In 1860, thousands watched as Charles Blondin walked a tightrope across Niagara Falls for the third time. Midway, he paused to cook an omelette on a portable grill, and then had a marksman shoot a hole through his hat from the Maid of the Mist boat, fifty metres below. As attested by Blondin - and the innumerable lunatics and publicity seekers who have gone over the falls in every craft imaginable - the falls simply can't be beat as a theatrical setting. Yet, in truth, the stupendous first impression doesn't last long and to prevent the twelve million visitors who arrive each year from getting bored by the sight of a load of water crashing over a 52-metre cliff, the Niagarans have ensured that the falls can be seen from every angle imaginable – from boats, viewing towers, helicopters, cable cars and even tunnels in the rock face behind the cascade. The tunnels and the boats are the most exciting, with the entrance to the former right next to the falls and the latter leaving from the bottom of the cliff at the end of Clifton Hill, 1100m downriver. Both give a real sense of the extraordinary force of the waterfall, a perpetual white-crested thundering pile-up that had Mahler bawling "At last, fortissimo" over the din.
Trains and buses from Toronto and most of southern Ontario's larger towns serve the town of NIAGARA FALLS, 3km to the north of the action. The availability of discount excursion fares makes a day-trip a straightforward proposition, although, if you do decide to spend the night, quaint Niagara-on-the-Lake, 26km downstream beside Lake Ontario, is a much better option than the crassly commercialized town of Niagara Falls itself. The problem is that hundreds of people agree, the result being that accommodation there can get mighty tight in high season, when you'd be well advised to book up a couple of days in advance. Both the Niagara Parkway road and the Niagara River Recreation Trail, a jogging and cycle path, stretch the length of the Niagara River from Fort Erie, 32km upstream from the falls, to Niagara-on-the-Lake.
