Audioguides Chutes du Niagara

Nothing about Niagara Falls prepares you for Niagara Falls. You have seen the photographs and still the first view of the Horseshoe Falls from the Canadian bank stops you flat. The cataract is 57 meters high and carries more fresh water over its lip than any other waterfall on earth; on a still day the mist rises high enough to form its own weather. The French explorer Louis Hennepin described it in 1678 as 'an incredible Cataract or Waterfall, which has no equal.' He was right, and the intervening three and a half centuries of tourism infrastructure haven't changed that underlying truth.

The Canadian side offers the panoramic view, with Queen Victoria Park running along the gorge and the Niagara Parkway threading north past the Whirlpool and through orchards and vineyards toward Lake Ontario.

The Journey Behind the Falls attraction takes you through tunnels carved into the bedrock behind the Horseshoe Falls, where the roar is physical and the water a constant curtain feet away. Clifton Hill, immediately east of the falls, is a cheerful assault of themed attractions, but walk even a few blocks away from it and the residential streets have the quiet, slightly melancholy character of a town that has spent 150 years living next to one of the world's great spectacles.