We did a little jaunt down to the US border today. After picking some things up at Burlington, then ending up in Hamilton due to a wrong turn, we had an early lunch at Tim Hortons. We grabbed a box of TimBits to sustain us, then jumped onto the QEW for the trip south to Niagara. Thanks more to good luck than good management, we went straight through to Fort Erie, which is a far more straightforward way to get to Buffalo than by crossing the river at Niagara itself.

We arrived at the Peace Bridge where we did US customs... very straightforward... the border lady asked us our nationality, looked at our passports and off we went. It was all done in 30 seconds. I've heard a few stories from other exchangees about all sorts of hassles crossing into the states, but we've done it twice now and it's been just the same both times. We're off to Detroit and Chicago next weekend, so we'll see how that goes.

Once in Buffalo, we were surprised by how dead the town was! In Canada things seem to be always open, till quite late, 7 days a week. Here we were in Buffalo, in the middle of the day, and the place was near deserted. We drove around to get our bearings, went up and down the main street a few times (we found out later it was the main street... you certainly couldn't tell), and eventually got out for a walk around. Seriously, the place was deserted. In Australia, we have a phrase for places that seem deserted... "you could fire a gun here and not hit anyone", but that's probably a phrase I would avoid in the USA, especially after watching Bowling for Columbine the other day. It's a weirdly scary feeling being in a place that you know people have the right to carry guns. Check out the photo of the statue in front of the bank... I couldn't get over how much it looked like an Aussie digger. The whole slouch hat and uniform looked just like an Australian ANZAC.

Anyway, we took a few photos, had a look around, went for a drive to see some of the houses (huge houses! We couldn't get over how big they all were!), and eventually headed back north to cross into Canada again at Niagara Falls. As we did the border check coming back to Canada, we were asked, with a grin, which we preferred, Canada or the US...

I'm sure we will see plenty of really great places in the USA when we go travelling later this year, but I don't think Buffalo is somewhere I'll be rushing back to in a hurry.