Initially over the weekend, Maggie and I were suppose to take Guo Xu and his family on a bus tour to see New York and Washington DC however it was cancelled due to lack of interest so we took them to the dump Buffalo NY. Haha we only went there because my sister in law wanted to go shopping… Before hitting the malls, we took a brief detour to the falls…
It wasn’t cold but with the spray from the falls, it definitely felt colder than the -3C temp according to my phone. The ground was slippery too so we didn’t stay long. Anyway after crossing the border we immediately hit the Fashion Outlet mall and well yeah she loves to shop! After getting there around 11AM we got something to eat then the ladies proceeded to shop for 5-6 hours while the guys just sat around playing with their phones… It was definitely not an enjoyable experience but whatever it’s their first time coming here and I want to be a good host right.
Luckily we were able to jump on the wifi of one of the local stores so that made the time go by easier. Maggie didn’t buy much but the sister in law must have spent well over $1,000 and she loved it lol. Apparently high end brands are very heavily taxed in China so it all seems cheap to her, good thing Guo Xu has money.
In the early evening we left the mall and checked into the Seneca Niagara casino hotel. I initially parked in the casino’s rear parking by accident so the 5 of us had to walk through the casino floor to reach the front desk and we needed an escort because Eric is under age. After dumping our stuff in our rooms, I headed back down to move the car and as I entered the casino floor the guard asked me how old I was, when I told him I was 34 he then demanded to see ID and it was great lol.
A bit later we went to have dinner at the casino buffet and man was it expensive, $24 per person… Every other casino I’ve gone to has always had a cheap buffet to entice people to visit but I guess these guys want to make money everywhere. Anyway we also got one of those premium club members cards which allows the casino to track how much you spend, it allowed us to save $2 per person at the buffet and also gave us $20 in credits to use at the slot machine.
After dinner we played a bit of slots, neither Maggie or I gamble so it’s not a big deal. I lost my $20 in about 10 minutes playing slots but Maggie won $41 so she cashed out and we called it a night around 9:30PM and went upstairs. 😀 I bet this casino will not be sending us free show or meal vouchers anytime soon lol…
Our room was nice and about what I expected… I took some pictures from the view on the 12th floor but forgot to take pictures of the actual room.
After checking out we went back to the Fashion Outlets mall because the sister in law wanted to pick up a few more things so lol back to the same spot so we can use wifi. This time around it was shorter and the girls only spent about 2-3 hours, afterwards we went to Walden Galleria and this time I set a time limit of 2 hours because I wanted to get back Toronto before the weather got worse.
Good thing Guo Xu has money because his wife was shopping for jewelry! All in all I think they probably spent around $4k shopping and she said she wants to emigrate to Canada because everything is so cheap here haha… We left the US at around 3:30PM and got home just around 6 which wasn’t too bad considering the weather and traffic.
Got Maggie to take a picture of the driving conditions, it got worse in certain parts where I couldn’t see more than 100′ but I managed to get everyone home safe. 🙂 I did buy a little bit of clothing from the Under Armour outlet store but nothing to write home about so meh I won’t lol. Glad to be back though, it was pretty tiring the last few days and it’s always nice to sleep in your own bed.
