Niagara Falls (at night) 25.12.2017

Alarm clock was set to 7 a.m. to get up for our day trip to the Niagara Falls.
At 8:15 h we left the appartment. The ride took us 1,5hours with transfer to the "GO Bus" from Hamilton and then walking a bit. Again really friendly bus drivers (calling us sir and ma'am and thanking us for purchasing the tickets)

Unfortunately the sun didn´t show up as the weatherforecast predicted it. But Nevertheless the trip was worth it (second time for me- first time was 10 years ago & first time for Jannik). Both of us were impressed by those huge, noisy water house (Wassermassen). First we took some pictures and it got pretty cold, so we decided to go around a little. Asking ourselves why we did not go later, because the whole purpose of going there in winter was to see the Niagara Falls lightend up. So we had to stay until it was dark.

Not far away we ended up on a street which looked like a typical american street, sometimes seen in movies: a lot of colours, blinking lights, advertisements flashing from large screens, mechanical voices which are trying to convince you to join each establishment, praising their entertaining actions.
We went to look for a nice place to drink coffee or get a little snack (except of Tim Hortons, Starbucks or other rather high priced fast food chains) a little not too expensive diner would have been perfect. We found one "Denny´s" it´s a chain but offered good prices. There was a line outside and inside it was soo crowded that we decided to look around a little more.

We were thinking of looking for this place we passed on our first walk few hours ago (AI Mac´s Buffet AllYouCanEat for 7 loons .

After few minutes of walking and 15 minutes of waiting to be seated:
Finally in we looked around, because we were wondering what kind of people would for obviously "lower quality" brunch on christmas day. In Germany people would be busy with preparing the christmas dinner, relaxing, or just enjoying the atmoshere at home or whatever they like to do. But it´s not usual to go to an all you ca eat buffet with the whole family: We spotted mostly tourists and somehow the athmosphere was far away from christmas, except some christmas decorations.
The buffet was typical (north)american I would say: pancakes, waffles, tons of maple syrup, greek rice pudding (Milchreis:)), fruit (canned and sugared), scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon
Just for you to imagine how healthy it was =)
Anyway Jannik enjoyed most of it and I treated myself with a hot cup of coffee.
Warm and full we continued our walk around town and some shops gave us the opportunity to stay warm now and then.
At one time a gambling hall caught our attention and this was just craaaazy: a large room full of gambling machines, croweded with whole families playing games like "deal or no deal", doodle jump etc. I saw one father sitting in a little plastic shell ( open on the sides ) with his two daughter, both had a plastic gun in their hand aiming and pretending to shoot on zombies on a screen plus some other horrors to be discovered there. We think some Americans who live closeby might even just go there to have fun. There is a bridge over the niagara river (one side is American, the other one Canadian). But why on Christmas Eve? Well I guess we´ll never find out, we should have asked them ;)

Leaving this crazy street behind us, going back to the falls, ready to take some more pictures. It was freezing so we agreed on finding a Tim Hortons to grab a cup of peppermint tea and something sweet called "Applefritter" for Jannik, may you realised already...he is ALWAYS hungry!
Finally we spend enough time sneeking around. It was dark outside and we had 1 hour left until the bus came. We enjoyed the beaty of the illuminated Falls untill we were nearly frozen.
DEFINITELY WORTH IT

Arrival at a bus Stop near Hamilton was shortly after 8 p.m. Too bad that we had just missed our transfer bus home by 4 minutes, so we had to wait another 26 minutes – felt like sooo much longer and both of us were freezing so badly....Yeah, this area of canada isn't really cold, but -3°C and strong wind is still not really pleasent.
9:15 p.m. Time of arrival at home: I took a good long hot shower, meanwhile Jannik was so kind to prepare a hot soup for dinner.
Warming up and falling asleep so exhausted after such an exciting long day felt awesome.
Good Night!