It’s 9:45pm. And we’re having dinner.

It’s 9:45pm, and the streets at Niagara Falls are as lively as ever. The restaurants are all full, with wait times required for all of them, even at this hour. That is crazy! I’ve had a weird eating schedule since waiting at the airport for my 7:00am departure, and we all think it’s actually 6:45pm, and so it was just right after a frustrating search for somewhere to eat. There are no grocery stores, fruit stores, or markets here…. What do all the people do?! The answer is that this city is really a tourist town, so it’s just a Casino, hotels, motels, and restaurants everywhere. Oh, and the prices are all inflated. A bottle of water, or pop at one of those typical vending machine? $2.00 is the cheapest we could find, in our hotel. Down by the Falls, it’s $2.50, and the cheapest food and drink you can get is at the Tim Horton’s there, where a bottle of pop is $1.69.

We ended up at Applebee’s, my family’s choice restaurant whenever we go to the States. After we got our bill there was an extra “TIFF” over the taxes (which are higher than back home). The waiter said it stood for “Tourist ..........”, “for the maintenance of the falls and fireworks and all that fun stuff.” We were like, “Ohhhh.” O.O Specialty Tourist Tax, eh?

So I was thinking, if Niagara Falls dried up (hey, stay with me), this town would experience a few months’ boom, then maybe go into a bust.

Observation: You know, there’re Tim Hortons’s everywhere. It’s just really popular here, ain’t it?