Day 35: On the Way to Niagara Falls, Ontario

This was a post I wanted to put in before I splash the photos of Niagara across my blog.
Wanted to gripe about how horrible our day 35 was.

We reached San Diego International Airport on Day 34 quite early (about 2 hours before our flight) but we had no qualms about that. It was a red eye flight and I was looking forward to the free juices on this budget airline TranAir and how I could use some shut eye on the way to Buffalo.

When we were in the plane and on the way there, I realised the flight time was a lot shorter than I had thought cos they calculated the time of arrival to our transit stop in Atlanta based on Atlanta's time which is 3 hours ahead of San Diego's time. That meant we were cheated 3 hours of sleep!

So we reached Atlanta with only 1-2 hours of sleep and had to wait at the boring airport for another 3 hours before boarding our next transit flight to Buffalo. So we tried our best to sleep on the row of chairs in the airport. I've never ever slept at the airport like that but it was an experience. It was hard to sleep because the TV was on and was loud and you get a little paranoid about people stealing your bag.

In the end, we had a bit of restless sleep for about 1 hour maybe. I awoke seeing a lot of people sitting around in those waiting chairs. On the plane we only managed to sleep a little since the flight was just 2 hours.

So we reached Buffalo and had another 3.5 hours to kill since our Amtrak train to Ontario, Canada leaves only at 3.15pm and we reached the station at about 11.40am. We left our bags at the station's room and went off for lunch.

Buffalo is filled with maybe 80% African Americans. It was a little scary looking at the places you travel in the bus and on the street cos the place was old, kind of on the dilapidated side. The city area was slightly better but there were lots of weird crazy people, we call them 'xiao lang' (in hokkien) since they don't understand. :) Some xiao lang will just shout or make funny loud noises while walking on the road. Then a couple of times, after I caught sight of some strange homeless/shady looking character, we felt them following us. We walked fast and into crowded areas and they probably lost interest.

After lunch we returned to the train station and was given the bad news that our train would be 2 hours late. TWO HOURS! We're been waiting since 11.40am which was 3.5 hours before schedule and now with the additional 2 hours, it meant we were waiting for this train for 5.5 hours.

We calculated the possibility of taking the bus instead but in the end, decided to wait for fear we wouldn't get the bus plus refund was a hassle and had a fee. The train basically was held up because of freight trains along the way.

In the end, the train came about 2 hrs 10min late. We boarded and was quite impressed at the comfort level of our seats compared to plane seats. It was spacious and comfy and great views. Unfortunately upon reaching Niagara, customs came up to the train and took another 1-1.5hrs to clear us. They wouldn't let anyone go until ALL were checked. Plus there were 2 guys who got pulled out of the train to the immigration room.

All in all, our entire journey to Niagara Falls provided us with a grand total of 2+3+3.5+2+1.5=12 Hours of waiting time! I've never waited so long ever before. It broke the last record held by Chris when I waited him for 3 hours at Tiong Bahru Plaza for a movie.