arienette

niagara falls was lovely. we had a gorgeous drive through canada, "fall colours" doesn't even begin to explain the magnificence of the trees all dressed up for autumn. the only issue we had with the highway between sarnia and, well, the rest of civilization, was that there were NO gas stations. there were no rest stops. and the speed limit is 100 km/h (60 mph), but the locals were going 100 mph. we got to the falls around 5pm and checked into our hotel, which was on center street right above clifton hill where all the cheesy attractions are. the funniest of these was the frankenstein-themed haunted house attached to a burger king; a giant frankenstein monster holding a whopper adorns the top of the building...

we walked down the hill, got a look at the falls, and retired to a bar & grill called Yanks for dinner. d got what appeared to be a good bar burger- i made the mistake of ordering a stuffed peppers appetizer for my dinner, and instead of green peppers like i was expecting they were hot red peppers. i swear i almost died.
we spent the rest of the evening wandering around the area on foot, playing video games in the giant arcade, and attempting to swim in the hotel pool which, although indoor, was of a decidedly canadian temperature (read: freezing cold). so we got dressed again and hit the bar across the street, called Jack's, which looked a bit more neighborhood-y and our kind of place than, say, the hard rock cafe's nightclub *gack*...we had a beer at Jack's and probably scared the grizzled old bartender- he asked us where we were from, and once we said Detroit suburbs he never came back to get us another drink. so after our beer, we went back to our solidly mediocre (and also quite chilly) hotel room for the night. i think i fell asleep watching the biography channel, and i will not tell you whose biography we were watching lest i die of embarassment.
saturday we woke up fairly early and went to the greasy spoon across the street for breakfast, where we were seated beside a table of cute asian girls. niagara falls is apparently a major tourist destination for hot young asians, as we saw plenty of both genders posing in front of various photo opportunities with their eensy-beensy digital cameras and their uber-fashionable clothing. we decided our choice of tourist trap for the day was the ripley's believe-it-or-not museum, where we spent hours looking at shrunken heads (i couldn't help it, i was absolutely fascinated) and butterfly-wing paintings and shoes which belonged to the world's largest man. d and i love that kind of shit, we did the ripley museum in new orleans too.
we then looted the duty-free, which ate up any cash we would have used for more tourist attractions...because a haunted house is a 15 minute scare, but three bottles of absolut and one bottle of maker's mark will stock our bar for ages. we took some nice photos of the falls, and decided to take k there next summer because there's plenty of fun stuff we'd like to do with her there, and it's not a bad drive at all.
we left niagara falls early in the afternoon and were back in the US almost instantly via the rainbow bridge, where we were castigated slightly by the customs official for buying more than our limit of alcohol. i was panicked for a minute, because we weren't aware of how much we were allowed exactly (i figured if it was too much, they wouldn't have let us purchase all of it at the duty-free) but the weary customs man said that mostly they don't disclose the limits just to make the sale. he let us go with a warning; i think he could see that we were completely oblivious and more than a little nervous. we then tried unsuccessfully to find a map of the niagara falls/buffalo/rochester ny area at the Worst Visitor Center Ever. "MAPS! REFRESHMENTS! SOUVENIRS! PONY RIDES!" the cheery signs in the window fairly screamed; yet they were sorely lacking anything except tattered brochures for places we'd just been- on the canada side of the falls- and a lackluster and thoroughly uninformative welcoming committee consisting of one woman. we got slightly lost, found a gas station with an alarmingly large german shepherd living in it, and obtained a map. it felt slightly like an RPG at that point. i kept expecting a map icon to appear above d's head or something.
we got our bearings and made our way to rochester. more gorgeous trees, and once we got into rochester there were amazingly beautiful houses as well. d and i both thought it reminded us of heritage hill in grand rapids, but larger. we found the hotel where my aunts and uncles were staying and invaded aunt lee & uncle gary's room to change into our party clothes. uncle jim, who was staying down the hall, crashed the wedding someone else was having downstairs to get us some drinks, and the night began. we walked to the restaurant where ali & harry's reception was being held, as it was only a few blocks away, and had a fabulous night socializing, eating a dinner that was so rich and wonderful, dancing and whatnot. they served pumpkin soup for the first course, and i am now determined to find a similar recipe. i could have swallowed gallons of the stuff. my cousin amy's baby Bram was there, who is 13 months old i think, and is now walking (by walking, i mean lurching around with his hands out for balance or spinning around in circles making himself deliriously happy with dizziness). i snuck out with my aunt lee to smoke cigarettes, and we met a bum outside whose name was ricky and claimed he had a twin sister named vicky.
a little after midnight, the party started winding down and we followed my cousins ian and jon and their girlfriends back to ali & harry's apartment, where we were staying the night. ali & harry live in the top floor of a grand old house, in what was once servants quarters. it's a really cool space, up in the gables of the house with exposed rafters they use as bookcases and giant skylights and a loft that you have to climb a ladder to get to. we all discussed how much we loved the place, just the angles and the skylights and the sheer size of it...two bedrooms, one large bathroom, a library, kitchen, dining room, and the loft. and all of it made even more open-looking because of the high ceilings the peaked roof made possible. my cousins and their siginficant others had already staked out their spots, as they had been there friday night as well, so d and i took the futon in the library as our sleeping quarters, and had a great time in the morning looking at all of their books, which ran the gamut from novels and fairy tales to incomprehensible science treatises (did i mention alison and harry met while they were at harvard together?).
we cleaned up the place a bit and said our goodbyes to everyone and set out in search of breakfast before the long (and thankfully uneventful) drive home.