Pass. Unfortunately, there was a lot of other Americans in line, so we waited for about 30 minutes as each car was questioned by the Canadian immigration officer.

My father quickly turned off our cell phone data plans. So frustrating that we were just a few hundred feet from America, but were being charged exorbitant rates for our data plan.

After checking into our hotel (Radisson Fallsview), we found our way onto the WeGo bus and went down to Table Rock where we could see the Niagara Falls from the top.

The town of Niagara Falls, Ontario (not to be confused with Niagara Falls, NY) was definitely lost in time. Parts of it really reminded you of the days of Motel glory in the 1950's and 1960's and part was very modern, but retained the seedy tourist trap feel. Very similar to Las Vegas.

Overall, it was nice to have gone to see the powerful waterfalls and experience the flurry of kitschy activity around the town, but we only spent about 30 minutes total at the waterfalls. My father didn't think I was ready to go on the Maid of the Mist or head down to the gorge to experience the waterfall up close. So we just enjoyed it from the top with the hundreds of other tourists.

Since we were in town for 48 hours, how did we spend the rest of our time? More to come over the next few posts but spoiler alert - we really enjoyed some of the lesser known experiences such as High Tea at Queen Charlotte's Tea Room and the wine-tasting town of Niagara-on-the-lake where I got some tasty ice cream.