Ignore the map - it's confused! We took a looonnng slooww train from New York to Buffalo - still in the same state but a world away from NYC. Our first impressions of Buffalo were of empty streets with leaves blowing around - just like a scene from 'Back to the Future' (where Marty and the Doc get ready for their firetrack drive up the main street at night). It seemed kind of empty! We got to the hostel though and had the warmest friendliest welcome we've had so far. Believe me we needed warm at that point - it was freeeezing! The hostel had a great kitchen so we got into cooking for ourselves - much cheaper than the NYC way (eating out!).

From Buffalo we took a nice cheap bus to Niagara Falls. The falls were beautiful, the town was not! It was cool to be right up close to the water -extremely cool actually. Near frozen, yet the hardy Matthew still wore his shorts (on his blue legs).

One night in Buffalo we went to a bar called Nieztches - a most odd experience. The bouncer was about 95, the barman 70 odd, and there were about 3 other people in there, apart from the 'jazz' band, 4 members who eached seemed to be playing a different piece. The weirdest thing was the lighting - very dim red light, and lots of papier mache type figures looming out of corners with fixed expressions and mutilated limbs and whatnot. People sort of sneered at us in a way that hinted they might very soon like to chop us up and eat us. It was only later Matt confessed it was EXACTLY like a scene from 'From Dusk til Dawn' where something similar does happen. How lovely. We were pleased to get back to our cosy hostel that night!