Day: June 11, 2011

Cleveland is an interesting place, there are quite a few empty buildings and buildings that were probably once office blocks but have been converted into multi storey car parks. In fact everywhere you turn there are car parks.

For dinner we ended up in a restaurant that only sourced produce from really local farmers. Matt had some scrummy garlic and rosemary french fries which I happily gobbled 🙂

Our main reason for staying in Cleveland was that it was a convenient break in our journey and it is the home to the “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”.

We were well prepped for our visit as we had listened to hours of “50s on 5”, an awesome radio station that only plays music from the 50s.

The museum is an interesting mix of video, music and nostalgic memorabilia. We both found the history of rock and roll the most interesting part and things like Bono’s shirt from some old tour the least interesting part.

I personally wouldn’t say that the museum is a must see place in America as it says in the Lonely Planet but each to their own.

I thought we would be sick of driving after that but it was surprisingly comfy and we weren’t horribly tired or grouchy with each other either, which is unusual for me 🙂

Now we we’re told to stay on the Canadian side of the falls as they were prettier, what they actually meant was that you can’t even see the falls properly from America!

So we crossed the border, another stamp in the passport, check! Checked into our lovely clean sheeted room and then ventured out into the crazy town of Niagara Falls.

Until we visit Las Vegas I can only speculate but I imagine Niagara Falls is like a mini Las Vegas for kids, all crazy bright lights, music blaring into empty streets at night, haunted houses, endless neon mazes, weird wax work museums and the odd lit up casino. It really is a bizarre and slightly eerie place, it reminded us of a set that could have feautured in “Erie Indiana” or a movie in a deserted theme park where people are chased by zombies.

So aside from the town there is of course the waterfalls. There are 2 sets but the most iconic ones are the Horseshoe Falls. We decided to go see them the evening we arrived as they are illuminated by changing coloured lights. The falls looked spectacular all lit up and Matt spent an eternity photographing them!

In the morning we headed out for a ridiculous pancake breakfast, it was huge and I couldn’t finish it but fatty Matty could 🙂

The falls in daylight are beautiful and huge, they’re not super tall but they are soooo wide. We took the famous “Maid in the Mist” boat so that we could get a little closer and we got so wet even with our silly blue ponchos on!