After Philadelphia and Anthrocon, I caught the train up to New York city, then onto Rochester in upstate New York. Visiting New York was bizarre. I had been there nine months previously and could remember walking through Penn Street station thinking this would probably be the only time I'd be here, yet here I was again.

I was met in Rochester by a friend of mine called Joshua. I was staying in a spare room of his and his partner's place which was really nice of them. They took me around, showed me the sights of Rochester, then Joshua took me off to Letchworth State Park for one day.

Letchworth is pretty impressive - a huge sprawling park, don't ask me how big, I don't know, but its big. With a river that runs down the middle of it in a huge gorge. It has three major waterfalls on it, imaginately called Lower, Middle and Upper Falls and numerous little creeks and streams running in on both sides. When we were there it was one of those terrible days when swimming would have been a godsend, but you can't swim near the waterfalls, so we sufferred in the high humidity.

After the weekend finished I was on my own in a hotel. I did some wandering around Rochester, then got the bus up to Niagra to look at the falls. It was about 90mins away and I went to the Candian side mainly so I could get another stamp in my passport.

My advice for anyone going to Niagra Falls, go to the Candian side, it has better access than the US side. No matter where you go it will be crowded, even at 6:30am there was a growing crowd. Be prepared for lots of people, get tickets for things early, most of the things near the river need tickets which are based on a time slot, not when you bought the tickets, so even after I spent 20mins in a line for a trip behind the falls it was still 3hrs before I could go down.

Niagra Falls are impressive, just the sheer scale of them and listening to the thundering of the water should be enough to impress people. However, they are not the sort of thing everyone would go "oooooh" at. There is a reason why Niagra was the honeymoon capital and people said the falls were the second disappointment of married life...

After Niagra I got the thrill of going through US customs (again) and caught the bus back to Rochester where I got the thrill of a taxi ride where my driver couldn't find my hotel. Its a worry if you're giving directions and you've only been in the city for four days and the driver has lived there for the past twelve years.