Southwest Airlines Reward Program made me earn a free round trip within US after I completed 8 roundtrips with them in 2 years. To utilize my free ticket to the fullest, we decided to head for a holiday to somewhere in East Coast, and the chosen destination turned out to be Niagara Falls. Took one day off from work, and left for Buffalo on Friday the 13th, the luckiest day on my calendar. At the Seatac airport marketplace we had Qdoba’s new and unique Egg Quesadillas for breakfast after which we hopped on to the flight to Chicago. Sunny a day as it was, I clicked some nice pictures of Seattle golf courses and freeways as the plane ascended into the partly clouded sky.
As it is with Southwest flights most of the times, our plane landed into Chicago 30 minutes before time though it had taken off slightly late from Seattle. This gave us around 3 hours of break until our Bufallo flight was supposed to take off. Good for us, as we decided to make a surprise sneak trip into the city to meet up with Bhaiya and Bhabhi. So we called up Bhabhi to give her a heads up, hailed a cab and reached Chicago GSB. Spotted Bhabhi coming towards us in her new look with straight hair. She gave a call to Bhaiya and told him that some of her friends had come over, so he should come to meet them. As we were waiting at the GSB reception, Bhaiya appeared from behind and must have surely been surprised to see Rikti and me. I think we were meeting after almost 1 year and he kept commenting on my modest weight increase – "CP, mota ho gaya hai". As Bhaiya’s MBA was coming to end, they had parties and get-togethers every Friday and one such party was going on in the atrium. We got to wear paper bands on our wrists and grabbed some stuff to eat. After spending an hour of quality time together, catching up, sharing pictures of our new house and clicking some more, it was time for us to rush to the airport. The departure attempt from GSB turned out to be a little adventurous in itself as we kept running around trying to hail a cab. Finally we got on a bus to Lake Shore drive from where we cabbed our way to the airport safely on time. Bhaiya and Bhabhi had plans for some evening Broadway/Opera kind of show which they must have enjoyed while we completed the second leg of our journey to Niagara. So the Chicago halt turned out to be a bonus trip en-route Niagara.
I would rate Bufallo airport as better than most US airports. We took our pre-booked GPS-enabled rental car from Hertz and started driving towards the hotel we had booked in Canada – The Inn at Lundy’s Lane. In fact we had meant to stay at a hotel on the American side but did not realize until too late that we had booked the room in a Canadian hotel. Before crossing over the border, we decided to go to the Niagara Falls State Park on the American side. The midnight stroll in the park was amazingly refreshing as we walked along the boisterous rapids that would in moments graduate to status of American Falls. Red, white, green, yellow and blue beams of light projected from the Canadian side illuminated the falls and we clicked a few pictures. After a while we got into the car and crossed the border into Canada, checked into our hotel, but soon stepped out to savour a delicious margarita pizza at a joint across the street. It was the best pizza Rikti had in over a year and I would tend to agree.
Next morning after checking out from the hotel, we had breakfast at Denny’s and then started for the majestic Niagara falls which was just a few miles away. The touristy area around Niagara Falls is sometimes also described as mini Vegas with flashy buildings and a few casinos. As we approached our primary destination for this trip, we got a breathtaking view of American Falls which we initially confused to be NF. It was fairly easy to find a parking spot and then we had nothing to do other than walk the Niagara Falls Way and enjoy the supposedly breathtaking views of Niagara. Quite honestly, my breath wasn’t taken away with the initial views of the falls until a little later when we got on the Maid of the Mist (MOTM) ride. Whenever you see pictures of people visiting Niagara falls or some travel program on TV, you can’t miss the blue and yellow raincoats that tourists are made to wear. The blue ones are worn on the MOTM, and the yellow ones are provided for the Journey Behind the Falls (JBTF) tour. The highlight of the trip was undoubtedly the moments when the MOTM boat slowly turns around in front of the Niagara Falls and all you can see is the majestic wall of water all around you. The JBTF tour was also nice and it was pretty interesting to see how the caves had been carved in the cliff behind the falls.
After treating ourselves to a buffet lunch at an Indian restaurant, we started to head nortwhards to Dundas, Ontario to meet Mickey didi and Mukesh Jijaji. The plan was to stay over at their place for the night and return to US the next day. We arrived at their house early evening and nibbled on some snacks. Jijaji took me for a walk on the trail behind their house. There was an old rusty windmill in their neigbours backyard. Their own backyard had a pond with lots of orange fish. I learnt that asements are a default feature in all houses in Canada. All of us including the kids Parth and Saransh went for a hike to the Sherman and Websters falls, just two of the scores of falls in that region. In the evening I had a fun guitar session with Parth. Didi made some wonderful golgappas and aaloo tikkis for dinner, after which we sat through first 10 minutes of a Saif Ali Khan movie, and then went off to sleep. The next morning Jijaji and Didi took us to Toronto where we went up the CN Tower and also walked by Lake Ontario. We had our lunch at Gerrard Street Indian Bazaar which was an Indian community market very similar to Devon street in Chicago. After returning back home to Dundas, we took our leave, waved goodbyes to the Jain family and returned to US. Early next morning was the flight from Buffalo to Seattle which we slept through.