The Amazing Race Series 2 - Day 11 - Drive to Niagara Falls

[neilhd]

Today we were leaving Washington and heading up on a long drive to Niagara Falls. So this may not be the most interesting day!

We were packed up and out of our room by 07:45. We went back to the Corner Café again, but it wasn't open yet. It was only 15 minutes until opening, but I wanted to hit the road as soon as possible. So instead we went to Starbucks which was a few doors down. Ele and I each had a bagel and Joe had a ham and cheese croissant. Obviously there was coffee involved. My usual is a large, skinny caramel latte, extra-hot, if you're ever buying.

Eating didn't take long and we went back to the hotel, retrieved our bags from our room, checked out and had the valet bring our car around. We were on the road by 08:30.

I was taking no chances with Sat Navs again, so I again had 2 of them going - Google Maps on my phone, and my Garmin. We headed over Potomac and spent a short while in Virginia before heading a bit more Northwards.

The drive was fairly uninteresting. It wasn't on a huge freeway, but mostly single-lane roads. It was a Sunday so the traffic was light. Once or twice we got stuck behind huge trucks - always in places with "DO NOT PASS" signs everywhere (somebody had put Gandalf in charge of road signage) but we made good progress. Eventually we got hungry (no surprise there!) and, being in the middle of nowhere, had to wait ages for something to come along. Of course we were hoping for some over-romanticised small-town American diner where we would go in and the heavily pregnant, gum-chewing waitress would sit us in a red-vinyl covered booth seat, and we'd have burgers and milkshakes and then a slice of pie. However, the first thing we came across was a McDonalds so we went in there. We all had buttermilk chicken burgers. They were actually quite nice. Joe kept going on about them for the rest of the holiday! The McDonalds was quite busy, and it was clearly a Sunday treat for many of the locals who all seemed to know each other. It's entirely possible they were all related to each other, even though we weren't in Virginia anymore. I'm trying not to stereotype, but the lady at the till who took our order had eyes looking in two different directions, neither of them at me.

As we left Ele and I each got a large coffee to go. We got outside and took a sip and immediately threw it in the trash. Most gross coffee ever. Definitely not the same as the McDonald's coffee in the UK, which is actually pretty good. There was a coffee place a bit behind the McDonalds in a little strip-mall, but it was closed.

We got back on the road, still needing caffeine, and about 20 minutes later came across a Tim Hortons of all things, by itself in the middle of nowhere. We weren't even in Canada. Still, they do pretty good coffee in there so we pulled in and got some. I also got a cinnamon swirl and the others got a donut, because it'd be rude not to.

Basically we saw lots of this:

We arrived into Niagara Falls at about 4pm, meaning we took 7 and a half hours, including stops, to go 400 miles. I was happy with that. We were going to stay the night on the American side because a) I didn't want to bother with the border after an all-day drive, and b) Why not. We stayed on the Canadian side last year anyway.

We were staying at the Sheraton At The Falls hotel. We found it easily enough, checked-in and then I went and self-parked the car. The hotel wasn't great if I'm honest. Sheratons are usually ok, but the corridors were really brown and dingy. The room was the same. Nothing wrong with it per se, and it was all clean, just a bit… brown and dingy. It was big though, with loads of on-site amenities.

One good thing it did have though - was a really nice pool. It had a large swim area, a really deep area where they could jump and dive in, an aquarium and a shark tank. Oh, and a couple of large hot-tubs. We had fun swimming and hot-tubing for a while. There was only a couple of other people in there. One of them looked exactly like Seth Rogen. I mean, do a double-take-and-look-really-closely like him. The aquarium had a couple of dead fish in it, but never mind.

Once we had dried and dressed and so on, we went to go to the onsite Rainforest Café. We went in and were told 45 minutes for a table. We asked if we could sit at the bar for a drink whilst we waited and she sure. So we went over there and found that there were some tables in the bar that would fit 3 people, and they were happy for us to sit there and order food so we did just that. We probably had a better view of the restaurant than most of the people sitting in it anyway. Seth Rogen's doppelganger was sitting just below us (the bar area is raised about 3 or 4 feet higher than the rest of the restaurant).

We ordered some wings as a starter, and I had a much-needed beer. The wings came quickly and were nice. I then had another beer. The rest of our food, however, didn't actually show up. Our server was really nice and kept apologising and eventually realised the kitchen had lost our ticket. To make it up to us she gave us free drinks in free souvenir glasses - anything we wanted. So I had yet another beer, Ele had a frozen margarita and Joe had some juice.

Eventually the food came and was actually really nice. I had a steak, ribs and coconut shrimp combo. Ele had steak, fried shrimp and garlic bread, and Joe had a burger. Once we'd finished eating a guy came over who looked like the manager. He asked Joe if he liked arcades (there was an arcade next door to the restaurant). Obviously Joe said yes, and the manager gave him a $20 card to use in there!

The server then came by with our bill and said she'd only charged us for one lot of drinks (we'd had 3 lots), and also gave us the new souvenir glasses. So basically we paid for 1 beer and 2 Pepsis. I said we had a $10 coupon that we'd got from a booklet in the room, and then also that I'd got a Landry's card with a $25 credit on it. She said that they didn't take Landry's cards like that in this location, but would give 10% off to card holders.

So in the end, the bill was only about $80! Given we had starters, special combo meals, much alcohol, and got given souvenir glasses and a $20 arcade card, we did pretty well out of the 30 minute delay to our food! We left our server a $30 cash tip, as she was actually really good and clearly made sure we were looked after. I have a bit of a reputation in our family for walking out of restaurants if the service is bad and stuff takes too long but our server handled it all really well, and did all that whilst running the bar at the same time.

We went into the arcade next door (still within the hotel) to use our card. I was quite good at the throwing and basketball games, considering I'd drunk 3 beers and most of Ele's frozen margarita. It was one of those arcades where you win "tickets" for each game, except these were virtual ones and got loaded onto the card, which is far better than the armfuls of tickets you end up with normally. I ended up topping the card up with another $20 or so as they wanted to play more games still. Whilst queueing for the prize machine at the end, we got given another couple of cards by other people who were leaving. In the end Joe had enough points (about 2200 I think) to get quite a lot of junk. We still had some points left over so I tried to give the card to another family who looked at me like I was trying to give them some dog poo from the sole of my shoe. I found someone else to give it to instead.

We decided on a late-night walk to the falls, so we headed down Falls Street to it. It was only a couple of minutes down the road and we were soon at them. You seem to get a lot closer from this side.

I realised this was actually the first time this holiday that we'd experienced night time anywhere!

We spent 10 minutes here, then walked back home to bed, getting back at about 10:45pm.

[Melbatb]

That was a long drive!

Good bargain on the meal!

Loved our trip to Niagara - the noise is amazing!

[WileyCoyote]

Not so bad for a long travel day apart from the " hills have eyes (looking in different directions)" lunch experience. We had something similar in a place called Waskom. Slightly unnerving ! A shame the hotel was dingy but total result on the dinner front there. Way to go on that. Impressive food and even more impressive bill. Also great that you got use the pool and other amenities. I take it the shark tank wasn't actually in the pool, lol, that would elevate it to a whole other level of thrill seeking.
How nice to walk to the Falls after dinner. They must be quite spectacular.

[jocat]

Well that was a long drive today, but the evening sounds like it made up for it.