Back from our trip to the Nevada desert, we headed for upstate New York and had a day excursion to the beautiful Niagara Falls. For the first time in our lives, we flew a round-trip within a single day: we took a plane from Baltimore in the morning and were back at home just a few hours later.
Five years, a couple of weeks and hundreds of thousands of tourists later, both the Maid and the Mist were still there, still engaged in their seemingly perpetual ritual, still sharing the dance floor between the moose and the eagle…
For me, it was a great experience to go back to what once was the highlight of my first transoceanic adventure. I distinctly remember arriving there from the Canadian side, looking at the balloon with the ‘I heart NY’ emblem and wondering if I would ever get the chance to step into the US. Something which today feels so “normal” just felt so out of reach at that time! You truly can never know what life is gonna bring (almost like a box of chocolates, right Forest? ;-).
I also remember that during my first visit five years ago I had some technical difficulties with a camera that I had borrowed from a friend and all my pictures were lost. Man, what a shame! It felt like the kind of opportunity that you may get once in a lifetime and I just screwed it up, going back home empty-handed with no pictures to hang on to and no more souvenirs than the memories inside my brain. Well, this second time around I made up for my youthful error and devoured hundreds of megs on a pixelating shooting rampage of epic proportions which left me as trigger-happy as the geekest of geeks can be. Revenge, oh sweet revenge!
Anyway, after a long ride from Buffalo Airport in a shuttle driven by a hard-core fan of Howard Stern who simply couldn't get enough of his brand new Sirius satellite radio receiver, we arrived at Niagara Falls Park and went for the observation deck and the Maid of the Mist.
We also had an awesome time going through the Cave of the Winds, where we got real close to the American falls and ended up being severely splashed as a result. Still, being the month of July, the water felt just great!
After the cave, we simply wandered around while taking in the amazing sights and the scenario. We even had time for a nice burger at the Hard Rock café (our second visit to one of this places in less than a month… talk about the Stockholm syndrome) and we also had time to fall asleep during a rather boring Imax movie. Hey, don’t blame us… it was siesta time after all… and, anyway, what’s the point of looking at the Falls inside an Imax theater when you can just step outside and have a look at the real thing?
One way or another, the day trip turned out to be pretty fun and, although exhausting, it allowed us to share a few laughs and a whole new collection of great moments.
