Niagara Falls
By: Edie Tuck
Tags: Canada, Exploring Ontario, Travel, Ontario, Niagara Falls

For the last few years, my best friend and I have started a fall tradition. Every October, as close to Halloween as we can manage, we have a girl’s weekend away. This year, we chose Niagara Falls!

It had been a while — about 10 years — since I’d last visited, and I just have to start by saying that like with any other tourist town, you have to choose your accommodations well. On my last visit with my husband and daughter, the overnight stay was a last-minute decision that didn’t end well. Motels were booked up, and we ended up getting a ‘left-over’ room I’ll never forget.

One of the two beds was broken, with the head leaning precariously to the floor. The door didn’t latch closed, and we had to push a chair against it to keep it shut, and there were — well, let’s just call them ‘nose nuggets’ smeared all over the walls. The front office that reeked of cat urine should have been our first clue, but at that point, we were just tired and didn’t feel like driving home. Yeah, we should have driven home.

The Accommodations

This time around, my friend and I thought we would do things a little differently. Since I had amazing experiences in the past, we decided to forego the nose nuggets and chose the Airbnb route. I mean, how can you go wrong with something called ‘The Unicorn’s Place’? Well, let me tell you how we can go wrong.

I arrived a little before my friend and did a quick walk-through. After almost two hours in the car, I needed to use the little girl’s room, but unfortunately, I couldn’t find it. The place was full of doors but none of them was a bathroom. Wait, what’s this door that seems to be a utility room, there are unfinished stairs going up to a second level, maybe I’ll check it out.

Armed with the flashlight on my phone, I crept quietly up the stairs. Was this another unit? Were there people up there? Nope. Every room was eerily empty. But wait, there’s a bathroom! Well, a powder room with a toilet and a sink, and nothing else. This can’t possibly be the only bathroom available?

I go back downstairs to send a message to the hostess, but not before I step in a very large puddle of water in the smaller bedroom as I bring my bags in. Water, on the floor, coming out of the closet on one side of the room and going to the wall on the other side, like a built-in river. For ambience, maybe?

So, Airbnb lady, there’s a leak in your unit, and um, where’s the loo?

“A leak, you mean, like, water?”

Um…

Oh, I found the bathroom! It was the locked door, that I had to unlock with my thumbnail. No towels, and a half-inch gap between the window panes where bugs could, and were, coming in. Sigh.

She sends a handy-man who arrives with his buddy, barely speaks English, and who ultimately doesn’t know what he’s doing. They mop up the water while we wait. By this time we’re both starving as it’s after 7 PM and lunch was a long time ago. Finally, they leave and tell me that a plumber will have to come the following day. Great — a plumber on my mini-vacation.

The plumber did come the next day while we were out, but the puddle came back with a vengeance within an hour. Well, not my problem. I did what I could.

So we end up sharing a room the first night. The bed is rock hard, and the entire apartment is freezing. Apparently the thermostat isn’t hooked up to, well, anything. We realized only this morning as we’re packing up that the bedroom had its own thermostat. Insert face-palm here.

There’s no door to the bedroom, and the floor is painted concrete covered with two large area rugs that don’t reach the walls.

Curtains hang haphazardly over painted-shut French doors. There are spiders in literally every corner of every room. There are even the remnants of a millipede that was at one point squished to death on the ceiling above the bed.

Also, the ‘empty apartment’ upstairs now has someone doing aerobics or training for a marathon. Either the tenants on the third floor are using it for late-night callisthenics, or we’ve got another kind of (invisible) guest sharing the accommodations.

Rating: 1 Star

The Food

Dinner on Friday night was the saving grace of the day. By this time, we were both exhausted from a long week in the wonderful world of freight, so we decided to walk to a nearby restaurant/pub called The Blind Pig. The food was absolutely fantastic and definitely worth the half-hour wait for a table. Five stars, no question. I would definitely go there again, and if you’re in the area and looking for top-notch pub fare, in the words of John Catucci, “You gotta eat here!”

Breakfast on Saturday morning was advertised as ‘The best breakfast in Niagara Falls’, and we sat eating bacon and eggs inside a flying saucer, and the food was out of this world. Sorry, I had to. I mean, it is a tourist town, so that kind of cheesy attraction is to be expected. I have to say, the advertisement didn’t lie, and the little green men (whom I’m assuming are the ones hiding behind the counter cooking the food!) didn’t disappoint! It was worth a repeat visit this morning for my hangover-cure breakfast.

Dinner on Saturday… I don’t know if I can find the right words to accurately describe my level of pleasure. ‘Better than sex’ just doesn’t seem to cut it. Between the Italian wedding soup, the crab-stuffed mushrooms, the lobster ravioli, and the Toblerone chocolate mousse cheesecake — all I can say is ‘oh, em, gee.’ And I can’t leave out the chocolate martinis because that would just be blasphemy. Seriously. If you’re in Niagara Falls, and you have to eat dinner at some point, which you probably will. Four words: Johnny Rocco’s Italian Grill.

‘Nuff said.

Ratings: 5 Stars ALL AROUND

The Sights

One of the seven natural wonders of the world, Niagara Falls is one of the most awe-inspiring beauties, bridging the gap between Canada and the US with a combined approximate 750,000 gallons of water dropping from the US and Canadian falls every second. It’s beautiful, yes. But it can also be deadly and should be respected, as we all saw in this famous scene from Superman 2, filmed on the Canadian side of the falls in 1980.

We started by taking in the sights from the top of the biggest ferris wheel I’ve ever been on (Ahem — I’m sort of afraid of heights) the SkyWheel. 1. Thank goodness they’re enclosed carriages. 2. I think they play soft Jazz to ease people’s fears. And 3. Oh my goodness, the view!

(US falls on the left, Canadian horseshoe falls shrouded in mist on the right)

After seeing it from the sky, we walked over to see it from the ground. I wondered why so many people were wearing rain ponchos — it wasn’t even raining. Well, apparently they were better informed than I was, because the closer we got to the Canadian falls, the more it became apparent that we were grossly unprepared. It’s crazy to be inside the wind and mist (more like pouring rain) created by this giant force of nature. Next time, I’ll remember a rain poncho!

(As you can see by the drops on my friend’s hair, and dripping from my chin, we got a wee bit wet!)

Rating: Can you really give Mother Nature a rating? I’ll go with “Breathtakingly flawless”

The Main Attraction

Although I could personally stand and stare at the falls for hours on end without getting bored, I might actually end up catching pneumonia.

We knew we needed something other than the water, and as we’re both Halloween fanatics (I think it kind of goes hand in hand with being witches…maybe?) We decided that a haunted house was the way to go. But not just any old run of the mill dime-a-dozen haunted house. Oh no, that just wouldn’t do.

And so, I would have to face my fear of clowns, because as it turns out, Haunted Manor — Canada’s largest haunted attraction — is completely infested with them! I thought that going a step further and taking photos with said creature might help me get over my fear. Those are images I won’t share because quite frankly they’re not very flattering. But I will say that after four hours of being surrounded with them, I at least managed, if not to cure the fear completely, to at least become slightly desensitized. For now.

I have to say that Haunted Manor and its three main attractions were by far, bar-none, the best haunted ‘experience’ I’ve ever had. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. Would I change anything? The only thing I think could be improved on, is to send people through each attraction in much smaller groups, but I do understand the need to do it as they do because the place was packed and would require another five hours to send everyone through with their own groups only.

(Image from the website linked above)

Rating: Definitely 5 stars

The Night Life

We were going to call it a night after getting back to our sub-par lodgings but then decided to not act like old people and go out and have a little fun.

I really wish we’d thought to bring Halloween costumes, but I had fun none-the-less. A local country bar called Big Texas was the flavour of the night. Yes, I dragged my country-music-allergic friend into this cowboy-infested joint, and I’m pretty sure she had as much fun as I had! (She was even singing along to many of the songs, so… your secret is out Melissa!)

I have pros and cons on this one. The place was on the smaller side, but nobody was cramped. This could have a lot to do with the crowd, which seemed to be more among my own age group. Or maybe it’s just that country music fans are the best. Just sayin’ (I’m a little biassed)

The $5 cover-charge was decent, but the fact that they don’t have coat-check until November was a bit of a buzz-kill. It’s autumn in Canada, which means it’s chilly at night, and nobody wants to leave their things unattended in a crowded bar. Hence, having to try and dance and have a good time while clutching to my purse and jacket — not cool guys, not cool.

I think my favourite part of the night, however, was doing something I’ve always wanted to do. Can you guess? I’m in a country music bar… come on, try!

I checked off a silly thing from my bucket list and rode the mechanical bull! Man, that’s harder than it looks, that sucker’s slippery! But I managed to hang on for dear life for 54 seconds before the little bugger (meaning the guy at the controls) bucked me off.

All in all, I sang at the top of my lungs, danced as well as one can with arms full of jackets and bags, and drank entirely too much. And then proceeded to go back to the apartment, drunk texted my friend Jon, and then wake up with a killer hangover as he so wisely predicted.

Did I think my head would explode? Yes. Was it all worth it? Definitely. Was it the perfect ending to our Niagara Falls getaway? Absolutely.

Rating: 4 stars — get a year-round coat check guys, please!