Visiting Niagara Falls: The Good, The Bad, and The Unexpected

It was cold, it was dark, and I was disappointed.

My parents and I had arrived on the evening bus from Toronto, but this was not the Niagara Falls I had expected: this place was brash, bright, and commercialized to the extreme, full of fast food chains, casinos, and garish souvenir stores.

Of course, I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge, and should have remembered that old maxim of not judging a book by its cover. Niagara Falls, as it turns out, is more than the waterfalls – and more than the cross streets of casinos and theme park-style attractions that make up the Clifton Hills tourist area.

Niagara Falls is a town in its own right, one we caught glimpses of on our way in and out of the tourist hub: a downtown with grocery stores and shops, like everywhere else; stretches of elegant, expansive homes lining the Niagara River; locals who go about their daily lives and don’t see the Falls from one end of the year to the next.

With only one day in town on the itinerary, though, that wasn’t the side of town we would be seeing. We weren’t there for the town at all; we were there for the water.

We were there for Niagara Falls themselves.

By daylight the next day, the neighbourhood around Clifton Hills was still cheesy, but this time we were ready for it (my Mum even embraced it by buying a bright pink Canada hat, complete with fluffy pom pom and maple leaf, to keep her warm for the day). And unlike the night before – when the Falls were only glimpsed in a wash of colour from the illuminations – the natural wonder was finally fully visible in all its glory.