Weddingbee Blog

When we left Seneca Lake, Mr. Socks and I traveled to Buffalo, NY to spend the night before crossing the bridge to Canada in the morning. I had never been to Canada before, and I was super excited to spend two nights there!

We went directly to our hotel at Niagara on the Lake, but our room wasn’t ready yet so we headed to our spa appointment. We had booked a side-by-side massage, and then chocolate body wraps. I’ve only had a handful of massages in my life, and always enjoyed them on vacations, but $600 later, I walked out of the spa with some pretty big developing bruises and smelling of chocolate and butter (the latter of which isn’t so bad, but I don’t know why the dude massaged my lower back to the point of becoming purple). Overall, I don’t think we’ll shell out the dough for spa treatments in the future. Live and learn, right?

After our spa treatments, our room STILL wasn’t ready, so we decided to hit up some of the local wineries. Also, I’m sorry for how horrible I looked in the following photos…it was because of that darned chocolate wrap and I could do nothing with my hair afterward since I couldn’t shower yet.

We first stopped at Peller Estates:

Gorgeous, right?? Well, we were in for a bit of a shock: all of the wines around Seneca Lake were available for sampling around $2 for 5 tastings. Here, they were about $20/tasting. Whatevs, we’re on our honeymoon!

We ended up with a couple of bottles of Baco Noir and a Rose wine. Aaaand a chocolate-dipped icewine marshmallow.

Yeah, there’s the atrocious hair I was talking about.

Anyway, then we headed to Reif Estate Winery where we did a blind tasting—we had to guess what each blacked-out glass contained. We got about half right, which wasn’t too bad—it was much more difficult than we thought it would be!

Finally, we went to Inniskillin, which is famous for its icewine! We bought two bottles here, and ohhh, it was so delicious!

We headed back to the hotel where we found chocolate-dipped strawberries and champagne left by the hotel!

We freshened up, went to a nice dinner (where we got more complementary champagne—I swear, we will be on our “honeymoon” anytime we travel now) and then in the morning, headed to Niagara Falls!

Let me just hold up here for a moment. For some reason, I had always pictured the Falls to be smack dab in the middle of nature. Like, we’d have to hike in a beautiful forest before arriving to the Falls. This was not the case. When we arrived, my tourist trap alarm immediately started wailing. I. Hate. Tourist. Traps. Hate them. I don’t like tacky souvenir shops, I don’t like swarms of people, and I especially hate the inflated prices of tourist traps.

But, I have to admit…our view from our hotel room (which was about $350 for one night) was amazing.

Yeah. Pretty incredible.

So we walked down to the falls, and did the most touristy thing we could possibly do: we got on the Maid of the Mist. Meh. I guess it’s one of those things we felt obligated to do, but I wasn’t super crazy about it. We acted like hams in our little ponchos anyway though.

And my hair was much improved. See?

After the boat ride, we walked a bit around the main strip, but didn’t feel compelled to do the haunted houses, putt-putt, Ripley’s Believe it or Not, or any of the other brightly-colored attractions that most definitely didn’t scream “nature.”

I did, however, get a chocolate covered candy apple from the sweet shop:

And nearly broke my teeth off…it was hard as a brick.

Overall…the touristy thing isn’t my scene. I enjoyed Niagara on the Lake and the beauty of that region, but could have done without the carnival atmosphere of the Falls. Plus, the prices were just too high and I would have preferred to stay a little off the beaten path if it had meant saving money.

If I ever go to Niagara Falls again, it’ll be for a day trip. I’d definitely go back to Niagara on the Lake, but stay a little out of the main area to save money.

That’s that for my honeymoon recaps! Stay tuned for our wedding recaps!

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, yes…we did bring back a few bottles of wine: