RimaRama

The first time my husband visited Niagara Falls as a young boy, he ran ahead of everyone else to see it and by the time they caught up with him, he was halfway over the guard rail.

“Things were different in those days,” my mother-in-law said. “You could drive right up to the Falls.”

You could also smoke in the hospital and ride backwards in the bowels of a hatchback with your face pressed up against the window pane.

We went on a mini-vacation to the Falls last weekend, but before taking the kids to the waterfall, we had them watch an Imax movie where they showed the true story of a brother and sister who went over the Falls wearing only life jackets after the boat they were in capsized. Miraculously, both of these children survived.

“But that doesn’t mean you would,” I told my son, who is a climber.

They also showed a French gentlemen in pantaloons walking across the gorge on a tightrope. For this segment alone, I would say the Imax movie was worth it.

It’s true that Niagara Falls is a giant tourist trap, but I enjoyed it. I’m still awestruck every time I see and hear that water thundering over the precipice.

“Just imagine what this place must have looked like before the white man found it,” I lamented to my children.

“Probably like this, but without all the buildings,” said the seven-year-old.

We did all the usual touristy things, including lunch in the revolving restaurant at the top of the Skylon Tower, and visits to Tussaud’s Waxworks and the Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum. The Ripley museum got mixed reviews on Trip Advisor because of the amount of reading its visitors were forced to endure. But seeing as we are the type of family who stops to read every signpost, billboard, informational brochure and cereal box, we went anyway.

Ripley’s turned out to be pretty old and creepy, like walking into the musty parlor of an eccentric who collects gross things. But some things were, in fact, wondrous. A few displays may be too much for the very squeamish, but nothing was really inappropriate for children, except maybe the reproduction of a special kind of pen1s protector (housing a life-size model) used by the men of a particular tribe in New Guinea. Still, these are the facts of life.

I found Tussaud’s wax museum a bit more interesting than Ripley’s, especially since the only thing I was forced to read were the name tags of wax likenesses that were a bit off the mark.

Take Mother Theresa, for example:

Micheal J. Fox:

And Oprah:

One afternoon, we drove out to Niagara Falls wine country to visit a nature preserve for the sole reason that it was called “Balls Falls.”

It was very pretty there and I recommend it, though I don’t recommend walking the trail up to the waterfall wearing hot pink clogs.

We also saw a strange yet entertaining dinner show called “Oh, Canada, Eh?” which featured a cast of Canadians dressed up as lumberjacks, Royal Mounties, French harlots, and Anne of Green Gables. When the comic foil from Quebec came onstage wearing a coonskin hat and acting the part of the ridiculous frenchman, I could feel my son the comedian thinking, “I could totally do this.”

And all the Canadians I met, except our hotel concierge who may or may not have rolled his eyes at me, were very, very nice.