On Sunday, Pauline, Ida, Joe and drove down to Buffalo to spend some on-par currency. We chose Sunday because we figured that most people would be going down on Saturday and returning on Monday, so the day in between would be the least traffic. We left Toronto at about 10 and arrived at the Fashion Outlets of Niagara Falls a bit past 12. We had to wait a for a little bit at the border, but because we took the Rainbow bridge there wasn’t too much traffic. The Queenston-Lewiston bridge apparently had delays of 30-45 minutes.
This outlet was pretty crappy. I remember as a kid when I came across to the US, we would go to the Rainbow Center Factory Outlet immediately after the bridge. Eventually we found out about these outlets, and it was a lot better than the Rainbow outlets. I guess things have changed (go US economy!!). While not being very good, the Fashion Outlets were packed with people, I would say 80% from Ontario looking at the plates in the parking lot.
Afterwards, we drove a little further to the Walden Galleria. This mall was much better even though it wasn’t an outlet. We milled around for a couple of hours, before we went to have dinner at the Cheesecake Factory — which was the best reason for the trip. The newish Cheesecake Factory in Buffalo is the closest one to Toronto, and pretty much like every other one I’ve been to — including the wait. We arrived as the mall was closing, and the hostess quoted a 50 to 75 minute wait! Since this was the highlight, we decided to wait. The food wasn’t as much or as good as I remembered, but I did save room for cheesecake for once.
We started heading back to Toronto at 8:30 again at the Rainbow bridge crossing, the wait at the border was a little longer, mostly because we picked the wrong line (but still much better than Queeston-Lewiston, which had delays of 2 hours!). The customs official apparently was asking every car for their receipts, which was the first time that that had happened to me. Good thing that while we bought more than our (lack of) exemption, we didn’t buy enough to be worth pulling over.
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