When in Roam: Three Cities, One Falls, Endless Wonder
- T'Anna
- Jul 15
- 5 min read
In this wanderlust journey, I drift from Buffalo's charm to the roaring beauty of Niagara Falls on both sides of the border. That concludes a total of three different cities in one trip! Visiting multiple cities during one trip has been on my travel bucket list for quite sometime. I feel that traveling here was the right place to start doing that. Each city is in close proximity of each other. Each in my experience dealing with the traffic was less than an hour drive, less than 50 minutes actually. So to start, I decided to take a trip to Buffalo, NY to attend their 50th year Juneteenth Festival. One of the largest and longest running in the states. What a great opportunity to visit during their milestone year! Niagara Falls was included because I did travel with my mom and she has wanted to visit for a while. Of course I was down for the adventure since it was only like a half an hour drive from Buffalo, NY depending on traffic. But, I had to take our adventure even further and cross the border lol. We both have our passports now so why not use them 🤷🏾♀️😊. At the Falls you can see the Canadian side within reach so there really wasn't any excuse in my mind 😁. So here's just a quick weekend trip overview of how I spent my time in 3 different cities.
Day 1:
That Friday we got our rental car from the airport and shortly after headed towards Buffalo, NY. I did avoid tolls on my trip so it took around 5.5 hours to get there from Central Ohio. Does anyone take tolls and is it worth it? This is also the longest drive I have done so I wanted to drive all the way to see what my limit is. To be honest I think I did great. The only break I took was to stop by to use the restroom 3 hours in lol. On the way there, surprisingly it didn't seem to take long to get there! But, on the way back was a different story lol. Which in my experience I have always felt that it took longer to get to your destination than when leaving because when you leave you know what to expect on your way back home.
Anyways, we arrived in Buffalo, NY, checked in our Airbnb, and headed straight to Niagara Falls. Luckily, it wasn't crowded and so it was easy to see everything. Granted we got there later in the evening so most attractions to do on the Falls were closed. The New York side was very chill and nature oriented. Perfect place to relax and even have a picnic watching and listening to the Falls. Beautiful for pictures so make sure you take some! I know i'm working on doing that as well. Need a balance of enjoying the moment and recording memories. After a long drive I was hungry, so we headed back to Buffalo University District and got something to eat at Halal Feasto. The food was delicious and is vegetarian friendly.
Day 2:
Saturday, Buffalo's Juneteenth Festival took place for the weekend so we went there. That day was beautiful, the sun was out and it was like 80 degrees. The festival took place at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park with vendors going on for a mile, plus free parking so keep that in mind 😉. You can park in the parking lot at the school or any neighborhood that's close to the park for street parking. Just don't park in front of someone's driveway, it's common courtesy and a traffic violation. Once we left the festival, we headed back to the Airbnb to rest and regroup. By that time it cooled down so I was outside on the balcony enjoying the weather writing. Then, we headed to a Black-Owned restaurant called the Fire Spot Restaurant. Serving soul food and breakfast all day long! There are also vegetarian option available so there's something for everyone to eat.
After we finished eating we headed back to Niagara Falls. I genuinely enjoy fireworks and every night Niagara Falls has a fireworks show at 10pm. If you're more of a morning person, try to take a nap if you can before lol. I made to sure to go and watch because why not and yes, there was a congested crowd. Grateful I brought my tripod/selfie-stick with me so I could position my phone higher up to get good videos. I would recommend bringing or buying one for that reason especially if you don't too many people in your video that are blocking your view. The show lasted for about 5 minutes and they pretty much started on time so make sure you get there so you won't miss it. The Falls lights up at night as well and it is sooo pretty.
Day 3:
Final day of our wanderlust trip, we check out our Airbnb and head to Canada 🇨🇦. Interesting story on how we made it there that I may share later on in a different post but we got there! Side note, you will need some kind of international plan when you go over! Your U.S. plan will not work 🙅🏾♀️. So my mom and I got to experience the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and it was cool. This side is more city like compared to New York's side. It did rain that day and hard for a little bit. Which is a lesson learned because as long as we are safe do not allow set backs such as the weather stop you from enjoying your time. I'm glad I kept going to explore once we arrived in Clifton Hill. Before Clifton Hill I went to the Aero Whirlpool Car. Free parking there so that was a plus. The rain held out until we literally got into the car it started raining super hard lol. We waited for to calm down because it was a safety hazard driving in that, not knowing where we are at, and there are a lot of curvy roads.
Back to Clifton Hill which is the heart of the tourist district in Niagara Falls. Lots of entertainment to experience and choose from. If you plan on being there all day experience as much as you can. I didn't have much time because I was driving back to Ohio that day. However, I enjoyed my time there. I got to eat at Applebee's which I haven't done in years, go to this arcade gaming place called Strike, and go to this world candy shop. we just did our best to walk around and see because it started raining harder again. Once we had enough of the rain we headed back to our car. Side note! The Canadian side is bigger and attractions dedicated to the falls are not walking distance which is why they have the bus system. You did need some form of transportation to get around to other attractions. That was day 3 for the trip and we got home at 1 am, hours later than our expected time lol.
Overall, this trip was really fun! I went with my mom and it was nice mother-daughter trip. Definitely somewhere to go with someone or solo! Step out and create memories for yourself because adventures are waiting for you and you never know what opportunities will present themselves to you. I was able to visit 3 cities in one weekend trip so it is very possible! I added 3 keychains to my collection 😁. It was so diverse and filled with people from different walks of life. Go take the trip– the mist, the moments, and the memories are waiting. I'll go into more details of my experiences in my future blogs so stay tuned!
