Doing it All in The Falls

June is my absolute favorite time of year. The weather has finally broken, the sun is always shining, and it houses my favorite holiday...my birthday. Now I know my birthday is not a national holiday; don't rain on my parade. However it is the one day each year I like to reflect on my accomplishments. It may be the only day I actually tell myself “I am proud of you. You made it another year.” I take full advantage of having a day be all about me. Prior to 2017, I celebrated my birthday on a small scale; just dinner with friends & family. After planning my first birthday trip out of the country, I knew I could never go back to just dinner parties. This past birthday, I was preparing to host a bridal shower, my mom's 50th birthday & I had just come home from a birthday trip for one of my friends. I did not have the time to plan a trip to a tropical island. I barely had time to plan anything. My birthday was approaching and I had less than 3 weeks to get it together. There was no way I was going to sit still for my favorite holiday. I quickly tried to figure out where I could go for a weekend getaway that I hadn’t been before. I was looking for fun far enough away from Detroit that it felt like a completely different environment, but close enough for a short road trip. Niagara Falls was the perfect fit. It was a 4 hour drive and technically, it was out of the country. I had no idea what Niagara Falls had to offer. Before making concrete plans, I did diligent research. It took less than 20 minutes for my excitement to hit the roof. There was a website that had a list of numerous attractions that checked a lot of boxes for me. The thought of spending a day on a helicopter tour, wine tasting, and cruising by the falls on a boat ride… I was sold. Everything looked so exciting. I constructed a detailed itinerary (check out my last blog) and booked our Airbnb.

In Niagara Falls, location is everything. I was able to find us a 2 bedroom Airbnb about a mile walk from the falls. It was a two bedroom apartment, suitable for 4 guests. The apartment had the perfect amount of space for my friends and I. It was newly renovated, and it was very clean. Needless to stay we had a very comfortable stay; and we were able to walk almost everywhere. After settling in we got right to our plans. Like I said, we were only there for two days, and the plan was to do it all, or as much as we possibly could. We had dinner at the hard rock cafe’ which was right across the street from zip-lining. We had zip-lining tickets for 9 p.m. after dinner, so that worked out perfectly. We enjoyed our dinner and drinks, then walked right out and across to our first night of fun.

Wild Play Zip-line was centered right between the view of two falls. What we didn’t know was the 9 p.m. zip-line was at the same time as the nightly fireworks show. We were able to watch the sunset over the falls before we were escorted to the top of the zip-line to watch the fireworks show.

It was absolutely beautiful. As soon as the signal came that the show was over, we were strapped into harnesses, which I believe had to be made for a man 6’3 because the crotch of mine was scraping the ground. Or it could’ve been because I’m only 4’10 and they should’ve given me a child sized harness; but that’s neither here nor there. They pushed us out of the gate to an exhilarating ride across from a perfect view of the falls. They were lit up in red and blue lights, and I could feel the mist across my face. Now as peaceful as it sounds, understand the first 15 seconds was terrifying. Being pushed off a ledge into the darkness of the night…I’m sure everyone on the American side of the falls could hear me screaming. Nonetheless, I had a blast. It was one of those things you’re ready to do again after the first trial. When we left zip-lining. we settled for a fun night in since we got right to it after our 4 hour drive up, and prepared for what Saturday had in store.

Saturday was the day to get it done. We got up, grabbed breakfast and set out for our helicopter tour. We arrived at Niagara Helicopters at 1 p.m. It was a 15 minute drive from the falls. By 1:10 p.m., our tour was booked and we were ready to go.

The ride was smooth, and comfortable. This adventure struck more excitement than I was prepared for, in a calm way. I did enough screaming on the zip-line the night before. We flew directly over the falls. The view from the helicopter was better than I imagined it would be.The water was so blue, and we could see everything from farm lands to Cliffton Hills. The flight was no longer than 10-15 minutes but it was worth it. Seeing the falls from that view was definitely a check off my bucket list. After our helicopter tour, he decided to head towards Niagara on-the-lake, or as we knew it, wine country. We heard good things about the vineyards in the area and decided to do some wine tasting. We stopped at a few small wineries along the way and tasted some wine that had me ready to buy bottles in bulk. My favorite winery was Peller Estates. Peller Estates is the most beautiful winery I have ever seen. It sat in the center of a large vineyard. The architecture was Old Victorian style. It gave me fairy-tale wedding vibes. We were able to book a chocolate experience wine tasting without reservations. There were four different wines provided with four different chocolate assortments.

One of the assortments was a s’more that had an ice wine infused marshmallow. I was in heaven. The presentation was fun, informational and elegant. It was a perfect wine down after so much adventure. We ended our wine tour there. It was almost 5 p.m. when we finished up. Before you ask, yes, we were lol. On the way back to get dinner, we found some beautiful places to stop and get some great scenery shots.

I never really took the time to stop and take in the scenery on most of our trips. This time it felt necessary. I had never seen anything more picture perfect. Sounds like a perfect ending to a perfect day right? Wrong. lol We still had an action packed night planned that started with a boat ride that had me convinced we were filming a scene for the titanic. But you’ll have to stay tuned for Part 2 to read about that.