Better than Niagara
Last Friday was one of those spontaneous days... OK, it's 5:30, let's saddle up and go to Canada...
The 6.5 hour drive to Rochester, NY was same as last time, except it was getting dark, Lever taking the reigns from BBFK at near midnight and us getting there at nearly 2am... Oh, and Syracuse never looked so good before ;)
Saturday was a buzzy morning, get up, hit the Parkway west along the southern shore of Lake Ontario, stop for food at a great diner and finally cross the Rainbow Bridge into Canada, eh?
Book the second to last available hotel room in Lundy's Lane (just up the road from the site of the Battle of Lundy's Lane, in the War of 1812) park up and hit the shoreline and ride the Maid of the Mist, drifting past Niagara and powering into the surge of the Horseshoe Falls...
I called my friends in Mississauga, just an hour away, and they said they'd come down after their business meeting - Saturday night, 8pm!! Great time for a business meeting huh?
Being near supper time me and BBFK went for the most bizarre Indian curry experience ever. They'd obviously just moved into what used to be an Italian restaurant (red, white & green decor), we got served by a Chinese girl and get this... they didn't serve beer. WTF!! NO BEER!! No Cobra? No Kingfisher? Not even a Bud or a Moulson? I contemplated leaving, but stuck with it... we didn't wanna walk for miles just to end up at another Niagara Falls Indian Restaurant and risk being in the same no beer situation...
I'll leave BBFK to tell you all where the grubby, noisy restauranter's kid stuck it's dirty little finger, but it did keep pointing to my butter chicken dish and shouting "BAD, BAD, BAD!!" at the top of it's voice... How reassuring... thanks Mowgli... does anyone wanna hit the Cove Tandoori with me when I get back to Blighty?
We walked off our dinner before geting back to the hotel to wait for our friends to show up, and ended up crashing out until the phone rang at 11pm... when they came to pick us up and took us out for more food and on to the Falls View Casino for a looksee... 3000 slot machines, 150 gaming tables, 350 hotel rooms, 10 restaurants and a shopping mall, all packed into a $1billion complex. They dropped us off at 2am and didn't get home until nearly 4am themselves! Thx guys, lovely to see you :)
Sunday we hit the strip... the Vegas/Blackpool-esque Clifton Hill, and ended up having another BIG pancake breakfast before attempting to cough it up in the Frankenstein House... which was totally pitch black... No, not the picture, that was Bur Gerking, just next door; the Frankenstein House was like a ghost train just... without the train. I had to keep taking flash photos just to light up what I was gonna trip over and break my neck on, seriously, it was that dark - either that or my night sight is just shot to funk... BBFK did a sterling job of blind leading the blind ;)
Leaving Niagara at 2pm we got stopped by a traffic cop just 5 minutes inside the US border and with our most imploring looks, got away with our minor misdemeanour and got a police escort all the way back to the Ontario Parkway...
And with Yours Truly driving 6.5 hours back to Connecticut, I shan't bat an eyelid when considering driving to Scotland now... except I may need a diesel station wagon with the Yanks here moaning about 20 quid being expensive for a tank of gas!!!
So... that was last weekend, and I do apologise for the lack of updates, we've been busy :) Hoow're y'all doing? :D
The 6.5 hour drive to Rochester, NY was same as last time, except it was getting dark, Lever taking the reigns from BBFK at near midnight and us getting there at nearly 2am... Oh, and Syracuse never looked so good before ;)
Saturday was a buzzy morning, get up, hit the Parkway west along the southern shore of Lake Ontario, stop for food at a great diner and finally cross the Rainbow Bridge into Canada, eh?
Book the second to last available hotel room in Lundy's Lane (just up the road from the site of the Battle of Lundy's Lane, in the War of 1812) park up and hit the shoreline and ride the Maid of the Mist, drifting past Niagara and powering into the surge of the Horseshoe Falls...I called my friends in Mississauga, just an hour away, and they said they'd come down after their business meeting - Saturday night, 8pm!! Great time for a business meeting huh?
Being near supper time me and BBFK went for the most bizarre Indian curry experience ever. They'd obviously just moved into what used to be an Italian restaurant (red, white & green decor), we got served by a Chinese girl and get this... they didn't serve beer. WTF!! NO BEER!! No Cobra? No Kingfisher? Not even a Bud or a Moulson? I contemplated leaving, but stuck with it... we didn't wanna walk for miles just to end up at another Niagara Falls Indian Restaurant and risk being in the same no beer situation...
I'll leave BBFK to tell you all where the grubby, noisy restauranter's kid stuck it's dirty little finger, but it did keep pointing to my butter chicken dish and shouting "BAD, BAD, BAD!!" at the top of it's voice... How reassuring... thanks Mowgli... does anyone wanna hit the Cove Tandoori with me when I get back to Blighty?
We walked off our dinner before geting back to the hotel to wait for our friends to show up, and ended up crashing out until the phone rang at 11pm... when they came to pick us up and took us out for more food and on to the Falls View Casino for a looksee... 3000 slot machines, 150 gaming tables, 350 hotel rooms, 10 restaurants and a shopping mall, all packed into a $1billion complex. They dropped us off at 2am and didn't get home until nearly 4am themselves! Thx guys, lovely to see you :)
Sunday we hit the strip... the Vegas/Blackpool-esque Clifton Hill, and ended up having another BIG pancake breakfast before attempting to cough it up in the Frankenstein House... which was totally pitch black... No, not the picture, that was Bur Gerking, just next door; the Frankenstein House was like a ghost train just... without the train. I had to keep taking flash photos just to light up what I was gonna trip over and break my neck on, seriously, it was that dark - either that or my night sight is just shot to funk... BBFK did a sterling job of blind leading the blind ;)Leaving Niagara at 2pm we got stopped by a traffic cop just 5 minutes inside the US border and with our most imploring looks, got away with our minor misdemeanour and got a police escort all the way back to the Ontario Parkway...
And with Yours Truly driving 6.5 hours back to Connecticut, I shan't bat an eyelid when considering driving to Scotland now... except I may need a diesel station wagon with the Yanks here moaning about 20 quid being expensive for a tank of gas!!!
So... that was last weekend, and I do apologise for the lack of updates, we've been busy :) Hoow're y'all doing? :D
Blue Skies thinking @ 10/07/2005 11:54:00 AM
16 Comments:
At Fri Oct 07, 09:59:00 PM,
Keeefer said…
What a kewl trip. I cant quite understand why theres a frankenstein house next to a burger ing or in canada at all come to think of it, but hey i guess the locals know what they're doing. Oddly enough the Aussies are moaning cos their petrol is now 50p a litre...i just laugh at them as i pour some more down the drain. I drove 10hrs straihght last year down western Australia, man did i need a beer after that, thankfully i ended up in a fully beer stocked restaurant and not some homage to the tea sipping days of the raj
At Fri Oct 07, 11:20:00 PM,
searchingforMrDarcy said…
Oh poor Lever, no beer! Anyway glad you finally took a break to let us know what you were doing. There should be a way to yell at people when you know they are having a good time and not letting you know about it.
At Sat Oct 08, 03:38:00 AM,
rebekah said…
hm yes i know that some days, when i feel really crazy and such, i wake up and think "it's a nice day to ... go to canada. yes let's." but there's always the no gas or money issue that stops me. never fails.
honestly though, no beer aside, sounds like a perfectly lovely time ...
dirty grubby children can be locked up in .. dark places and uh you know, left there. ahem. yes i am a grinchy type ...
At Sat Oct 08, 03:54:00 AM,
RahX said…
Rochest....oh NY
Damn dude did you move here or what? If not, just do so already....
At Sat Oct 08, 01:42:00 PM,
Lever said…
Keeefer: LOL, yeah I thought the same meself; Frankenstein + Bur Gerking + Niagara Falls = WTF ???
50p a litre? Jeez. It was pushing .99 when I left the UK...
Aw cool, 10 hour Aussie road trip... so what was the terrain like dude? What motor? It wasn't that auto again was it? And beer/tea... ah, I'd cane a beer then have a mug of tea meself ;)
SfMD: LOL yeah, in England curry minus beer = not so good a night out :( Ah, we'll make up for it - there's a decent Indian curryhouse in Bridgeport so I'm told...
We were totally gonna blog from the road, we both had our laptops, but l'hotel had no internet, let alone BB internet :S
Rebekah: Ah, gotta be spontaneous - you gotta do what you gotta do else you feel frystrated - oops, great typo, think that can stay... frystrated LOL So how many miles/hours would it be to Canada? Plenty I guess...
Yeah, despite lack of beer in restaurant (there *was* beer in hotel fridge mind you...) it was gooooood... and I'll let BBFK speak of "the grubber"... ;)
RahX: LOL, right city, wrong state ;) You just *know* we'd have mailed ahead if we'd been coming to Minnesota... that's a good track by the Dandy Warhols too :)
Nah, not moved here permanento... that would take the sale/rental of a house plus all manner of technical/ political stuff to go through. One day, maybe... :)
At Sat Oct 08, 10:09:00 PM,
davinian said…
I'm doing cool - sounds like your doing cool to - although it sounds like the Indian was a disaster!!! How did you manage to eat it? I would have walked out and found somewhere else...
Anyway, yes and no to all that stuff, take care, watch out for Big Foot and always carry a 6-pack of cobras in your trunk! Is truck right?
At Sun Oct 09, 12:33:00 PM,
Mummy/Crit said…
Yeah mate, doing great. Ta. No. Really.Much better than the last time you asked that general question.
I went to Canada for lunch one time. I was visiting a friend in Buffalo, and we woke up one day, with that very thought in our heads. So we did. We stayed for dinner too. It was great. She'd been working in Toronto a bit then, so knew her way around lots. Crossing the border was interesting, and the border guards were really surly.
At Sun Oct 09, 02:27:00 PM,
Lever said…
Davinian: Cool :D LOL Yeah, the Indian was funny - but you just have to endure these things sometimes to realise the quality of what you have at home, so Cove Tandoori here we come :) Yeah, it tasted good, had to specify a level of spiciness - that was weird :S
Yep, trunk it is :) You have to say trunk over here otherwise they don't know what you're on about. :)
Mummy/Crit: Well that's good, glad to hear you're doing better :)
Ah, surly border guards, ours had those totally unsociable mirrored shades on - seeing a US and UK passport coming into Canada the guy asked why we were together and how we met... when we said "Blogging" he said he just didn't have a clue *what* we were on about... LOL
At Sun Oct 09, 08:46:00 PM,
Brom said…
So yet another blogger treads the same bit of turf as myself... going to have to synchronise watches one day! :-)
I must admit that Niagra was a bit of a dissapointment for me. Expected to drive to an isolated place in a large park and walk to the falls that would be surrounded by thir own natural environment.
I thought that the hotels jostling for position and craning their necks to get the best view were bad enough, but the Casinos took the biscuit.
Yeah the hotels. My first impression was, jeeez these are bloody expensive, after enquiring the cost a couple of times I remembered something. Canadian Dollars Brom!!!... DUH!!
The highspot of the weekend was the drive through Pennsilvania from Maryland and back.. Beautiful!
At Mon Oct 10, 01:32:00 AM,
Lever said…
Brom-man: LMAO, Ah Brom, yeah, better meet down the pub for the synchronising of watches LOL
Shame you didn't enjoy the falls so much - I was there in '79 but the memory was a little rusty - the vernacular was working then too...
We had the same kittens at the hotels - I think we paid just CAD69.00 for a night :))
Might have to cross into Penn & MD someday - see where BBFK got lost ;) LOL
At Mon Oct 10, 06:19:00 AM,
superfan said…
hey dude...
sounds fun :) but i must ask...don't you have like, a job? or did you pack it in for fulltime life in the US of A?
At Mon Oct 10, 02:36:00 PM,
Lever said…
Superfan: Hey girl :) Have laptop, will travel ;) I'm here on holiday for a month (back 23 October) so I'm doing my job remotely and keeping the boss happy from 3,500 miles away... as for packing it in... not yet, got a fat-ass mortgage to pay...
At Tue Oct 11, 08:40:00 AM,
Jay said…
Wow, you're really putting that driver's permit to good use! I love the Maid of the Mist. I remember going on it the first time as a kid and thinking that getting wet was the whole point of the "ride". Now I live just an hour away from it, so I suppose it'll lose its magic over time. :(
At Tue Oct 11, 02:01:00 PM,
Lever said…
Jay: LOL, yeah, prolly 500+ miles by now!
I was on that boat when I was 9 but remember so little of it, this time was more memorable, especially being with BBFK and both of us getting soaked. The power of the falls is amazing though, let's hope it doesn't lose its magic :)
At Tue Oct 11, 04:27:00 PM,
BeckyBumbleFuck said…
Well, babe, thanks for letting the blogland know we're not dead. :D
I've meant to, y'all....I miss you guys.
At Tue Oct 11, 05:18:00 PM,
Lever said…
My BBFK: Of course, dear, *you* are, after all, the one who's *not blogging*, so I gotta let people know you're not "under the patio" or anything LOL
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