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.

First step:  book flight.  I managed to get a $60 one way to Buffalo, NY.  Second step: figure out how to get from the airport to Niagara Falls.  Finding information on this proved way more difficult than necessary.   Dear Buffalo airport:  Be better at the ground transportation section of your website.  Jeez.

There are a lot of options up there for various forms of transportation.  Most of them are insanely expensive.  We are talking like $65.  I came really close to paying either $2 or $4 for a local bus to the New York side of the falls and then walking the rest of the way to Canada.  This would have taken me 2.5 hours.  I am not sure if it was going to be $2 or $4.  It involved taking two buses, the jury is out on whether or not you get a free transfer.  Buffalo does not like giving transit information to its customers.

Then on the morning I was leaving, I had a sudden flashback.  When I took the bus home from Toronto back in June, we stopped at the Buffalo airport.  How cool would it be if I could take Greyhound from the airport to Niagara Falls?  So I looked and you can!  For only ($20/$/$15.00/$12.50 – we will get to that in a minute).  Megabus is even cheaper, only THREE DOLLARS to get to the Niagara Falls bus station in Canada.  But their schedule didn’t mesh with mine so Greyhound it was.

The price that came up for me on the Greyhound website was $15.  I could not buy tickets on the site, I was told I had to pay the driver in person.  He charged me $20.  I was not going to argue.  It was like negative eleventy billion degrees outside, coupled with wind gusts of 30+ mph.

We get to the Canadian border, which is always a pleasant experience.  No really.  I hate crossing this border.  They always act like you are trying to discreetly defect to Canada.  I also always get asked what I do for a living and “why aren’t you at work today”.  Duh, because I am on vacation in Canada, you dolt.

After being granted admission into Canada, we had to reload our luggage onto the bus.  The bus driver asks where you are going, to make sure to put your luggage in the right compartment.  I said “Niagara Falls” and it turns out he had originally thought I was going to Toronto, hence the $20 bus ticket.  He gave me back $7, telling me the bus is “$12-something, I am not sure on the change part”  So I am still not sure exactly how much the bus is, but I won $7 so who cares?

We ended up at the Niagara Falls bus station about 70 minutes after leaving the airport.  If I had taken the bus, I would still be on a local bus in America and nowhere near my final destination.

I decided to walk from the bus to my hotel.  According  to Google maps, it was only a half hour walk.  Here is something that you should know about walking from the bus:

There is a pedestrian path that goes all the way from the bus station to Victoria Street.  I did not know this.  I was following the Google maps directions and looking for street names to walk on the street.  I did not know until returning that I could have had a much easier walk had I known about the pedestrian path.  Not only did I not know it existed, I never saw it in the dark.  Even if I had, I probably would not have taken it because I wouldn’t have known what it was.  But now YOU dear reader, you know.  Take the pedestrian path.

I made it to my hotel completely frozen solid.  I was given a room that was across a parking lot and told I could walk inside.  Just take the elevator to the second floor and make a left at the Coke machine.

This is what that means in American:

Take the elevator to the second floor.   Walk into the room labeled “Ice and Vending Machines”

See the Pepsi machine and wonder if that’s the “Coke machine” and then walk through this door, which is not at all made for people walking with luggage to exit through:

Then once you do, you are outside on a patio.  From here you just walk around the patio and up a flight of stairs and down a walkway and WOO HOO!  You are at your room!

And bonus!  This is inside it:

My room view was pretty cool once I cropped out the parking lot.

Now it is only around 8:30.  I decide to stay in so I can get up at the crack of dawn and go see the falls at sunrise.  I had a very hard time sleeping because of the windstorm outside.  It was knocking my room door around like a maniac and I kept fearing someone was breaking in.

Up next, we see the actual falls!