the barrons

the barrons

about us

We're from the Syracuse, NY, area and started dating when we went to BYU-Idaho for college. We were married December 2008 and have a daughter, Sophie. We will be welcoming a new baby in November 2013! We currently live in Mason, Ohio, near lots of family! Drew is working at Liberty Mutual Insurance as an Auto Claims Adjuster. Carissa is now a stay-at-home wife and momma! We know there's more in store for us in our future, and we say, "Come what may and love it!"
Powered by Blogger.

06 July 2009

A Day in Niagara Falls

June 27, 2009:
Drew's 23rd Birthday!
Our 6 Month Wedding Anniversary!

We decided it was about time we went to Niagara Falls! Neither of us had been there to see the sites, so we thought it would be the perfect way to celebrate our special day! Since it's only 3 hours away from home, we made a day trip to the Falls.
Unfortunately, we were unable to go to the Canada side because my passport was expired, but we found some things online that we could have fun with on the U.S. side! We bought Discovery Passes; a package of tickets to 6 activities in the National Park: Maid of the Mist, Cave of the Winds, Niagara Adventure Theater, the Niagara Gorge Discovery Center, Aquarium of Niagara, and the Niagara Scenic Trolley.
We hit up 5 of these things according to their closing times. BAD MOVE. The Niagara Adventure Theater is a boring 40-minute movie about the history about the Falls. They could definitely put a little money into making a new one.
We rode the Trolley to all of our other destinations. It was cute and old-fashioned.

Being silly on the Trolley

The view from the Trolley: rapids leading to the Falls

Next was lunch. We wanted to go somewhere popular there, so we went to the Top of the Falls Restaurant. The view was amazing, as all of the tables were turned toward the wall of windows overlooking the Horseshoe Falls. The food was very good. Drew had the Fish 'n Chips; I had a delicious Portobello Burger with a garlic and herb goat cheese spread. SO YUMMY! The service, however, was awful. Everything went very slowly, and our server was rude and impatient. Because it took so long for our food to get to us, and then for our check to get to us, then again, for our change to get back to us, we were set off schedule and were unable to experience everything we wanted later on. So when it comes to the Top of the Falls Restaurant, we do NOT recommend going there.

Lunch at the Top of the Falls Restaurant

The view from our table at the restaurant

The Horseshoe Falls

Next! Cave of the Winds! Set back from the delay at the restaurant, we were torn between Cave of the Winds and Maid of the Mist. They were both closing soon, so we resorted to the closest location: hence, Cave of the Winds. It was actually really fun; it took forever, but it was SO worth it! We had a great time laughing at how we looked in our ponchos and getting wet next to the Falls!

The goofy complimentary sandals given at Cave of the Winds

We look dorky! : )

Carissa next to the Falls!

Drew at the Falls

Cave of the Winds! (I'm still not sure why it's called a cave, because you walk right next to the falls, not in a cave...)

Some nice Indian people took our picture

We walked around for awhile to dry ourselves off, and walked into some gift shops. We are such goofs- we wanted to find something memorable to take home with us, but failed miserably.

Having fun in the gift shop!

HARD ROCK CAFE, here we come!!! This was a must-do thing on our list. It was a little late for dinner, but we didn't care. We had a great time sitting next to Bono's glasses and drinking delicious "Alternative Rocker" drinks. The food was AMAZING and the ambiance was even better. This was definitely the best part of the night!

Our table view at Hard Rock Cafe: Bono and his famous sun glasses

Drew really WAS having a good time
Those drinks were so yummy, and we kept the Hurricane glasses!

As our night was ending, we went back into the National Park for a few minutes to take a few pictures of the Illumination on the Falls. It was beautiful and pretty cool.

Illumination on the Falls at night. So pretty!


We were very ready to go home, and even though it was 10:45 pm, we didn't get home until after 3 am. Drew and I were smart enough to realize that we needed to pull over to nap before driving the rest of the way home. We got home safely, tired from a wonderful day together!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

This looks so fun. We were going to try to go to Niagra falls on our honeymoon, but we weren't able to fit it in. Next time I'm in NY we're totally going, I'll have to get some tips from you before we go :)