Day Sixteen

Monday 20^th October

Up before dawn this morning, after a restless night waking every few hours to check I hadn’t slept through the alarm.  J slept blissfully and snore-fully through this of course.  Eventually I timed it right and woke with a minute to spare at 5.44am.  It was all stations go to shower and pack the last minute stuff, and then hoof all our luggage to the train station.  We decided to walk, only 8 blocks and at that time of the morning, very few people about.  Got there with plenty of time to spare and mooched into the Amtrak lounge to relax.  Then we heard the beginning of two announcements about our train that were interrupted and talked over by someone else, so we had no idea what important information was being imparted.  I decided I better go and ask, and apparently we had to go through some kind of checkin where our passports were presented to make sure the tickets matched our passports and were then given a luggage label for each bag (6 in total !!) because apparently Canadian customs are picky that each bag has a label.  As usual, it turned out they didn’t give a hoot and no-one checked that the bags we got off the train with in Canada matched those on our ticket.  Sigh.  These people really should talk with each other.  No security to go through, we just formed an orderly queue and after about 10 minutes wait, were herded down the escalator to the train.  Boarded, found a seat, and hefted the luggage into the overhead racks with no issues (easy enough with one person each end of the bag!)  Now it was time to sit back, relax and enjoy Amtrak hospitality for the next 9+ hours.  And it was a very nice relaxing trip, lots of gorgeous Fall tree colours as we followed the Hudson river up through New York State.  At Utica (pronounced Yoo-tikka) a woman with two kids got on.  Sigh.  A little girl of about 3 going on 13, and a baby boy about 9 months old would be my best guess.  Sadly he cried, and whined, and howled and whinged for most of the trip, and at each station, we would cross fingers that she would be getting off.  Eventually she did, at Rochester, so we at least had a few hours of relative peace for the rest of the trip.  The train was running late by the time we got into Niagara Falls, and was made even later as we had to sit on the train and wait for Canadian border control to decide how they were going to process us.  Eventually they reached our carriage and came on to tell us everyone had to unload all their bags and go through passport control and customs.  So off we went, queued up, and went through the usual “how long are your here for, where have you been, how long are you staying, what is the purpose of your visit” rigmarole.  Then we had to put our bags through x-ray and that was it, free to go.  We hoofed outside and grabbed a cab and headed to our motel.

We had picked the Fallsview Marriott because of it’s reputation for spectacular views over the falls, and my word, it did not disappoint.  Took our breath away when we first walked into our room.  Now we’re over it and don’t even bother to look.  Just kidding of course !!!!!  It’s stunning and it will be hard to walk out of here.

We were pretty hungry by now as lunch had been a good 6 hours earlier, so we headed off to find something to eat.