Welcome to Canada and see you soon USA

After an 8-hour bus ride, we finally arrived in Buffalo on Saturday morning. However, that was not yet the destination of our trip.

The initial problem was that our AirBnb was in Fort Erie, not Buffalo. While it is only a 15-minute drive away, Fort Erie is already part of Canada, so we had to cross the border. When we found a taxi driver who was willing to take us, he told us that as non-Canadian citizens, we must not take the direct route over the so-called Peace Bridge, but rather enter through the "official border" at Niagara Falls. Otherwise, we would be deported there by border police. This made us very suspicious because we assumed that we could enter normally via the Peace Bridge and the internet did not say otherwise. But the next bus we could have taken would not have arrived for another 5 hours and would have followed the same route passing by the falls.
So reluctantly, we accepted his relatively expensive offer. We didn't really have any other choice. When we arrived at Niagara Falls, the taxi driver told us that we had to walk with all our belongings through border control and he needed the money that we paid him in order to be allowed to cross the border by car. Then he would pick us up again and take us to our accommodation. Although we had an uneasy feeling, we all knew a similar procedure from our class trip to London, for example. There, all passengers also had to walk with their luggage through a separate control.
In addition, the driver was very demanding when it came to paying. However, when we got out, we couldn't find any border control, only the American viewpoint of the Niagara Falls. An employee of the tourist center then explained to us that the good taxi driver had told us complete nonsense and when we wanted to look for him at the agreed location, he had of course disappeared. In the end, we had to enter Canada on foot via the Rainbow Bridge, which could be more accurately described as immigration with 15 kg on our backs. In addition, we had to pay for a taxi again in Canada.
Well, things like that happen too and we were all relieved to be in Canada and spent the rest of the day shopping, cooking, and relaxing. The next day, our mood was better again and we could slowly laugh about what had happened. Nevertheless, we didn't want to miss the opportunity to see the Niagara Falls properly, so we drove back towards Niagara Falls and took a boat tour right in the midst of it all.
We all had to admit that we had imagined the Niagara Falls more in the midst of untouched nature rather than tourist overload, but the waterfalls themselves are no less impressive for it. The next day, our bus headed towards Toronto. This time we had to wait for the bus for over 3 hours on a curb, but even that time passed by quickly and we eventually arrived in Toronto. Better late than never. And here we are now: in a beautiful apartment that will be our home for the next 12 days (except for Kathrin..).