Wings, Spray and a Roll of the Dice
After a horrible Friday and Saturday spent with a group of 8 adults and 9 children going around New York City, I swear to you I never, ever want to see the Statue of Liberty or take a ride on the Staten Island ferry again. One of the kids was barfing on the ferry, and the women were constantly compaining about the half-doors on the toilets, and the impatient waiter at the restaurant, and the rude guy who pushed his way through the group.
Anyway, I thought maybe Upstate NY would be a little more to their liking, so here we are in Buffalo. I had them booked into the Seneca Niagara. Reason I gave them was that it was better than most of the other Niagara Falls hotels, but actually, I wanted something to do other than watch television after packing the horde off to the Falls. Not that I don't enjoy the natural beauty, but its just that the grass is greener on the other side of the pasture.
Meaning that its much more beautiful on the Canadian side than in NY. There's brightly lit hotels and nice restaurants, and its generally a much more pleasing experience for tourists. The American side is more like, ok, its the Niagara Falls, so its gotta be great. There's nothing special on the NY side of the Falls to make the experience even better.
Be that as it may, after docking my intrepid tourist horde at the hotel, I beat a hasty retreat, promising to meet them in the evening for dinner. The one thing I dearly wanted to do was go to the Anchor Bar on 1047 Main Street, Buffalo and just hang out. Until now, I've never really got a chance to savor the chicken wings. I was always passing through, or in a rush to get back to NYC. Since I now had the full day to myself, and nowhere to go, I decided that I'd give the Anchor Bar my full attention.
The chicken wings were fantastic. I dunno if its the history, or if they have some kinda secret ingredient, but I swear chicken wings here taste better than anywhere else. Course, that's not all they serve. There's a spendid array of Italian cuisine on offer. The chicken wings, along with stuffed peppers with Italian sausage and bread left me gasping, so I had to make it all settle down with a cheesecake and lots of beer. Spent more than acoupel of hours there, and the damage didn't even cross $20. Not bad at all.
Returned to the Seneca, and found my horde still hadn't returned from terrorizing everyone at the Falls, so I decided to check out the casino. I'm not much of a gambler and I lost a little bit, but it was worth it and way more entertaining than sitting in a hotel room, waiting for a group of screaming kids to come back. When I came back, the gang was back, and they had indeed scared the daylights out of a few people when they went shopping, including the owner of an Antiques store who apparently had a near heart attack when he saw the kids playing catch with one his prize vases. And a salesman at the One Niagara building that they entered by mistake apparently earned a healthy earful when he tried to sell them some kinda tour package.
I can only be thankful that I decided to leave them alone for the day. A last word of advice if you're saddled with out-of-town visitors. If you don't wanna go crazy, find places to take them to where you can leave them for the whole day and pick them up in the evening.
