Day three was FULL of touristy goodness. We woke up in the morning with no concrete plans. We went across the street from the Crowne Plaza Hotel and had breakfast at Denny's. It was nothing fantastic, but a good deal of food to start the day. Turns out we were going to need it. Check out time at the hotel was 12:00 so we went back, grabbed our bags and packed up the Escape. In the hotel lobby at the concierge desk, they will set you up on a Niagara Falls tour. We had gone and looked at the falls the day before, but having a guide seemed like it would be fun. We signed up for the Niagara Majestic tour and the bus came to get us at noon.
Our tour guide was "Prady" thus we were dubbed the "Prady Bunch." Prady is an immigrant of Indian descent, has been in the United States since 1972, and has been a tour guide at for Niagra Majestic for 15 years. The first thing you do on the Niagara Majestic tour is go straight to the "Maid of the Mist" cruise of the falls. The boat ride takes you by the American Falls, the Bridal Veil Falls, and the Horseshoe falls. To stand at the top is one thing, but to be riding by the falls on a boat is an experience of mammoth proportions. You just can't fathom the volume of water cascading over the brink unless you are down there. It was truly amazing.
The second part of the tour is going to the "Cave of the Winds" which hasn't actually been a cave since the 1850s, but the name has stuck. I knew we were going t get drenched when they made us wear sandals and put our shoes in plastic bags in addition to the disposable rain poncho. CotW takes you down an elevator near the foot of the falls. When you get off of the elevator you then descend a bunch of wooden steps to the foot of the Bridal Veil falls. This was ripe with photo opportunities so check the facebook page to see all of the action. After the CotW, we went to a gift shop. The rest of the tour was bus rides to seeing the electric plants and other sites, but it was pretty much hop out of the bus, look over the rail, listen to some facts, hop back in the bus, repeat. One cool thing that we did get to see but not do was the jet boat tour of the whirlpool and the gondola that travels above the whirlpool.
We got back to our car at about 4:30, punched in our destination to the GPS and set off to Boston. There is NOTHING to do or see between Niagara Falls and Boston. We stopped at a little town called Canastota, NY: Home of the Boxing Hall of Fame. We stopped for a quick photo opportunity and then tried to find some dinner. I was sick of eating at chains so I wanted to find a mom & pop eatery. We ventured further into Canastota and found "New York Pizzareia" in the heart of downtown. It was around 8:00PM and we hadn't had a meal since Denny's so we were starved. It was definitely dive-ish, but the pizza was fantastic.
Hopped back in the Escape and and planned to drive for an hour, but like I stated earlier there is nothing between Niagara Falls and Boston. It took us until about 12:00 to find a suitable hotel. We finally stopped at a Holiday Inn Express (which is brand new) and got a fantastic room at a decent rate. So, here I sit writing about day 3 and about to embark on day 4.
