While in Niagara Falls, I wanted to get some use out of my ESTA (and say I have been to New York State!), so I pleaded and begged to walk over the bridge to the US, and I got my wish granted! Tsktsk. Now, I do not mean to say anything mean or disrespectful about the US side of Niagara Falls (and this is meant in a very light-hearted way), but oh boy, the Canadian and the US side were not very similar!

Walking over the bridge, I saw Maid of the Mist! I still have never been on board. Third time is a charm, right?

One of the first things that met me after I had entered the US, was this little booth with this fine poster. Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore! It was just one of those tiny things where you realize how culture vary so much from country to country. I took a 10 min stroll over a bridge, and holy smokes! There are gun commercials! I had an Oz-moment there. Seriously? You don’t call the cops? You use your colt?! I have never seen posters like these before, since there are virtually no hand guns in neither Norway or Japan. I haven’t seen that many of them in Canada either.

My US escapades continued to a somewhat dingy mall where we ate oversized portions of some kind of asian-fusion food on paper plates.

After finishing our lunch, and simultaneously starting to realize that Niagara Falls NY is somewhat of a ghost town, I wanted to go back to Canada.

THANK GOD I FOUND CANADA! Back I went!

I still took the time to stand in two countries at once. That felt… pretty exciting, actually!

And back to Canaaaannnda! Where the restaurants are more expensive, where the live-bands are playing and where they have pretty flower beds and shrubberies and all things nice. (Yes, I am biased!)

Although certain things in Canada also seems a bit backwards and upside down…

But certain backward things are pretty neat! Since I am in North America, I can request cheese on my seafood pasta! This would have been considered blasphemy in Italy, right? But not in the land of plenty and its hat! I actually really do love how people are super helpful if you want to change or modify your order in the US and Canada. In Japan, usually what is on the menu is what is on the menu. If you ask for extra X or less of Y, they don’t always accommodate you. Rules are rules, you know.

I went back to the hotel room and considered how expensive and time consuming it would be to paint my own ceiling like this. Then I fell asleep and forgot all about it.