When I found out that I needed to go visit a customer in Bradford, Pennsylvania, Arlene and I decided that it would be fun to take the kids and go to Niagara Falls and to Palmyra. Bradford wasn’t very exciting, but I got my work done, and that’s the important part. Anyway, we left Bradford on Tuesday and drove the short distance (~110 miles) to Niagara Falls; we crossed the Peace Bridge, cleared Canadian customs, and made our way to the Embassy Suites Niagara Falls-Fallsview.
I’d used some (well, actually a lot) of my accumulated Hilton points to reserve a room, but the hotel doesn’t allow you to reserve falls-view rooms as award stays. The reservations clerk offered to let me reserve a falls-view room for CDN$100/night, but I decided to take my chances.
At check-in, I politely asked the clerk whether any upgraded rooms were available; she hunted for a couple of minutes and produced the key to room 1012, which had just a smidgen of a view of the falls. Not much, but still nicer than I expected; the room also had a great bathroom with a large Jacuzzi and a separate shower. Unfortunately, it also smelled funny, but we figured the smell would dissipate overnight, so we took the incline railway down to the falls area, where we walked along taking pictures and seeing the sites. (Bonus video: Tom and Matt chasing seagulls.)
When we returned to the room, we figured out what the smell was: a mix of deodorant and cigarette smoke. After spending the night there, Tom’s asthma had flared up, so the next morning I asked the hotel to move us to another room. The clerk forewarned me that she’d have to move us back to a city-view room, but that was fine by us since that’s what we’d paid for.
(A couple of quick hotel notes: parking is CDN$20/night. It might be available at the casino next door for less. The lobby and elevators were always crowded, and waits for the elevators sometimes stretched to 5 minutes. If you’re having the hotel breakfast, get there before 9am to avoid long lines, though they usually move fairly quickly. There’s a coin laundry on the 10th floor that’s well worth the CDN$2/wash.)
We headed off to Marineland, where Arlene and I had had such a good time on our prior visit. We visited both of the shows: one with some sea lions and a better, longer one with dolphins. In the second show, David was picked as an audience volunteer; he got to “visit” one of the dolphins (see the video). Marineland also has buffalo, which we visited for Matt’s sake. His new #2 favorite animal is the beluga, but we all thoroughly enjoyed everything we saw.
In the meantime, I tried calling Tom’s doctor to get a prescription for his Xopenex. Guess what? Canadian pharmacies (at least the ones I called) won’t accept prescriptions from US doctors. I’d always thought that was the big deal about buying drugs from Canada; obviously I missed something. Anyway, after a quick but late lunch, we walked across the street to Cirque Niagara, which I already reviewed.
After the circus, we went back to the hotel to get our new room assignment. We picked up the keys to 3318, went up to our floor, and saw that the room (at the end of the hall) had a city-view window in the sitting room. However, when we opened the connecting door to the bedroom, we were treated to an eye-popping view of Horseshoe Falls (and the Konica Minolta tower, right next door). I guess it was the hotel’s way of saying “sorry we kept your son from breathing”, but it was awfully nice nonetheless.
We went down and had dinner at the Keg, one of the on-property restaurants. They had a gluten-free menu; the food was excellent and the service was quick. However, they keep that place cold, so take a sweater. (I should also note that the hotel’s breakfast buffet is quite good, with plenty of gluten-free stuff, and getting a free breakfast for our heavy-eatin’ boys was a definite plus).
Thursday we loaded up the car and drove to Palmyra, about 120 miles from Niagara Falls. We took a leisurely tour of the Hill Cumorah (where, sadly, there was a groundskeeping crew at the Moroni monument, making it a little less spiritual than I was hoping for), Grandin’s printing shop (where the boys all fell in love with the sister missionary, Sister Mulehstein, who led our tour), and the Sacred Grove. Arlene and I really enjoyed the Grove; I’m not sure how much the boys got out of
it, but they seemed to enjoy the overall experience. We stopped in Batavia to buy a new cooler, then went back to the hotel, dropped off the van, and went to the Rainforest Cafe for dinner. Mistake! It was expensive, the food was mediocre, and they didn’t have any gluten-free food (save Arlene’s salad).
Friday we went on the Maid of the Mist and over to Clifton Hill, where we let each boy pick out a stop. Matt chose the Spiderman ride at the Marvel joint. Tom chose the Guinness museum, and David chose the SkyWheel. I took Matt to the funhouse as a bonus. (Arlene wisely chose a different attraction; I think she got the best deal).
We tried to watch the fireworks Friday night from our hotel room; normally they’re launched over the Horseshoe, but when winds change they sometimes launch between the two falls, and that’s what happened. We couldn’t see anything, but we were all exhausted, so it wasn’t a big deal.
Saturday we drove home through almost incessant rain. We took the northern route through Hamilton, London, and Windsor; the scenery doesn’t vary much, but there was little westbound traffic, so we made good time.
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