Most people think about visiting Niagara Falls, Ontario in the summer time. Millions of people visit every summer, but the crowds can be a little bit overwhelming. Neal and I decided to take a major risk and go there in the winter time. When I say we took a risk it's because the weather could be very cold, windy and snowy. It sure was cold and windy, but for the most-part, there was no snow. That was until our drive home on Sunday. Thankfully we left early enough to miss the big snow storm that happened later on in the evening.
Vising Niagara Falls in the winter time does have it's advantages. There are no crowds, you can get a parking spot very easily and the prices of a hotel room is much cheaper. If you don't want to have to drive around the city or walk up and down the big steep hills, there's another option. It's called the WEGO. That's their public transit. A day pass to get on and off the bus as many times as you want in a 24 hour period is only $7.50, or in off peak times of the year $6.00. You should be aware that if you take the bus you could be waiting at a stop for as long as half an hour. It's not fun because most of the stop do not have a bus shelter so dress accordingly.
Here you can see that Neal and I braved the icy spray to get this photo.
Here we were goofing around at one of the tourist places. It's funny because I found this exact same photo stop from when I was a little kid.
At night you can watch the laser light show and fireworks over the falls. It's really pretty. The best place to watch it is from behind Fallsview Casino's back deck. The fireworks only lasts about 5 minutes and if it's too windy or the weather is bad the show will be cancelled.
Here we found this huge gingerbread house. Yes it really is totally made out of gingerbread. We found a few pieces missing as child or kid at heart must have gotten hungry.
If you are a chocolate fan like I am, you have to visit the Hershey's store. Make sure to ask for your free treat. YUM the chocolate is so good. They sell cookies, brownies, fudge and milkshakes as well as their various candies and chocolates and souvenirs.
Neal being the bird lover that he is, we couldn't miss an opportunity to visit Bird Kingdom. This is a great place for kids and bird lovers to visit and learn all about different birds. A word of caution, if you have a fear of free flying birds you may want to miss the aviary on the 4th floor. I was a bit scared having so many birds flying past me as some of them were rather large.
As you can see Neal was in his glory here. He made friends with lots of the birds. It was great to meet the staff there as they played with the various birds and took them through their routines. You could see how much the staff loved what they did. A lot of the birds were rescues from owners who either abused the birds or just couldn't look after them properly or didn't have room for them.
I made friends with this guy. He apparently liked a good game of peek-a-boo. He talked to me for a few minutes and we had a ball.
We had a great time in Niagara Falls but I do have a few words of advice for anyone planning to visit at any time of the year. Niagara Falls has a voluntary visitor tax on everything you buy, any restaurant you go to and your hotel. You are within your rights to ask for this tax to be removed from your bill. For the most-part it will be without no problems. Some of our local news and consumer shows have done stories to warn tourists about the tax. If you see any other tax other than the HST (that's the government sales tax) have it removed. It appears on your bill as NFDF or other various acronyms. The only place that flat out refused to remove the tax was at the IHOP. Not only would the manager not remove the tax he gave us a lecture how wrong the consumer show was. He basically lied to us and said that it was the IHOP's business plan. I have contacted the IHOP's corporate office to let them know how this manager treated us and make sure that he understands that a voluntary tax is just that, voluntary and must be removed if requested.
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