I have been to Niagara many times, some more memorable than others. My first time was as a child, on a family trip to Toronto. I don't remember it at all!
Later in life, when we lived in Potsdam, NY, we took our son to see the falls. We were in a hotel room directly over the wax museum, and heard the guillotine fall far into the night. And the next day we went to a miniature village, where the boat locks worked and the model capital building was as high as an elephant's eye. Sorry to say, neither village or guillotine are there any longer.
Years later, when our son was a student at RIT, our trips to Rochester often included a stop at the falls. One early spring day we stopped at a park in Buffalo, and watched chunks of ice as big as houses come down the river and smash into the bridge abutments.

But our most memorable trip came in 1993, when 2 Swiss friends came to Pittsburgh to visit. We had exhausted the Pittsburgh sites, and had a full day before they were to board the plane that continued their vacation westward.
"We could go to Niagara!" we suggested. "it's only a few hours away. Spend a day there and come back that night."
5 hours later we were pulling into a motel in Buffalo. This gave us an early morning crossing into Canada, by the Peace Bridge. We approached the falls along the Niagara highway. "Sneaking up on the falls", we like to think. It was early morning, with very little traffic. Passing the park just above the falls, we saw a couple of VW busses and some people milling about, but gave it no thought.
We arrived at the falls and parked; at this hour there were plenty of spaces available, and headed for breakfast at the restaurant on table rock. Larry made a stop in the restroom; and the three of us waited outside the restroom door (as we had so often in Iceland). A woman came by very excited. "I just saw a man go over the falls in a barrel!" she said. When Larry rejoined us, we all kidded him, "you missed the excitement! A man just went over the falls!" He didn't believe us.

But at breakfast, the waitress cluck-clucked about this crazy person, pulling a stunt like that, "and it's his second time" she said.
Larry looked at us incredulously. "You didn't!" he said.
"No, actually we didn't" we admitted.
The man survived the dive; was pulled from the river unconscious and bruised but still very much alive. His stunt closed down the tunnels under the falls and the Maid of the Mist until the rescue was complete. And it gave our friends something to talk about when they returned home. And us, too.
After the excitement died down, we went into the tunnels, and rode the Maid of the Mist, went to the top of the tower. On our way home we stopped at the Welland Canal for dinner and watched the boats make their way through the locks. And then we headed back to Pittsburgh.

Remembering the fun we'd had with Peter and Sylvia, we offered our grand daughters a two day vacation at Niagara when they visited Pittsburgh this summer. They were as impressed wtih going to a foreign country as with the falls - birth certificates had to be located, and a letter of permission from their parents.

We made our reservations at a motel in "Fallsview" - "within walking distance of the falls" the brochure said. Wrong on both counts. But we found an incline near the motel which made the climb up and down for us. On a positive note, they had an indoor pool, almost a necessity when traveling with children who love swimming as much as ours do.

We walked along the promenade, and took pictures, and dined at the restaurant at table rock. Expensive, but what a location!
We spent a full day experiencing the falls. Underneath, in the tunnel, with the roar of the falls in our ears and the spray in our hair. We drove along the river, saw the whirlpools. We went to the top of the tower, to see the night lights on the spray.
A friend had advised it would be better to catch the Maid of the Mist from the NY side; better parking, no crowds and the ride was the same. We did that on the way home, arriving early, getting an easy parking place, and boarding the boat ahead of the 2 bus loads of Japanese tourists. An exciting ride, and very wet! And we came home with souvenir rain ponchos, with "Maid of the Mist" writ large on them.

On one of our walks up and down the promenade, we spotted a black squirrel! Camera at hand, I took his picture and this time the picture came out well. Later, when I exclaimed about this photographic capture to a Buffalo-born friend, she shook her head and said, "Black squirrels are native to Canada. They are everywhere!"

We spent most of the second day away from the falls. Fort George was a hit with the girls who charmed the docents into some hands-on experience with the tools, and the piano in the officer's quarters. (our son, at the same age, climbed every cannon in the fort)
We told them we would stop at a winery next. "Do we have to?" they whined. It was a good tour and ended up in the tasting room where was grape juice for the underage tourists, and I had my first taste of ice wine; mmmm, delicious, mmmm, expensive.
The next morning we were on our way back to Pittsburgh, to another week of adventures described on our Pittsburgh page, Kids in the 'burgh .