Two weekends ago the weather was a lot more wintery than it is now, and we heard that the Niagara Falls were actually freezing over. Bram had already been to Niagara Falls before but I had never seen them. Even though Bram had a pretty important work related thing going on that sunday he decided that, since he could work remotely, it was worth the hassle. He booked us a motel room and a rental car, and off we went! Funny to mention; it's a 7 hour drive from NYC to Niagara Falls. I don't have a US driver's license yet, so Bram had to drive the entire distance by himself. That's a 7 hour drive on saturday, working and looking at the falls at the same time the next morning, then driving back 7 hours. INSANITY!!! He just shrugged and did it. Because he's a boss.
Our roadtrip started with the usual New York traffic.
The drive there was pretty uneventful, apart from the bald eagle I spotted flying overhead. It was beautiful! We did stop at the Pennsylvania Welcome Center on the way, which wasn't as welcoming as its name would suggest. It was mostly empty. But the restrooms were clean. We didn't get to Niagara Falls before dark, but we thought the falls might look pretty at night too so we went there as soon as we had checked into our motel room. The walk there wasn't far at all, but it turned out to be a bit tricky because most of the sidewalks hadn't been cleared. Bram tried to walk on what we guessed would be the sidewalk, but he soon realized that walking through snow that came up to his knees just wasn't a good idea, so we resorted to walking on the road. We got there eventually and the view was definitely worth all the stumbling through snow!
Spooky frozen tree!
The Canadian side kind of reminded me of Sonic 2's Casino Night Zone.
All the trees were frozen. And the lookout binoculars. And the lamp posts.
Bram spotted a face on these scenic lookout binoculars.
After a while I noticed that even the camera lens had frozen over. Which actually looked pretty awesome!
Mistah Freeze!
For some reason all the ice turned me into a nuclear popsicle.
Ice moon
And that's when the camera stopped functioning altogether, so we thought it might be a good idea to get out of the freezing cold and see if it would work again after defrosting. Unfortunately, the local Denny's where we went to grab dinner was cold and drafty, and for some reason they thought that turning on the ceiling fans in the middle of winter was a good idea. All the other guests were even wearing their jackets, but the staff apparently didn't see a problem with that. Despite the cold we had a nice dinner and the camera eventually defrosted again. To our relief it didn't sustain any permanent damage.
Side note; Denny's chocolate lava cake is AWESOME! It hurt afterwards and I cried when I looked up how many calories it contains but it was worth it. After dinner we underwent the perilous walk back to our motel to finally warm up in our comfortable room. I still vividly remembered the motel on our previous road trip... This one was WAY better! Clean, warm, dry and with decent beds. The next morning, after we had breakfast, I bought a souvenir t-shirt and Bram checked in with the office back in New York City, we hurried back to the falls to get a glimpse of them in daylight. Bram brought his laptop in case he needed to jump in at work, but he eventually managed everything from his phone. It was only slightly weird.
Does anyone else suddenly need to pee?
Hee kijk, een buizerd!
Not now honey, I'm working..
Ok, one picture.
NOT NOW HONEY, I'M WORKING!
Ooooh, pretty!
He did take the time to snap some pictures as well, it's all good :)
Another comfy bench..
I'm still 12 years old at heart, so I totally giggled at this.
New profile picture-opportunity!
Hang on, I need to do this one thing really quick..
Almost done..
A photo doesn't really convey the deafening sound of the waterfalls and rapids, so I made a video! Aren't ya glad?
I was curious about this, apparently it's a Native American dance show theatre and a big store. Even if it had been open, we didn't have time to check it out anyway..
Then, on the way back to the motel, I suddenly spotted a moving garbage can. It has been my experience that garbage cans or their contents should not be moving. Seeing as Bram had to stop anyway to concentrate on providing some emergency workforce, I took the chance to investigate further.
Not quite the monster I expected...
Back at the motel and our rental roadster.
That's right, real legit Temper Pedic beds!
We finally got back into the car and Bram started the long drive home. Like a BOSS. And then the weather did this.
Oh shit...
Bram expertly manoeuvred the car across the now extremely slippery road. There were snowplows everywhere but it kept snowing so they didn't do much good.. We stopped for lunch after a few hours, and we were both happy to be off the road for a bit.
At least we found decent coffee! ;)
But we had to get back on the road eventually, and continue the dangerous way back home. I'm totally serious about it being dangerous by the way, we lost count of the amount of cars we saw that had ended up next to the interstate, some even upside down. We passed 6 or 7 accidents, and we were behind dangerously swerving cars and trucks on more than one occasion. It was pretty tense. We were both very happy to finally see the familiar view of the city.
Almost home!
Bram managed to get us both home safe and sound. I didn't exaggerate when I said he's a boss. He's a total bad-ass! We dropped off the car and took the bus back home. By the time Kitty greeted us like we had been away the whole month (she's good at that) it was past 11PM. We just crashed into bed and went to sleep immediately. Kitty got some extra cuddles from me the next day to make up for our absence, and all was good in the world again.
It took a while to get all the pictures and video in order, but here it finally is! The Chinese New Year parade of 2015! The weather was absolutely wonderful, we were both very excited to finally see the Chinatown parade for ourselves, and it was fantastic!
Literally the first thing we saw and heard were bagpipes. For a second we thought this was the St. Patrick's day parade, but no, we were in the right spot!
Someone was a dragon's butt for the entire parade... That's dedication.
To our amazement, there were a lot of sponsored wagons in this parade. We're still not sure if that was an American cultural influence or if this is tradition in Chinese parades, but it was a bit of a culture shock for us either way. We're used to the Dutch "Carnaval" parades, in which most of the participants make fun of politics or current events, local celebrities or just themselves. Commercials or sponsors in these parades are totally unheard of. And serious political campaigning also never occurs. But I realize our Carnaval is more of a comical event, and the Chinatown parade was to wish everyone a happy new year, so in hindsight it does make sense :) We still needed to get used to it though!
There was one really funny guy at the end of this group, just watch the video!
This dragon was still in training. Very promising!
Definitely one of the cutest, happiest sheep I've ever seen!
More sheeple!
Accidental photobomb?
Tiny sheeple!
I think it's considered lucky to touch a dragon.
Lambert?
Police closed the parade, they looked like they were having fun too, though :)
Even these guys, although they also looked seriously alert. It's good to know they were there :)
Goat shaped figurines were hanging in the trees
Some looked suspiciously piñata-like
But they were getting shot at instead of hit. Strange customs..
The aftermath..
I don't think I'd have done this a year ago, but I mustered up the courage to ask if I could take a picture with this dragonhead. It was awesome!
Hence my "THIS IS AWESOME!"-face. The guy obviously didn't share my enthusiasm
After the parade we went to our favorite dumpling-place to get a bite to eat
Unfortunately, we weren't the only ones with the same idea. This was the line. So we decided to go somewhere else this time
Someplace where we could sit inside to eat our "bapao" rolls. They were tasty too! Man happy ;)
Afterwards we walked past this place. We heard it's famous
Yep, definitely famous
While Bram was taking a lot of photos of the parade (most of the photo's used were Bram's) I was filming everything. It took me pretty long to filter out the boring parts and make a compilation of the good bits. Here's the result, I hope you'll enjoy it!
Oh yeah, another reason why it took so long to finally make this post is that we went away last weekend, to gaze upon one of New York's most famous landmarks. You can read all about that next time!
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