Alan left Sarah to blog today because he thought it would be a boring day. It turned out NOT to be. His comments will be added in green. Plus I had done it the last 2 days.
This morning started with a leisurely trip to the airport. We were hoping that our days of being manhandled by Airport Security were over but that turned out not to be the case. It is these darn airline tickets booked by Flight Centre that is doing it to us. With the airline tickets booked by me we have breezed past security. I'm sure it's probably just coincidence.
A quick 1 hour flight in a plane that seated 52 people and we landed at Buffalo Airport. Our luggage was collected very quickly and in no time, we were getting into our hire car, another Saturn. We really look like tourists as we're in New York and the car has Texas licence plates.
Alan chose to finally listen to my directions for once and we arrived at the hotel with only slight confusion. I think with all the scenery we just missed the hotel as we drove by. We may as well have gotten lost because when we arrived at just after midday they told us we couldn't check in until 3pm. We took a walk towards the falls and immediately fell in love. Niagara Falls are beautiful. Niagara Falls, NY, the town is not. The place is pretty scary. Most of the shops are deserted and, as we quickly discovered, those that are here are not worth visiting. This place is nothing like I was expecting. The Falls themselves are fantastic, but the town is virtually deserted, there are condemned shopping malls, abandoned arcades and restaurants, extremely dodgy looking souvenir shops and cafes and one totally out of place casino. Even in the middle of the day the streets were almsot like a ghost town. Maybe this is typical of America once you leave the big cities.
After taking a number of photos of the falls, we paid our $1 each to go to the Observation Tower and then took the lift to the bottom of the falls. The observation deck is 200 feet high and pretty scary when you look over the side. We then dropped by the visitor's centre and had a dreadful ham and swiss cheese roll.
In desperate need for money we took a walk through the scary streets to the casino to cash a travellers cheque. We started to think that it wasn't as such a casino than a slot machine room when we stumbled on 8 gaming tables. With the gaming tables came a cashier and we were able to get some money.
We then walked back to the hotel and looked very sad at the clerk who then let us check in at 2.30pm. The outside of the hotel might look like a dump but the room is lovely. We are on the top floor but didn't get a view, not that there is much of a view to have other than the buildings on the Canadian side of the border. A nap was had after our very long and stressful flight and then we went out to dinner. We ended up at the Hard Rock Cafe again as there really is nothing else around that looks half decent. The hotel has a restaurant but the online reviews suggest we are better not eating there.
After dinner we journeyed back over the road to view the falls and 50 photos were taken before the camera battery died. We returned to the room and picked up the charged battery, jumped into the car and drove over to the little island between the American Falls and the view of the Horseshoe Falls. Thankfully at night parking is free, saving us $8 and more photos were taken. There were a few people around taking photos and admiring the views, along with plenty of police patrols. Clearly the area is not particularly safe to be wandering around at night. Luckily big tough Alan was on hand to protect little wussy Sarah. There were no signs anywhere stating that the island closes and as we were leaving around 11pm they were closing the gate. It wouldn't have been a problem had we been locked in as it was only a 10 minute walk back to our hotel.
Tomorrow hopefully the weather won't be as bad as they predict as we are doing the Maid of the Mist (going to the falls in a boat), the Journey Behind the Falls, White Water Boardwalk (formerly Great Gorge Adventure) and the Butterfly Conservatory.
Trivia for the day: There are 2 sections of Niagara Falls - the smaller one is American Falls and the much bigger one is Horseshoe Falls. We saw a sign saying that the amount of water going over American Falls is 285,000 litres every second. It's mindboggling.
No comments:
Post a Comment