Niagara Falls!

Though yesterday was my Rob's birthday, I am a little slow getting the pictures edited! I'm also a little late sharing the rest of my Valentine's Day...but better late than never right?!

Rob and I made an impulse decision and drove up to Niagara Falls, NY for the evening for Valentine's Day. It was beautiful, of course! We had been years before, but in August, and we couldn't wait to see the Falls in their winter glory. They didn't disappoint! I know I keep saying it, but every time I see an undisturbed blanket of snow beneath a canopy of trees, I think Narnia. The spray from the falls made everything that much more beautiful! It was magical, even though we got there a little late and only had about thirty minutes of daylight left.

The funny part of our trip was dinner. We didn't really make plans, so we decided to look up places on our GPS. We settled on The Cheesecake Factory. My logic was that everyone else would be going to Italian or steak house type restaurants, so we wouldn't have to wait too long. Boy was I wrong! We parked and headed into the huge Galleria Mall in Buffalo, NY and saw literally hundreds of people milling around outside the restaurant. They told Rob it was a three hour wait! No wonder there were people sitting on the floor...even in their dress clothes! After we had a good laugh that all those people were actually OK with waiting three hours, we headed to P.F. Chang, because there wasn't a line. Again, three hours. Across the street at Olive Garden? Three hours. We were amazed. In the car outside of the third restaurant that told us we wouldn't even be seated until 11 pm, we were about to give up and go home for sandwiches! We noticed there was also a Smokey Bones in the same parking lot, so Rob called them. Their wait was only 40 minutes! So, of course we headed for Smokey Bones and waited for a table. It turned out to be one of the best meals we have had lately! Our night was saved!

The best part? We waited 40 minutes, ordered, ate our meal, and drove the hour home in the snow before we ever would have been seated at any of the other restaurants! We felt pretty darn good about that! In fact, the entire ride home, we kept talking about how we'd still be waiting to eat! We turned in around 11:30 that night...we wouldn't have even ordered by that point if we had decided to wait at the Galleria restaurants! So, thank goodness for Smokey Bones!

(On a side note, I am making a very late resolution to do better about being late with posting events!!!)