Surprises

From yesterday....

 

We started our morning in buffalo, well, Amherst really – though nothing like our local one.  It was surprisingly easy to navigate the city and it all seems in many ways smaller than it should… With the notable exception of SUNY Buffalo.  The north campus, the newer one we think is shockingly huge.  It makes UCONN and UMASS seem like small liberal arts schools.  I was truly astonished.

But this aside, this morning we made our way downtown to Babeville, which (among other things) includes Ani DeFranco’s studio space, Righteous Babe Records.  It’s in a church!  Well, not in a church, it’s a church building taken over for recording studio, art, and concert space.  Sadly it was not open, but it was gorgeous.

From there we drove around some Buffalo neighborhoods – very urban artsy, hippie-esque.  Oddly M and I both agreed we liked Buffalo and it would’ve been an okay place to be.  Though at this stage, particularly given weather, there is no reason to be there.  Still, it was a surprise to find we rather liked it.

This being said, Buffalo also didn’t hold us that well.  The art museums didn’t have anything we particularly cared about.  We went to see the Frank Lloyd Wright house – because well, we have this tradition, but really… another FLW tour?  I just couldn’t do it.  The house looked nice though.  It was in a very urban (albeit expensive) neighborhood, I was surprised at this.  I think of him as requiring more property and less neighbors. 

FLW’s house here is 2 blocks from the zoo.  The exciting moment there here was that just outside the zoo we saw an urban bunny.  He was a tiny guy, on inner edge of the sidewalk, eating some shrubbery.  A bike came up the side walk, I don’t think the rider even saw the rabbit.  She stopped at the light a foot away from the bunny and the bunny didn’t flinch….

Down the road from this, we did see a dragon, so may be the whole scale is different here. Mike says don’t eat the mushrooms.

So, after driving around buffalo, we headed north, first to North Tonawanda.   A half horse town, but Hershel’s factory is there.  He made merry go rounds and other kiddie rides.  It’s in hard shape – I hope they make it, but it was neat to see the horses etc.  They’ve a working merry go around, but we opted not to ride.  (only horses – I really wanted a sea monster like the one we have in our dining room.)

Moving up the river, we got to Niagara Falls, NY.  It’s like a poor city threw up a casino and midway….I actually thought it would all be bigger.  This is true of the American side of the falls too.  We did walk out to see them, of course, and went up the tower walk way, and walked over to get closer and all… And they are impressive, but… at that point, more impressive to think about than to see.

As we have seen our share of plastic alligators, we did not walk around the midway area nor enter the block square high rise shopping mall.  Instead, we crossed the border to the other Niagara Falls.

Oh my.  This side didn’t just throw up a midway, it birthed one and the child is now a toddler.

We didn’t really stop or do anything today, we just did reconnaissance.  But even from the car, yes, indeed, there is no comparison of the Falls from the American side to the Canadian side.  The Canadian side makes the US seem sickly. 

And the midway… wow, more enough to for me to be overwhelmed and get my fill just driving around the block a few times.  There must have been 3 haunted houses, automatons all over the Ripley’s, the Ferris wheel…Giant Frankenstein 3-D billboards eating a hamburger from BK….

Wow.

Thankfully we are not staying in Niagara, but about 10 minutes north.  I was happy to leave the chaos and get a real, quiet, dinner.  We found a Vietnamese fusion place in St. Catherine where we’re staying.  It was fresh, good, quiet!

After dinner we took a ride to Niagara on the Lake.  Saw the lake, saw the ‘town’ – it looks like every other wealthy tourist town I’ve ever seen right down to the same stores:  Crabtree and Evelyn, 10000 villages…. It’s better than the plastic alligators, but still.

The lake is okay… big, but doesn’t feel big like an ocean.  Maybe it’s because I know it isn’t?

We are now done for the day and tired.  We are planning a super full day tomorrow doing the Niagara Fall’s stuff, like Maid of the Mist, etc.  We’ll be here again tomorrow night so, we’ll see where we are.