Vacation Part 2a -- Niagara Falls, Canada

Since I spent an entire post on the amazing beauty of Niagara Falls, I need a few more to tell about what we did there. First of all, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, which is where we stayed, is very touristy.  They have the Ripley's Believe it or Not museum and about 82 come in here for your next adventure type places.  It reminded me of Branson or South Padre Island with lots of restaurants and souvenir shops.  We did choose to park in that area and walk down to the sidewalk where you could see Niagara Falls.  Here are some of our awesome pictures from that walk:

Kudos to the guy who had a really nice, expensive camera who asked us to take a picture of him because then he returned the favor and got this amazing shot of us!

We chose to eat lunch at a restaurant where we could sit outside and view the falls.  The view was amazing!  The food was not.  And neither were the prices, but hey at least we looked at Niagara Falls the whole time.  After lunch, Aria requested a nap so we went back to the hotel and did just that. 

After the much needed nap (for everyone) we ventured out to what I thought would be simply fulfilling Aria's big request for the vacation.  Back when we started planning the trip, we explored all the different things to do.  One thing they have is a Butterfly Conservatory as a part of the Niagara Falls School of Horticulture.  I would not have really considered paying for that as a part of our trip except that Aria heard butterfly house and did not let us forget it.  She wanted to go to the butterfly house.  Before we left, she told people we were going on vacation to a big waterfall and a butterfly house.  So we decided to do it because she seemed so interested.  And I was actually blown away by the beauty of all the butterflies.  It was very serene and beautiful and you could easily hold a butterfly in your hand.  Of course, all the talk about the butterfly house and Aria DID NOT want to hold a butterfly.  She enjoyed looking at them, but she didn't want them to touch her.  Kind of hilarious.  Here is my favorite.  Wings closed it looks like this:

Wings open it looks like this:

It is so incredible how God makes a creature able to blend in with its surroundings to avoid predators and also dazzle me with their beauty!

Then, one of the best parts about the butterfly house was the drive back to Niagara Falls.  The butterflies were just outside of town a little bit and all along the road were bike trails.  We decided to stop and walk along them a bit and we got an amazing view of the gorge.  We also got to see the whirlpool where the Niagara River changes direction.  There was this cart thing that you could ride out across the whirlpool and back, but this non-heights girl was not doing that (and it was pricey).  But the view was spectacular and it was fun to walk along the trail a bit.

It is kind of hard to tell, but the cables in this picture are what move the car back and forth.  You can kind of see the red car out in the middle.  The river is coming from the top of the picture, it whirlpools on the right edge of the picture and then continues down the left side.  Very amazing!

Next, we returned to the craziness of the touristy area and shopped in one shop, ate supper at a less expensive with no view restaurant that had much better food and rode the big sky wheel.  It looked like this:

 
It is hard to tell from the picture, but there are 42 enclosed gondolas that are climate controlled on that wheel that goes 175 feet in the air.  We specifically waited until it was dark to ride it so we could see this:

They shine lights on the falls at night.  It was a pretty cool view and a fun little ride, but Aria was slightly distracted by the ginormous dinosaur and erupting volcano at the mini golf place right next to the sky wheel.  I was just glad it was enclosed.

And that concluded our day in Canada!  We bought a few souvenirs and saw the amazing sights and enjoyed being in a different country.  About the different country thing, you really couldn't tell.  Actually, I could tell we were in a different country, but I would have guessed an Asian one.  There simply was not a majority of nationality around Niagara Falls.  Being such an amazing world attraction, there were people from all over!  I bet we heard at least 7 or 8 different languages as we encountered people.  It was just pretty neat to think we came from so many different places all over the world to visit one magnificent piece of nature.