Great view, shame about the hotel!

We've "done" Niagara Falls. We were warned that the place was tacky, but to be fair to Canada, the area around the two falls themselves was beautifully landscaped and maintained to a high order. If you wanted tacky, you had to go to Clifton Hill at the other end of the strip from or hotels' location, Fallsview.

The falls were very impressive, of course, but perhaps we'd be excused preferring Igacu, which we remember as being bigger and benefitting from still being in a comparatively undeveloped area.

We had a wonderful view of the falls from our 30th. floor room... ...but the room itself and the hotel, the Ramada Fallsview Plaza, were dreadful. Picture a baby's rattle, six floors of rooms in a roughly circular cylinder, held up by a twenty four storey high spindle containing three lift shafts and a couple of stairwells. The decor was tired, the room small and a frighteningly shambolic fire alarm on our second night didn't make us bettter disposed to it. Definitely a "never again" job.

The area around Niagara was interesting, we spent a day exploring genteel, wealthy Niagara-on-the-Lake, the Welland Ship Canal and Fort Erie. In fact we enjoyed our time out and about hugely, but our lousy hotel meant that we were relieved to leave on our next leg - to Ottawa.

Pictures of our Canada trip so far here...