I. Am. So. Tired.

Like a good girl, I went to bed at a sensible time last night to maximise the number of hours I could spend with my eyes closed before my stupidly early flight in the morning. This turned out to be quite a wasted exercise, however, because one of my lovely dorm buddies came in at about 1am (acceptable), made quite a bit of noise getting herself organised (also acceptable), and then left the frigging light on when she went to bed meaning that I spend the next 3.5 hours drifting in and out of sleep being dazzled by 12 million megawatts of fluorescent-tube ceiling light wondering why on earth it was taking her so long to get to bed, when in actual fact she’d been out for the count for hours (not acceptable). Then it was time to wake up.

Hey ho. No time to dwell on the sleep that could have been though. Gotta get me to Boston Logan Airport so I can see me some waterfalls!

It was a fairly standard hour-long plane journey (although, one thing of note was the absence of life jackets, in place of which were some useful Velcro straps on the underside of your seat, which supposedly doubles as a “flotation cushion”…

… Hopefully I’m calm enough -and conscious enough- to suss this out should we end up nose-diving into Long Island Sound).

Joyously, we arrived in Buffalo unscathed. The quick walk from where the airport shuttle dropped me to where I got on the Niagara-bound bus told me that I wasn’t missing out on much from not having added a day of exploring Buffalo to my schedule. Although I did have some banter with a friendly cop who enjoyed my accent and my ‘bravery’ – whatever that implied.

I checked in at my hostel. I’m staying at the cheap and cheerful Red Lounge Hostel and it seems pretty nice so far. Apparently it’s off-peak so there’s just me and some mystery dude in a 6-bunk dorm, so, providing he’s not a snorer/murderer, I should at least get some peace tonight. Time to go see the main attraction!!

Again, you’ve probably had enough of my chat by now, and as the Falls is definitely better seen than described, I’ll cut the talk and get straight to the good stuff. First some nice rapids.

Then some bigger rapids.

This is not where you want to fall in.

So. Much. Wet.

Take a moment so soak up some refreshing spray. This is only the baby waterfall.

You get some pretty good views from the observation deck at the top of the gorge.

But this boat malarkey looks like much more fun. Staying dry is for pussies.

MAID OF THE MIST SELFIE WITH OMINOUS-LOOKING FILTER!!

Getting closer…

Wow. (Getting well and truly pissed on by the spray at this point)

And that is pretty much it. Don’t think there’s a lot else to do in this place except go to the casinos, but I’m too broke for that. Starbucks by the rapids and them some trashy TV at the hostel sounds like a pretty good evening to me. And then some sleeeeeeep. Gosh aren’t I cool.