RV'ing: 6-8-15 Monday (Lots Of Water)

It’s off to Niagara Falls we go. A flight at 9:30am for an hour and a half isn’t so bad. Overall though, Jim and I have decided that once we get to the airport, we totally become stupid. It seems like every TSA checkpoint is our first time. We become bumbling idiots that TSA workers will surely talk about in the break room.

So we had ample time before the flight to have breakfast. We went to a sit down restaurant and started with a Mimosa for Jim and a Bloody Mary for me. Then some regular soft drinks, and 2 omelets. $60. I was floored. Those cocktails were $15 a piece!

Onto the plane we went. The flight went well considering the trauma of walking up aisles designed for 5 year olds, and the seats that I can barely get strapped into and the as usual barely operative air conditioning. The joys of travel.

We arrived in Buffalo. It’s amazing that as soon as the plane stops, everyone pops up off their seat. Where are you going to go? So we waited our turn to get off the plane. Found a restroom and a beverage and made it to the luggage claim where, as typical, there wasn’t any luggage yet. See why it’s worth it to claw your way off a plane? So we stood there for 10 minutes waiting for the stupid carousel to even start. Finally ours was in sight and then the machine stopped. We had to walk over to get ours. It was like the airports last effort to give us the finger. Yeah we walked a short distance but it’s the little things.

Next up, a short wait to get a shuttle to the off-site rental place, Payless. It was a great price but we may have sacrificed convenience a little. But then again, sometimes airport rental locations have lines of people. With Payless, it was just us and a woman so it went pretty fast. We’ll just never know what was faster.

We set the GPS for our hotel which was a 45 minute drive. The in-the-car border check point into Canada was a new experience for us. We totally acted like newbies. It was like TSA. We fumbled our way through the process. Next was MPH to KM. Interesting. We arrived at the Four Points by Sheraton but the room wasn’t ready yet. We went to Perkins for lunch. We miss Perkins from our past in Florida. They have such awesome pancakes.

We walked down to see the falls. Just a couple of blocks away. Pretty amazing. The walk back up was on the tough side. It’s quite a hill that definitely works those ankles and calves.

Back at the hotel, our room was ready. Nice room and a pretty cool view of the falls. There’s a strand of trees hiding a lot of it but we can see enough of it to make me thankful for what we have. Ever have those moments? You stand in awe and then think how lucky or fortunate you are? It could be moments of being surrounded by family, or on vacation, etc. It’s just that moment though when your brain and your heart communicate with one another and agree that life isn’t so bad after all.

Anyway, we unpacked, and then hopped into the car and took off for Walmart. Some observations that were strange to us but of course normal here. Liters and grams. Every package has both English and French on it. Selection was very little compared to the US. I’m not knocking Canada at all so don’t jump all over me. The US is far from perfect. Back in the US, the cookie aisle was expansive. Here? A quarter of the size. Oreos were 3 to choose from. As we stood in amazement and voiced our discontent like spoiled Americans do, a Canadian shopper said she goes across the river for Peanut Butter Oreos and other things she likes but can’t get here. Funny. I once read an article about the US being stressful because we have too many choices/options. We also went to Canadian Tire Centre which was a mismosh of goods. Electronics, appliances, automotive, hardware, etc. The “centre” spelling as well as several words ending in “our” as opposed to “or”.

After some more settling in, relaxing, hotel-water-fall-view looking, we took showers and then headed out for dinner. Nothing special. We went to a Rainforest Café. The food was good. The ambiance is fun and we had a coupon (which didn’t work; wrong location). There’s chain places all over and we will eat at non-chains later in the trip. I’ll tell you this though. It’s not at all uncommon to have 3 IHOPs in a 1 mile radius. The hotels don’t seem to mind repeating restaurant chains a block away from one anther. It’s amusing.