A triumph for the home team

Of all the cool things that happened over this past weekend—and there was nonstop fabulousness every hour of every day—I have got to say that my proudest moment was when some of my fellow bloggers went with me to both sides of Niagara Falls, and afterwards there was unanimous agreement that the American side was—yes—better.

You see, for years we have been putting up with the universal wisdom (largely spread by taxi drivers) that not only is the American side not as scenic, but that there is no reason to go to NF, US at all. While it’s true that the actual city of NF, US is in bad shape, when you go to see the Falls, you don’t really need to see the city. What the US side has is a lovely park embracing the viewing area. You can walk across scenic bridges, get really, really close to the falls and rapids, meander down pathways, and always be surrounded by trees and plants.

Across the way, however, although the actual view of the falls is more spectacular, you are on pavement and hemmed in by a commercial strip of tacky tourism options—wax museums, souvenir shops, etc. The CA side has some great nature trails along the gorge, but I find the area close to the waterfall kind of built-up.


So it was nice to hear this corroborated. As for the rest of our blogger meet-up, others have taken much better pictures than I and detailed every event better than I could. What many might not realize is that much of it was as new to me as it was for our visitors. I had never set foot on Sixteenth Street, hadn’t visited the Lancaster gardens for years, and had never seen Mike Shadrack’s hosta paradise.


It gave me some ideas. Here are the rest of my pictures, though I did not really have time to take as many as other did. Check them out here.