1 day in Niagara Falls, Canada side 🇨🇦

Day 9

Friday arrived and it was a very early start! Alarms went off at 6:30 although mum and Alec were up and sorting their cases from 05:30. We bid farewell to our Air b n b host Debra at 7:30 giving ourselves plenty of time to make the shortish drive to Boston Logan Airport- we had been warned about rush hour traffic!

We made a quick stop at Ocean Drive Salem to look at the house from Hocus Pocus- wow what a gorgeous house it was!

Wouldn’t you just love to be in that lookout tower watching the night sky?

We carried on towards the airport passing though some lovely sea view suburbs of Boston. As predicted the should have been 30 min drive took over an hour due to commuter traffic, but as commuter journeys go, this was a spectacular one.

We arrived at Boston Logan Airport, handed back our rental car, and made our way to the domestic flight terminal- we were catching the 10:20 Jet Blue flight to Buffalo, NY.

Jet Blue are extremely strict on luggage weight – most airlines these days seem to have a collective weight for your party- but not Jet Blue! Keith and I were both over weight (both our cases and our bellies lol!) so cue a mad 20 min reshuffle of cases!

We’d never taken an infernal flight before – and only had Ryan Air and sleazy jet ones to compare it to. Well, Jet Blue do internals very well indeed! Free Wi-fi – free hot drinks and a snack- in an hour and 15 min flight! British companies you should be ashamed.

Before we knew it we were landing at Buffalo airport- about half an hour drive from Niagara Falls. We picked our rental car up and got upgraded for free to this beast 👇 a $90,000 luxury SUV which took us almost half an hour to switch on!

Luckily it had an inbuilt sat nav as for the first time in the trip my copilot didn’t want to play ball. (I think I’d forgotten to download Canada whoops!

Crossing Rainbow Bridge into Canada was exciting- we saw the mist of the Falls for be first time and got a Canada stamp into our passports.

The weather was perfect and we had an hour before we could check in at our Niagara Falls apartment so we went to Niagara Falls Helicopters to see whether they could fit us onto a helicopter ride soonish. As luck would have it, we managed to get on the next ride. I am not a great flier and Alec and Keith had never been on a helicopter before (in fact, I wasn’t even sure Alec would do it, but fair play to him, he did!) so it was a pretty big experience for us all, and at £75 pp we felt not too badly priced.

The helicopter soon arrived and we were ushered on. My God. I’ve NEVER been so terrified in all my life, I actually was hyperventilating at one point, and in floods of tears! BUT – it was INCREDIBLE. the emotion when you see the perfect horseshoe shape of Niagara Falls from above is just beyond words. The view was AMAZING.

Don’t just take my word for it. Look at my mini video here

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nce back on the ground, it took my legs a good hour to stop trembling. We were all high with emotion and we hadn't even got close to the falls yet. We dumped the car and our bags at the apartment and walked the 10 mins down to Rainbow Bridge. It was then a further 20 mins walk along the river, first you saw the American Falls then Horseshoe Falls.

We were surprised how close you can get to the edge actually – everyone had told us that the Canadian side was the best view and I absolutely whole heartedly agree. Keith had a “moment”. We’ve been very lucky with where we have travelled to in the recent years, but I can honestly say Niagara Falls is one of the, if not THE most impressive thing we’ve ever seen. The sheer volume of water that just continually falls is just mind blowing. You HAVE to go!

Soon it was time step aboard The Hornblower (which is the Canadian side version of the famous Maid of The Mist boat) This 20 minute trip (you can’t book but they run trips every 10 mins) was amaaaaazing. We got DRENCHED but I cannot describe to you how incredibly awesome it is to be within that much water! At one point your entire field of vision is the water fall – it is HUGE and has most definitely ruined any future waterfall visits we may encounter!

We were supposed to eat at the Skylon Tower, which offer arial views of the Falls, but by this point we had already seen them via helicopter, viewing platform and by boat quite frankly, we were totally overwhelmed by what we had experienced, so we chose to enjoy a beer at the boat terminal and then wander up into the main strip to find some dinner.

Unfortunately the main town of Niagara is tackville and although we enjoyed a beer or two at the Niagara Brewing Company, our meal wasn’t great that evening. Mum and Al turned in as Mum had a nasty cold and we hadn’t stopped all day, and Keith and I wandered down to see the falls by night. I’ve ran out of words to decry how much we loved the whole experience – I reckon you get my drift!

day 10

Next morning and it was up and out of our apartment BY 8am, back across the bridge into USA and the short drive to Buffalo airport where we caught our flight back to Boston Logan.

We had some time to kill before our evening flight so we caught the water taxi across the bay with all our luggage – which actually caused the small boat to shed water!

Part of the ticket cost meant we could leave our luggage at the Marriot Hotel right by the centre of Boston for free which is amazing as there are no left luggage facilities anywhere in the city otherwise! We had a couple of hours mooching before heading back to the airport for our night flight back to UK. What a fab trip!

For anyone who has not been to Niagara Falls – please go, it really is one of the most amazing places on Earth. And I reckon you could easily go for a long weekend from UK.

Until next time

Lx