Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Forget exam results, let's think Danish pastry instead


Cherry Danish pastries from Panera Bread.

Yesterday we went stateside to visit Buffalo for the day.

Unfortunately, ever since the US border nightmare incident when we moved to Canada, our kids don't want to go to the US at all, so we chose to go on a school day and leave the kids in school in Canada.

We were really impressed with Buffalo. We’re used to crossing the border at Detroit, but Buffalo is only 90 miles from home. Buffalo looked well cared for, and there were pretty parks.

So, we went to all our old favourite haunts from Florida. Moe’s for lunch. I love it when they say “Welcome to Moe’s” when you walk through the door. We walked around Target a bit, found a t-shirt for oldest boy. So hard to find any clothing teenagers like. Did some price comparisons for fun and found that many prices were similar to Canadian prices.

As we were only in the US a few hours we had $0 allowance on return to Canada, so we couldn’t really shop. It seemed weird to go to all your favourite stores and know you technically cannot buy anything – kind of like being there, but not being there. We weren’t planning on buying anything anyway, and figured the t-shirt and some snacks would be ok. I know lots of Canadians buy clothing during a day trip and wear them home, but we’re new to this border shop thing and just wanted a fun day out and some lunch.

Next, we had to find our favourite Hershey Symphony bars to stock up on, and we found a place on Delaware called Premium Gourmet that sells Boar’s Head Turkey Salsalito. We used to buy that at Publix in Florida, so we were happy to find it there. Went to Panera Bread for coffee and a cherry danish pastry, then came home.

Weather was sunny, and everyone seemed in a good mood. When we arrived at Buffalo the US border guard was pleasant, looked at our US passports and waved us through, so we weren’t hassled at the US border either.

What a fun day!

3 comments:

  1. Hmm. Every so often I go cross boarder shopping with some girlfriends. So far I've never been asked to pay duty on anything. We keep all our recipes and everything just in case, but normally if you just tell the boarder guard you kept it under $100 each, they just let you pass.

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  2. That's a good tip, thank you Andrea K.

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  3. Have you ever been to this place?

    http://www.anchorbar.com/

    We used to live in Pittsburgh, and every time we drove up to Niagara Falls, Hamilton, or Toronto we always used to stop through. Don't be put off by the name, it's definitely a "family restaurant" with all kinds of fare, not just brews and wings (but the wings are exceptional). Other than crossing the Peace Bridge, it was our favorite thing about Buffalo.

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