Canada 2014 - Day 4 - Niagra

Today is restless leg awareness day (and also September Equinox)

We woke up early again, in fact technically Mark woke himself up with excessive snoring, Martin confirmed this, we put it down to the aircon.

We're in the town with no name, which is still as dead and empty as it was at night. We left during rush hour heading the nearest IHOP and promptly doubled the amount of traffic on the roads, seriously there is no one here.

Tom at IHOP wished us a happy day many many annoying times, he was super polite and does that 'you're welcome' thing after every 'thank you'. Sticking with the theme of the holiday, IHOP didn't have any wifi, so we planned the route using the sun and trigonometry which determined that the i90 would take us all the way to Niagra Falls.

It turns out that 'freeway' in a blatant marketing lie as it was everything other than free. Toll road would have been a more accurate description. However £5 to drive 4 hours worth wasn't bad value.

During a standard rest break we discovered an information booth about Niagra, here we purchased what we hope were discounted tickets for an evening tour of those little water falls that they have in Niagra.

With no further delays we descended upon the American side of the falls hoping to locate the Cave of the Winds, and we're now going to avoid all flatulence jokes about the Cave of the Winds.

It turns out the Cave of the Winds is no longer a cave but is indeed an outdoor shower 180 foot below the top of the fall. You get pretty bloody wet here, thank god for the ill fitting ponchos and dodgy sandles we were given.

Tim chose this moment to call Mark to tell him that he'd sold his motorbike which was great news, and as if the deafening noise of the falls didn't make it hard enough to hear, a helicopter went past at that moment too.

Finally we decided to depart the US of A and join Canada, eh.

The hotel was easy to find, eh, and was in a surprisingly good location, eh.

We'd timed this perfectly as the evening tour was about to collect us for our four hour trip. Eh.

The trip involved various locations along the river near to the falls before descending into the tunnels that run behind the falls, eh. Here there were some observation decks that gave you an even more powerful shower, eh. Mark did his Mario Balatelli impression here, and couldn't get his bib/poncho on, so it ended up being ripped and giving about as much protection as wearing a paper hat in the shower.

We then went to see some stupid clock that didn't clock that didn't work as the power stations at night and ending up in the Skylon tower tower some 500 foot in the air overlooking the falls at night which were now illuminating, eh.

Over the course of the tour we were talking to some yankees, the lady was a professional photographer and so had spent most the the tour tutting and then showing Martin how to take photographs. Mark spoke to the bloke who had a Harley dealership, so Mark had to bite his tongue a lot and not take the piss.

At the end of the tour we went back to the hotel and got changed before heading out for a steak. 

We'd chosen a 9th floor restaurant overlooking the falls, but they sat us at the back where we could barely even see a window. 

After sitting for 15 mins, no one had even taken our drinks order when finally someone came to ask why we were sat in the closed part of the restaurant. After explaining the lady embarrassingly moved us to a vertigo inducing  window seat where we had two 12oz killer steaks. 

Following dinner we were knackered so returned to the hotel for a kip as we had a busy day ahead.