Things to do
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Clifton Hill
Up the hill from the gorge runs a street of wax museums, haunted houses, arcades and a Ferris wheel, lit like a fairground and loud into the night. Fudge counters and chain diners fill the gaps between. Families with restless children find it useful, and it is where the town keeps its rain-day options. Ten minutes on foot from the falls, steeply.
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Horseshoe Falls
The Canadian cataract, fifty-seven metres deep and some six hundred and seventy metres across its crest, carrying the bulk of the Niagara river into a gorge of its own cutting. The rail at Table Rock stands within metres of the lip and the spray drifts over it in any wind. Floodlights colour the curtain after dark, and boats work the basin from spring to late autumn.
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Journey Behind the Falls
A lift drops through bedrock beside Table Rock into tunnels cut behind the Horseshoe crest, where two portals open into the falling water and the noise ends conversation. An observation deck at the base of the gorge follows. Ponchos are handed out and are needed. Open all year, and in a hard winter the ice mounded at the base is the reason to come.
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Niagara-on-the-Lake
Twenty kilometres downstream, where the river meets Lake Ontario, a Georgian and Regency main street rebuilt after American troops burned the town in the war of 1812. The Shaw Festival plays in repertory through the warm months, Fort George drills in period uniform, and vineyards begin at the edge of the settlement. Allow an afternoon, and traffic on the parkway in summer.
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Skylon Tower
Exterior lifts climb the outside of a concrete shaft finished in 1965 to a deck two hundred and thirty-six metres above the gorge, with both cataracts, the whirlpool downstream and a stretch of New York State in view. A revolving dining room turns on the level below. The deck is glassed on one side and open to the wind on the other.
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Whirlpool Aero Car
Spanish engineering of 1916, still running: an open cable car strung above the whirlpool where the river turns a right angle and spins on itself. The crossing takes about ten minutes, standing, on a mesh floor. It works from spring into autumn and stops in high wind. The pool below turns one way or the other depending how much water the power stations divert.