My plans for today were to get up before the sun, and to go watch the sunrise over the Falls. Great idea, right?
Well these were foiled by the wind storm outside that kept me awake all night by smashing my door around and making me sit straight up in bed every time I was positive the sound was someone breaking into my room.
I ended up being awake pretty early, but not early enough.
I was at Niagara Falls in winter. One thing I wanted to do was the Maids of the Mist tour. This is a boat tour where you go riding around the falls, getting completely soaked as water pours all over you.
I discovered that this ride was closed in winter, which I had to concede makes total sense. I was freezing on dry land, I am sure it was dangerous to be out on the water in this weather.
As I walked along the water, I noticed that little kiosks were closed as well. Like with Maids of the Mist, I can understand this as they may not do enough business in the winter to stay open.
What I found odd was that Applebees is closed for the season. If you are unaware, Applebees is a chain restaurant. I figured it would be open for people who live in the area. Or for people staying in my hotel, which is attached to it. Surely that alone would be enough to stay open year round?
But where I drew the line between “understandable” and “you have got to be kidding me” was when I found the Coke machine that was closed for the season.
I have always wanted to go to Niagara Falls. It has been in my top three “WANT IT” forever now. I had a few failed attempts in the past couple of years. The best one being the time my flight was cancelled, leading to me taking off to Atlantic City instead, and winning $1000.
This is what life is all aboot, eh?
So this past November, I would be making another attempt to finally see the falls.
I don’t know if i technically got scammed. But here is my story.
On my last full day, I had planned to get up at the crack of dawn and be walking into the Blue Mosque the second it opened. The night before, I had a horrible night’s sleep. I was woken up in the middle of the night by a text that kept me up for the rest of the night.
I still manage to get up and out. I get to the Mosque and I am an hour early because I do not know how to correctly research opening hours.
It is really hot. I am really sun burned. I am so tired.
I sit down on a bench outside the Mosque to rest and collect my thoughts.
A man comes up to me and offers to shine my shoes. I say “NO” I am not even wearing shoes, I am wearing cheapo sneakers that are getting thrown out as soon as I get home. Despite me saying “NO”, he then says “just let me brush off the dirt”. Now I get mad. He is already down and brushing the dirt off my sneakers. All I want to do is sit here in silence and rest and go into my own little world where I figure out the things in my personal life that are now running rampant through my head.
I promised myself that in 2014, I would go to less fests. They take up vacation time and one weekend can cost the same as a flight to Europe. They are hindering my desire to see the world. That said, I am already planning for:
Oops?
Last transport of my trip – overnight bus from Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria to Istanbul, Turkey. This was quite the trip. Finding out information about this journey before leaving home was nearly impossible. I could never figure out where I was supposed to leave from, Veliko Tarnovo has two bus stations. I was able to get some bus company names, but they had no internet presence.
There is a train, but the schedules I came up with were so beyond contradictory. I also found a bunch of websites saying the train wasn’t in operation right now because of construction. I would really prefer to take the train but all of this research getting me nowhere was really making my head spin.
So I left the USA without having any clue how I was going to be doing the last leg of this trip.
The main attraction of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria is Tsarevets Fortress. I had specifically picked my hotel for the balcony view overlooking it.
I saved visiting the fortress until my last day, when I had several hours to kill before heading to Istanbul.
As always, I am in a room with a casino underneath me so I cannot sleep. I woke up at 4:00 and and tried so hard to go back to sleep. I thought I was successful, but my second time awake it was still only 6:00 am.
I spent my entire Las Vegas trip totally confused because in my mind, it was Christmas, even though it was not. This is because I spend every Christmas in Las Vegas. This year however, even though I felt like I was in Vegas for Christmas, when I got back home, Christmas still had not happened. How the hell did that happen?
The obvious question here is “Well then where are you going to go for actual Christmas?” which I answered with “Atlantic City, obviously”