Niagara Falls

Vicki and I went to see Niagara Falls today. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the parking lot only took cash. There was no sign saying that they took cash only, and we didn't have enough with us - I'd expected them to take credit cards or even debit cards (silly me!). I guess I've become much too accustomed to using my debit card :). The attendant was very nice, though - he said that we could park off to the side, go to Table Rock, get cash out of the ATM there, and come back and pay them. We managed to get the last $100 out of that ATM :) I went and paid the parking attendant while Vicki looked through the gift shops at Table Rock.

The Falls were beautiful as usual. It wasn't too busy today, and so we were able to get right up to the railing at many points along the walkway. We ended up walking to the Hershey store (about 1.5 or 2 km), taking pictures the whole way. There was a beautiful Zen garden across the street from the Hard Rock Cafe. It was very peaceful. The souvenir shop next to the garden was the best that we saw; it had the best selection of stuff and the stuff they had wasn't all that tacky.

We were a bit disappointed by the Hershey store; there were a lot of chocolate bars, but, well, I can buy those almost anywhere :) Next door to the Hershey store was a Coca-cola store. We stopped there; Vicki had a flavoured pop and I had a vanilla malt (yummy!). We also wanted to rest our feet after walking to the store. We stopped at the RCMP store, where Vicki bought a wooden watch. It looks really cool. The one she got has a leather band, although they did have some with wooden links. The company is called Tense Watch and they're Canadian; their website is here.

At that point, we were pretty well done with walking.... or so we thought. We had planned to take the People Mover (a bus) back to Table Rock, but we weren't sure how much it cost. There were no signs regarding tickets at the stops (I looked), and there were no signs on the buses themselves. It turns out that tickets must be purchased in advance from places that aren't marked at all, and it's $7.50 for a daypass. We decided that $7.50 each was a little pricey to go one way back to the car, so we ended up walking back. We passed through some lovely gardens, so it wasn't all bad. As we walked through the parking lot, we entertained ourselves by finding license plates from far away. The farthest was from Mexico.

Overall, it was a fun day. I was disappointed by the lack of signage for things like the parking lot and the People Mover - I felt like there must have been an orientation course on how to navigate Niagara Falls that I missed. Or maybe I'm just spoiled because I live in a place where we have signs like those :)