Niagara – A step from the norm

Chuck (my team leader at Scotia bank) invited us down to the city of Niagara for the weekend, with a group of his mates…sounds good!...we’d been meaning to get down there…seeing as how its one of the great sites of the world etc…

It’s only a 1.5 / 2 hour drive from Toronto (once you get out of town)…about Auckland to Hamilton.

The similarities don’t end there…lol

Niagara is pretty much on the border between the USA and Canada, and is just across the river from Buffalo.

We brought our weekend bags to work, and headed straight out from there on Friday night.

Chuck has a van (the Chuck Wagon of course), so there were 5 of us in there…Caren, Karen (Chucks wife), Jason (a work mate), Chuck (driving) and myself.

The weather seemed to be holding, which is good as the weather forecast hadn’t been to promising looking.

Being as how it’s Friday evening, Jason is already 1/3rd of the way through a bottle of Vodka on the ride down, so by the time we arrive at our Motel, he’s ready to go!

We meet up with the rest of the folk (in adjoining rooms)…. The Motel is a pretty seedy dump, but we’ve been in worse, and it’s cheap so that’s good!

Any ways, usual Friday night shenanigans … large group stumbling around new town looking for place to eat.

I should point out at this stage the Niagara is a Gambling town.

“Hey …we’ve got one of the most amazing and beautiful natural features in the world at our doorstep…LETS BUILD CASINO’S AND STRIP JOINTS!!!”

We wind up in a Chorizo (?) place (ya know, like wildfire in Auckland, with all the carved meats and the little red/green signs) …have a great feed (although super expensive), then head to the Casino!

I wasn’t in the mood to spend money at this stage, but was quite content to wander around the Casino and try and pick up a few new games…I ended up watching 3 Card Poker for a few hours….very cool game, might have to give it a go one day! (with payoffs like 64/1!!).

Anyway, after a few hours we headed back to the Motel, where the wary hit the sack (ie. all the wives/ girlfriends), and the bold carry on!

Gambling’s in the air, so pair of Euchre games start up with a $20 buy in..

..Unfortunately I get paired with Jason, who has been drinking steadily for 6 hours now…however, even in his impaired state, he was playing ok, considering he didn’t know the rules at the beginning!

We come within 4 points of winning, but eventually get taken ….so I’m down 4$ for the weekend! (heh).

The next morning, we wake up, only to find we are in the middle of a blizzard!

Snow everywhere and it’s pelting down!

We have to take a couple of Taxi’s to Denny’s for Breakfast.

(Clifton Hill the main drag of Niagara Falls township)

After breakfast the plan is to stop by the Casino to “warm up” , and then those who want to take off and do touristy things.

After a quick $30 blown on Roulette, we manage to Get a Blackjack table to ourselves (8 of us playing, and 2 people roaming to step in for toilet breaks etc..) … this was a very cool way to play, as everyone on the table knows each other and you can relax a bit.

We change the table limit to $5 minimum (the lowest) and settle in….
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…..6.5 hours later we emerge.

We’d almost all managed to last that long…Caren and I went in with $60 of chips….I ended up with $35 , but Caren managed to come out with $120 odd, which was great, as she’d never really played Blackjack before….another of our friends, Jimmy, managed to (by gambling like a maniac and trying to loose all his money) come out ahead by $600 …

Karen (Chucks wife) took $700 on the roulette table!

Anyway, we actually had a great time, if a little different from our normal

After that it was straight to find some food (as we hadn’t had a break for lunch and it was now 8PM), where the winners shouted us all dinner and drinks.

The snow was still falling thick and fast, so we never did get around to doing anything touristy .We’ll head down at another time (if the opportunity Arises) though, and check out such cultural masterpieces as the “Ripley’s believe it or not Museum”

By Sunday Morning, everyone had had enough (heh…some pretty seedy feeling individuals) , so we grabbed breakfast and split..

(The Group)

The bad weather was going to make the journey back up to TO a bit hairy, but we managed to do a quick drive by of the Falls, which were barely visible, but still extremely impressive

(the Falls shrouded in mist and snow)

We quickly managed to double park and take few shots, and then it was back up home.

All-round a really fun weekend….not that we’ll make 7 hour gambling sessions a norm in our travels, but it was something different and really fun.

(If the wind changes, it'll freeze like that!)

We still don’t know about our Temp Working Visa’s, so have no idea whether we are going or staying…..

Only 5 weeks left on our current visa, so it’s all coming up really quickly …