I woke with a smile on my face and more energy than I could imagine. It was the summer of my sixteenth year and the first time I had left the United States. The beauty and richness of Niagara Falls, Canada was right outside my window at the Marriott Hotel. At night we could see a firework display rising above the waters, and in the mornings it was as if the mist from the falls rose into our room.
It was our first full day in Niagara Falls Ontario Canada, and we were going to spend all day touring the falls, and the tourist attractions surrounding it.
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My dad, my mom, and I headed out to look for a nice restaurant before we began our adventure, so we stopped at a delicious restaurant called Tony Roma’s. The food and service was exquisite, but there was such an over abundance of food on our table we had to take two to-go-boxes. As we began to drive down the road though, my mom made the comment that we had nowhere to heat the food up or store it.
The next word that comes out of my dad’s mouth was, “Ducks!” This is one of my dad’s favorite activities to do with me, so we decided to look around for a spot we could feed our leftover bread to the birds.
On our way to the falls, we stopped at a beautiful park called Queen Victoria Park, where we ran into some ducks that we thought would be a wonderful source of entertainment. As my dad and I began throwing small crumbs of bread the ducks way, they started, as usual, swimming to us from the middle of the pond. This was regular routine, so we kept throwing the crumbs closer to our feet until we were completely out of food. In a blink of an eye, one duck began attacking my dad’s ankles for more food (my mom all the while at a safe distance with the camera). This duck did not let up until my dad slipped on his behind.
My body was overtaken with laughter at this epic moment until the duck did the same thing to me! Instead of falling down though, I ran the opposite way a few feet, but much to my surprise, the evil duck followed me and did his business right on the side of my shoe. This is what we get for showing kindness to these terrible birds! My mom was in the back laughing, and trying to get as much on camera as possible. Even though I was angry at the bird for attacking me, I could not stop my laughter at the whole situation. My family sat on the ground at the park, as everyone else was looking at us like we were crazy people, and we laughed and recalled what just happened for almost two hours.
After we regained our composure, we headed out to explore the rest of Niagara, bird free this time though. We went to experience the falls hand on in, my favorite part of the trip, the Journey Under the Falls. It was the most amazing scenery. It was almost as if I could reach my hand out and feel the water rushing down. Not only this, but there was actually a picture perfect rainbow you could clearly see under the falls.
While our day was different from what people usually would have thought to be the perfect day, the ducks, the water, and my family made this an unforgettable memory.
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