That's a lot of water

One of my childhood dreams came true today when we visited the Niagara falls. It was weird - we parked the car on Clifton Hill which is about two kilometers from the big Horseshoe Falls, and walked to the park that offers beautiful views of the both falls (that's where the panorama photo is taken - on the left are the American Falls and on the right the Horseshoe Falls). We entered the park in front of the Amercan Falls (which are, incidentally, in America) and had a view from there to the bigger falls - and the first thing I thought was: it's not that big, is it. But after walking the whole mile or so to see the Horseshoe Falls up close (which is on the Canadian side), it became slowly bigger and bigger until you realise that, holy crap, it's truly one of the biggest and most impressive things you've ever seen.

The Horseshoe Falls are 54 meters tall, and curently about 100 000 cubic feet of water per second goes over the top every moment. This is actually only about half of the amount of water that would naturally flow here, and when you're standing right next to the edge looking at the rushing water the thought of twice as much water going by is truly scary. We wanted to see the falls up even closer by taking an elevator down, but unfortunately the next free slots in the elevator were several hours away so we were contented with just admiring it from afar. Very impressive, indeed.

To get to our next intended destination, we decided to take a long ride along what the travel guide called the most scenic route in the country and drive up the Niagara river towards the Lake Ontario and visit a littel town on the mouth of the river called Niagara-on-the-Lake. And the route was absolutely charming, we drove along the peaceful road lined up with wineyeards, parkland and beautiful houses - and Niagara-on-the-Lake itself was just as charming, and really defining the word idyllic. They had a Peach Festival going on (lot of orchards sold peaches on the roadside) and the town was buzzing with exitement in a very enchanting way.

Unfortunately the enchantment didn't last, and we had to continue our last leg of the journey to an industrial city called Hamilton.