Thursday

We woke up freezing cold this morning, it seems that cabooses are much like tents or caravans, unless the sun has been shining on them for hours they don’t hold much heat. It was cold, very cold. We finally managed to drag ourselves out of bed and left to find some breakfast.

Cabooses

During the run up to the holiday, I had done a lot of research surrounding places to eat, I really wanted to find at least one proper retro diner to eat breakfast in. I’d found a place called Jennie’s using Google maps that was close to the Red Caboose and had done a street view; it looked perfect – an aluminium building with a big ‘diner’ sign outside, surrounded by trucks and lorries.

Jennie's Diner

As we drove up to it, we kept our fingers crossed that it was still open and that it serve a nice breakfast. It was open and the breakfast was just as we’d expected, although the pancakes were the size of dinner plates rather than the small side plate size you usually see. 

Authentic 50s interior

Looking at the jukebox

 

It was very tasty; streaky bacon, pancakes and maple syrup go so well together. Knowing that we weren’t going to eat again until we got to Buffalo, we ate as much as we could fit in and got back on the road.

The drive up to Buffalo was going to be long, so we took it steady, stocked up on drinks and snacks and enjoyed the amazing scenery along the 340 mile drive. Natalie started the journey, making sure we got onto the nice, quiet roads safely and I took over once I was sure I wasn’t going to have to make too many left turns. Driving in America is actually pretty easy, having an automatic car with cruise control helps but actually the roads are pretty good too, they’re so long and straight, you don’t have to do an awful lot. It’s loads better than driving in England!

Covered bridge

Covered bridge inside

Old bridge pier with statue of liberty on it!?

Heat haze

Entering the Empire State :)

So many places with English names. Also went through a 'Liverpool' today too.

The journey took six and a half hours but it flew by in no time and before we knew it we were pulling up to our hotel in Buffalo. As we’d only paid £53, I don’t suppose I was expecting too much, I knew it looked ok when we’d booked it months ago but neither of us could remember exactly what type of room we’d booked or what the hotel was like.

The receptionist (we’ll call her Meredith) was really friendly and had a bit of a laugh with us, which made us feel very welcome. Although we waited to discuss it in private, we noticed that the accent up here is pretty strong, more like Canadian than American, but that makes sense I suppose as we’re pretty close to Canada! We were very pleasantly surprised with the room, which for the money was amazing. We had booked a suite, but that doesn’t usually mean too much in England so when we opened the door to a lounge and a bedroom we were delighted. When we saw Meredith, we let her know it was the best room ever; she seemed to find this amusing.

Massive suite

We had to move The Beast to a secure car park which was a block away, when we said hello to the attendant (we’ll call him John Candy), he picked up on our accents and started talking to us about Monty Python, Argentina, how Toronto isn’t as good as it used to be, his faded desire to travel to Europe, his ex-girlfriend’s drug addiction, the best route to drive to Niagara…after 20 minutes, Natalie managed to find a conversation escape route. As we were leaving we found out his name was Dan, but I’m sticking with John Candy as it suited him more.

We got back to the hotel room and decided to have a shower to wake us up before heading out. The shower turned out to be amazing, we let Meredith know it was the best shower ever; she seemed to find this amusing too.

Sunset from the hotel room

Buffalo sign

Lovely theatre around the corner from the hotel

As we were in Buffalo, we decided to find The Anchor Bar, the home of the Buffalo chicken wing, invented in 1964 by Theresa Bellissimo when her son’s friends arrived in the bar ravenous. Theresa was going to use the wings for soup stock but decided to deep fry them, they were amazing, everyone flocked to try the new phenomenon and a world famous taste sensation was born. (This blog is not only fun and entertaining, you also learn something from it.) The bar itself was really cool, it’s decorated with license plates, random photographs and the main bar has motorbikes hanging from the ceiling, it looks like another pretty retro place. There was also a guy performing jazz songs, mostly Sinatra, it created a lovely atmosphere.

Anchor Bar, Buffalo, NY

Forgetting for a moment that we are in America, we ordered a stupid amount of food; 20 wings, fries and onion rings. At the time this didn’t seem like a huge amount, after all if we ordered that in England there would probably be a small bowl of chips and four onion rings. Not in America. In America there was more. Lots more. I think I’ll let the picture explain…

Soooo much food at the Anchor Bar

Buffalo Wings

Mmmmmm!

Anyway, the food was yummy, we didn’t eat it all and for the first time since arriving in the US we asked for a box to take our leftovers home with us. We walked home, slightly cold and very full. When we got to the hotel, Meredith wasn’t on reception but her friend, let’s call her Christina, asked if we’d had a nice night. We told her we’d been up to Anchor Bar for some Buffalo Wings and that they were the best chicken wings ever; she seemed to find this amusing.

Back at the room, we chilled out on the sofa, updated the blog and that brings us up to now. Bedtime.