Written October 2019
This morning, Norina and I woke up early to make our way to the Newark airport to meet my parents. We grabbed a couple donuts from Dunkin Donuts, and then hopped in an Uber over to Newark. From here, my parents picked us up, and then we headed up towards Niagara Falls. It was about a 6+ hour car ride, but it actually didn’t feel too bad. Maybe because my mom drove the whole time, and we fell asleep a little here and there. But it also gave us some time to talk and catch up. We also listened to a Casefile, but I don’t think my parents liked it too much…that particular episode was also pretty dark…so we followed it up with a more uplifting podcast episode about Chloe Kim. We wound up stopping off to grab some pizza and subs for a late lunch in a small town along the way – and not much later, we were in Niagara Falls!
We got in a little before 4, and after driving around a little bit to find some parking (I managed to find us some free parking by a church with just a little walk), we made our way to Goat Island on the American side. We walked around the outside of the island for a bit, until we came upon the Cave of the Winds attraction. There wasn’t much of a wait for us to be able to get in, so we decided to just check it out today while we were there. The forecast for tomorrow wasn’t looking great anyways, so we figured might as well take advantage now. And it was a nice thing to do, as my parents had never done this before, in any of their previous outings to Niagara Falls.
After a short walk through a small museum of sorts and history video/presentation of Niagara Falls, we got our free sandals and ponchos, as we were going to get WET! Even though they only let so many people in at every entrance time, the tour is self-guided and paced, as you just walk around the decks as you please to see the falls and views of Canada. It was pretty cool, and you wind up getting pretty close to the American side falls, and can get VERY wet!
Initial Views (still dry)
Closer, but still mostly dry
Soaked
After we had enough of spray from the falls, we made our way back up the elevator and away from the ‘Cave of the Winds’. From here, we decided to check out the view of the falls from above, looking down on the falls as well as the other people walking around the decks of the Cave of the Winds.
After this, we just walked around the rest of the perimeter of Goat Island to get more views of the Canadian side of the falls, the River Niagara, as well as 3 Sisters Islands, which are much closer together than it looked on a map. I think it was like 15 steps on a footbridge from one ‘island’ to the next. Some nice views of the river from here though. Overall, it was a nice walk around Goat Island! No need to take the tram around!
After we got off the island, it was fairly late into the evening, so we decided to find some dinner. There wasn’t anything nearby that was open and sounded too appealing to any of us, so we finally settled on Hard Rock Cafe. It was fine…I think we all pretty much had some burgers or ribs…typically fare – it got the job done. Oh…we also got some nachos, which I think we wound up taking home and having for breakfast the next day 🙂 After dinner, we got checked into our hotel room for the night. We shared a suite this night, and Norina and I created a makeshift floor bed using all of the couch cushions…it worked out pretty nicely! Plus, we were all pretty tired, so we passed out pretty quickly. Good first day, and we got to see quick a bit, considering we didn’t make it there until pretty late in the day!
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The Dating Life of Norina and Jonathan 