Niagara

There are things that photographs simply cannot convey about Niagara Falls, and sound is the most important of them. The falls generate their own ambient roar that you hear before you see them, and once you are at the rail above the Horseshoe Falls, the sound is physical — it is vibration as much as noise. The mist the falls generate creates a permanent localised weather system: it is raining within fifty metres of the brink regardless of what is happening in the sky above.

The Canadian side gives the better view — the Horseshoe Falls curve away from you and you see the full width of the cascade rather than its edge. Standing at the Queen Victoria Park observation rail, you are close enough to see the individual columns of water as they break apart on the descent, and the green colour of the water in the crestline before it falls is unlike anything else — a specific, particular shade produced by the dissolved minerals of the Great Lakes.

Niagara-on-the-Lake, twenty kilometres up the Niagara River from the falls, is what you visit when you want the exact opposite of the spectacle below. A well-preserved colonial town with Victorian storefronts and a main street of churches, inns, and wine tasting rooms, it sits at the northern end of the Niagara Peninsula wine region — which produces some of Canada's most interesting whites, particularly the ice wine made from grapes harvested after the first frost.

The contrast between the two experiences — the industrial sublime of the falls and the domesticated prettiness of Niagara-on-the-Lake — makes for a surprisingly varied day trip from Toronto. Both things are genuine, and both tell you something different about what this particular stretch of the Ontario-New York border has been used for over the centuries.