Month: June 2011

Our drive from Boston to Niagara Falls was to be our first of many loooooooong drives. It was about 400 miles so we thought it would take about 8 hours but after many pit stops it took us about 10 hours in the end.

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!

After Niagara we headed to Cleveland, a mere 5 hour drive away…

First stop after getting the car is Boston. We stayed in a Motel 6 just outside the city, which is a budget motel chain. Definitely the worst place we’ve stayed… possibly ever :-S We’re almost certain the bed sheets weren’t washed, so Katherine slept in her sleeping bag liner and I had to get one the next day. Hopefully that’s the lowest point we’ll reach for accommodation!

We drove into town on Sunday and spent the day wandering. Quincy Market is the best place to find food IN THE WORLD! So many different types and all tasty.




We both preferred Boston to NY – more chilled out and nicer to walk around. The buildings feel like they have a bit more history to them as well. We went to see X-Men: First Class in the evening, mainly because we didn’t want to go back to our horrible room!

Ok, so there’s been a bit of a gap between updates in the past few days. We’ve either not had access to internet or we’ve not had time to do it because we’ve been searching for accommodation instead!

Saturday was our last morning in New York, and we nipped up to see the public library, which is a bit like a museum/gallery too.


Then it was time to pick up the car! I was a bit nervous about all the driving at this point – silly considering we’re on a roadtrip! We turned up at the rental place… only to be told that the booking had been cancelled 🙁 We’re still not sure how it happened, but the rental company had it as cancelled and the broker didn’t. So we were looking at a roadtrip without a car!

Katherine got a little weepy, and they took pity on us. After about two hours of back and forth between Holiday Autos and National, it eventually all got worked out and we were allowed to pick any car we wanted! Katherine didn’t fancy anything too large as she’s only used to driving a Nissan Micra, so we picked a Ford Fusion, and it’s been great so far… as Katherine is showing here!


American driving is a little crazy – undertaking seems to be the norm, as is random lane changing to get ahead, and despite numerous warnings from people before we came out that they’re really hot on speeding here, several times we’ve been left standing by every other car/truck/bus on the road as we stuck to the limit. Oh, and the trucks here are huge, often with three trailers hooked together which can get interesting when it’s windy!

Really good day 🙂 Apart from the time we had to spend this morning searching for somewhere reasonable to stay in Boston, we’ve had a lovely time. We went on a bus tour of Brooklyn, stopping to get a genu-wine slice of Eye-talian pizza, then walked back over the Brooklyn bridge. That big yellow thing Katherine is stuffing her face with is a whole mango on a stick, which is possibly the most awesome thing we’ve eaten here! Not really NY food, but there it is.

We went to the Met in the evening and saw the Alexander McQueen exhibition. Katherine loved it, and I didn’t mind it, so a roaring success 😛 Couldn’t take any photos in there, but there was also some Tiffany stained glass which was very impressive, so here’s some of that instead.

Then we went to the rooftop garden and had a drink. Didn’t realise we’d jumped the whole queue until we were at the bar. Oops.

Very, very windy and surprisingly cold, but a great view at sunset of the lights starting to come on downtown. Forgot to take a good photo for the blog though, so you’ll have to make do with this one of Katherine instead 🙂

Well, what can I say? Katherine was so unimpressed that she didn’t even want to get off the boat! The thought of having to queue in the baking sun just to get back on was too much for her, so we sailed right by both the Statue and Ellis Island. Nevermind – they do say that the best views of it are from the water 😛

Did this on Wednesday night – great view! There was a storm brewing to the east too which looked amazing, but I couldn’t snap it in action.

Oh, we also went for a bus tour and got mild heat stroke, so we ended up sleeping a lot of the afternoon :-S

We spent a lovely afternoon in Central Park yesterday. It’s incredibly hot here so it was nice to go somewhere green and shady!

We did actually make it to New York, in case you’re wondering! We’re staying in a place called the Broadway Plaza Hotel, about 15mins walk south of Times Square, and we’ve got a pretty great view of the Empire State Building from our window.