Niagara Fails

We arrived in Niagara Falls this evening and I am dumbstruck.

I'd been warned by many that it was quite the tourist trap, a gift shop laden area crowded with visitors. I was prepared for that, it's a famous place, and my prescence here makes me one of those tourists too.

I was however, mind-blowingly unprepared for what we came upon this evening. As we walked towards the falls, which are lit up at night, I could already see a giant ferris wheel and a couple of ugly buildings, but as we hit the small main street I simply couldn't believe my eyes.
A sea of noise, neon and plastic greeted us, from fast food joints and tacky gift shops to arcades and theme park rides. From all sides we were blasted with music, announcements, buzzers and bells.
Now I'm well aware that a large portion of the general public, whom I try my hardest not to judge, love this kind of thing. But to me that's what the likes of Disneyland, Las Vegas and Cancun are for. To build such crap in such close proximity to a beautiful natural wonder seems truly reprehensible.

That said, browsing the plethora of tat shops was actually quite interesting, not through a desire to purchase, just for the sheer amazing standard of shite on offer.
Every shop housed Niagara Falls snow globes, ornaments and even a DVD slideshow of the falls to 'take home and share with your friends'. As you can imagine though, there are only so many waterfall-based gifts the human mind can conjure up. As a result there are all manner of pointless and horrible creations, highlights including neon coloured 'I was shot in Niagara Falls' shot glasses, animated flamingo bookmarks, and 3D dog-shaped 'I love my border collie' plastic wall hangings.

The picture above is a T-Shirt available in one of the shops, a fair representation of what was on offer in general. Like yesterday I was again torn between one of two photographs, the other was a twenty feet high plastic Frankenstein sat atop a 24 hour burger king.

I had to laugh as we wondered around, of course reserving full judgement of the falls themselves for tomorrow mornings daylight encounter, but places like this make me shake my head at the human race, as well as having the all too obvious fact shoved right in my face - that Mother Earth would be a lot happier without us stinking up the place.