Friday

Had a fantastic night’s sleep in our lovely hotel suite, the bed was very comfy and once again it was big enough to allow movement without Natalie wafting cold air into the bed; this made me very happy. We went downstairs for the complimentary breakfast buffet, when we’d booked the room I don’t think either of us realised there was free parking or breakfast included in the £53, so things just kept getting better and better at the Comfort Suites!

Waffle machine!

The breakfast included a wide variety of food, the best thing being waffles. That we had to make ourselves, in a waffle iron that you pour the mixture in and flip the machine over! We were very excited about this. An American woman who was stood next to us watched while we documented the fun and laughed at how enthusiastic about making our first ever waffle, I suppose it’s a bit like us seeing someone getting excited about a toastie machine.

As we were finishing breakfast, the fire alarm went off. We couldn’t tell if it was a false alarm or not and it was all very exciting, we started to make our way to the exits, I wondered if somehow our travel adapter had set our room on fire, but it just turned out to be one of the other guests burning some toast. Phew.

When we had finished breakfast and checking out, we had a little wander around Buffalo, which intermittently smells of fried food, but not in a bad way. It’s a nice city but there wasn’t anything in particular that we had planned to see so we had a quick look at some of the pretty buildings like the City Hall, then left for Niagara.

City Hall in Buffalo. Looks a bit like a space invader.

We decided to take the advice ‘John Candy’ had given us yesterday and rather than just follow the satnav up to Niagara, we crossed over the Peace Bridge from Buffalo into Canada. We left the interstate and followed a very quiet, scenic road north along the Niagara River. This was one of the most beautiful drives we’ve ever been on; the sun was shining, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the river was wide, there were some lovely houses but they were set far enough back to ensure they didn’t ruin the view and we had to slow down to wait for some geese and deer to cross the road. In a nutshell, it was perfect.

Canada, very easy to get into.

Niagara River

Geese in the road

We checked into our room earlier than we were supposed to and kept our fingers crossed that the view was going to be as spectacular as the website had looked when we’d booked it. When we walked into the split level suite the upstairs didn’t have a view at all, we made our way downstairs and to the window. The view was so amazing that Natalie actually fist pumped the air. We stood in awe for a few minutes then decided to go down to get a closer look at them making sure we put on some warm clothes as it was pretty cold when the wind got up.

Awesome view of the Horseshoe falls...

...and the American Falls

We went to see the American Falls first, they were pretty impressive, and then we made our way up to the Horseshoe Falls, which were very impressive. We could get really close to them and for a minute it was a bit scary, imagining what would happen if you fell over!

American falls

(Laura has now gone to bed, so I shall carry on writing this bit…) Next to the falls is the Behind The Falls attraction, so we paid our $12 and for that we got whisked down an elevator to a viewing platform at the foot of the falls. The view was staggering as millions of cubic metres of water rushed by.

Back at the top of the falls we made our way to Clifton Hill for some food and entertainment. We went to the Hard Rock Café and ordered a pulled pork sandwich and a burger. When the food came the portions were HUGE! The food was yummy and we ate as much as we could before staggering up the hill to the amusement arcades.

Giant sign

So much food

How I looked after dinner

Skee ball

In the arcade, Laura discovered her love of Skee Ball. We spent lots of tokens on trying to get the ball into the high scoring holes. By the end we’d amassed a massive stack of prize tickets, which we duly fed into the ticket counting machine – and we had 93! Woohoo! Wondering what prizes we could get, we went to the counter and it was enough to get us… a pencil shaped like a hockey stick and 3 erasers. Ooooooooh!

After a quick pit-stop at the hotel room and a facetime call back to the UK (Hi Mum! Hi Dad! Sorry everyone else, but if you don’t answer it’s not my fault!) we then went to the Skylon tower and rode the scary hanging-on-the-outside variety of elevator up the viewing platform 775 feet above the falls.

The view was spectacular, although it was a little bit chilly on the open air deck (much warmer on the inside deck). We hung around at the top and watched the sun go down over the distant horizon. Laura pointed out a city in the distance and I recognised the distinctive shape of the CN Tower, meaning it must be Toronto (some 50 miles away).

Buffalo

Toronto (50 miles away)

Sunset from the Skylon Tower

Skylon Tower

After descending to ground level we crossed the road and went to the Fallsview Casino. The Casino was just like the ones in Vegas (well, the ones that don’t have tigers and fountains) with lots of noise and flashing lights. We set our budget at $10 each, and then hit the slots. We tried various machines but came back to the 2c, triple reel machines as they offered the best value for money (i.e., lots of pulling the lever and not much money disappearing from the total money remaining figure!)

Happy Laura

We drank as many free diet cokes as we could and played for what seemed like ages. Laura had a few “big” wins ($5 was the most I think) and we actually quit before we lost all the money. How very sensible! The machines didn’t dole out coins, everything was done on paper tickets with barcodes, so we converted out ticket back into dollars and left having spent about $14 the whole night. Bargain.

Back at the hotel we sat in our room and watched the illuminated falls from the warmth of a cosy bed. A perfect end to a brilliant day.

Falls at night