Niagara Falls - Day 2

We started our second day in Niagara Falls with a drive to Niagara-on-the-Lake. Along the way, we drove to a "scenic overlook" which was a platform overlooking the Niagara River directly opposite where we took the Whirlpool Aero Car.

There, we saw the boat from the Whirlpool Jet Boat Tour in the river below.

Took more photos with the red double decker bus :)



Saw the Adam Becks Power Station.


And arrived at the Flower Clock.








Here's Sonya helping the flower spread its seeds :)



More views of the Niagara River...

Before we got to Lake Ontario :) Lake Ontario is huge! I used Google Maps and found out that it would take about 9 hours to drive the perimeter of the lake!

If I didn't know that it was Lake Ontario, I would have thought that it was the sea :)

We could faintly see the skyline of a big city which we think was probably Toronto that was about an hour and a half away.

After lunch in downtown Niagara-on-the-lake, we thought we would drive to Marine Land. We found the admission prices way too expensive ($39.95 for adults and $32.95 for children 5 - 9 years old) and decided that we would explore the American side of the Niagara Falls instead. So across the Rainbow Bridge we went again and onto Goat Island. The area was called the Niagara Falls State Park in the state of New York.

There was a statue of Nikola Tesla and Sonya suggested taking a photo with the statue :)

The views at the Niagara Falls State Park were spectacular. The paths brought us right next to both the American Falls and the Canadian Horseshoe Falls.

These are the photos next to the edge of the Canadian Horseshoe Falls.

I tried the Stitch-Assist Function on my camera and got the 3 stitched photos below of the waterfalls. You may want to click on them to get a bigger view :)

There was also a lot of open fields where Sonya and Clara could run around for a while :)

Here are some photos of the Rainbow Bridge and American Falls below.






There was also a path beside the river that led to the edge of the American Falls.


Here, I got to try the Aperture Priority option on my camera again.

The photo above is taken with a fast exposure where the water was frozen in motion.

The one above is taken with a longer exposure and the one below with an even longer exposure. See the differences?

More examples below...

There were many visible huge rocks at the bottom of the American Falls. Maybe it was the same at the bottom of the Horseshoe Falls but with all that mist in front of the Horseshoe Falls, it was hard to tell. See the people in the yellow raincoats along the footpaths next to the rocks in the photo below?

On the American side, there was also a platform to view the waterfalls. It is the green structure in the photos below.

After the Niagara Falls State Park in New York, we crossed the Rainbow Bridge again to Canada where we went for dinner and then a shower for the girls at the hotel before heading out again to see the fireworks by the waterfalls. Traffic was terrible and parking was impossible. We ended up in front of the Sheraton Hotel in the Fallsview Tourist area. We still had trouble finding parking and Clara had fell asleep (her usual routine was dinner, bath and bedtime... hehehe...) so Justin waited by the roadside while Sonya and I went out by the hill to see the fireworks. It was nothing like the 4th of July fireworks in Boston of course and it was also rather far away but it was fireworks. I tried taking photos but they didn't turn out well since I had trouble finding a stable place to rest my camera :( Oh well, there is always next year's 4th of July fireworks over the Charles River.

That ended our Niagara Falls adventure. Our conclusion is that the waterfalls were truly spectacular but many attractions, especially the ones over the Canada side, were outdated and too expensive :(

Below is a photo of Clara trying to climb on the chair in the hotel room that Justin took with my camera. It was on the settings I used for the fireworks :)

We left Cambridge at about 10am last friday and spent 2 days in Niagara Falls. We spent almost the whole of Monday driving back and got back to Cambridge at about 7pm. We had dinner at Royal East, our favorite chinese restaurant in Cambridge, MA. Below is a photo of Clara having a fortune cookie :)