Today we arrived in Buffalo! This time we had TWO hotel rooms with king sized beds (thanks, Dad!). The beds were so big that we could have fit about four people in one AND Jace could actually stretch all the way out. (PS He is 6'6".)I'm pretty sure that was his favorite part of the whole trip. Honestly we could have both slept in the same bed and not even been anywhere near close to touching, but, don't worry, Dad, we didn't.
After we checked into the hotel and brought in everything we thought we'd need for the night, we hopped back into the Yaris and drove up to Niagara Falls. We parked on the American side in a Duty Free shop parking lot (it was free) and walked over to the Canadian side because neither of us had ever done that before and I tell you what, I highly recommend it. All you need is your passport and you're good to go! As we were chatting with the Canadian border guard guy (and by chatting I mean he was looking at our passports and we were waiting to be allowed to go) there was a group of kids around our age that were being escorted back across the border by a police officer. It is one of Jace's goals in life to be asked to leave a country, so he was sufficiently jealous of their luck. We're still not sure what they did, but they seemed unaffected by the whole thing.
We wandered around the Canadian side for a while, mostly just strolling along the river/waterfalls and enjoying a nice walk after hours spent stuck in the car (the drive from the campsite to the hotel alone was about 6 hours). The most fun thing we did was the Journey Behind the Falls. It's where you get to go through these tunnels that have little look outs and you literally walk behind Horseshoe Falls (one of the smaller waterfalls in the Niagara vicinity). They gave us yellow plastic ponchos but Jace still got really wet. I, on the other hand, was prepared and brought my rain jacket. Sucka.
Also, remember how we were so clever and got free parking in the Duty Free shop lot? Well it was a good trick because the only exit out of said lot was to pay the $3.25 toll and cross the bridge over to the Canadian side. Lame sauce. So we crossed the border twice in one night. Good times. We had to explain to the border guard that we just wanted to turn around and he directed us to the customs building where for some reason they felt it necessary to search my car. Really? I think they might have mistaken the exhaustion in my voice and demeanor for something else (maybe, I don't know, drugs?) and wanted to make sure we weren't transporting any of the stuff back to the US. We weren't. Though with all the secret compartments in my car I bet we could have and not have gotten caught. But we didn't. But we could have. But we didn't.
