Oh my God. Okay. I cannot recommend this coach tour enough. I cannot recommend Contiki enough. Basically I had the most incredible time visiting top locations on America's East Coast and into the boarder of Canada with beautiful people. Stunning sights, a new place every day, fun attractions, great food, great hotels, crazy nights out, endless shopping...I was living the dream! Read on to find out exactly what I got up to and all the typical Trip Advisor style comments and tips!

Niagara Falls from the cruise

The falls is pretty epic

Niagara Falls, Canada

Be prepared to get wet..

Prepare to get very wet at Niagara Falls! If you are taking the boat cruise that is. You get given a standard rain poncho, but I tell you, that water gets in every nook and cranny no matter how hard you try and cover yourself up! Tip: don't wear fake tan, it will run. Tip: don't wear jeans, you'll never get them off again. The boat doesn't go under the Falls and drench you on purpose or anything but the Falls are so powerful the spray gets flown at you from all angles.

A downside of going to Niagara

The Falls is such a beautiful place and most often a one off experience for those who visit it and you're gonna wanna capture its beauty in every way you can. Q the Snapchat pic and vid, then the standard phone camera pic, vid and pano, oh then lets get out the camera and try 150 different exposure settings. No chance. Unless you're happy for your gadgets to get soaked, you're gonna need a really good waterproof camera or gadget case to be able to take some snaps right in the heart of the Falls. I managed to take the photos in this post using my normal camera with no case, but they were not taken in the heart of the Falls where it is very wet and basically feels like it is raining! You can still get some great snaps and if you're careful you can try to get your camera inside your rain poncho to take a few quick photos. If you wanna be in the photos, you're probably gonna look a bit rough and weathered too, not gonna lie.

Rainbow over Niagara Falls, Canada.

Sheraton Restaurant on Niagara Falls

What else to do at Niagara besides the Falls?

If the boat cruise isn't your thing or you are slightly put off, or even wondering "where can I get a good photo at Niagara Falls!?", then I have a few pointers about what else you can get out of Niagara. We, being a large coach group, stayed at The Quality Inn in the heart of the city, about a 20 minute walk down to the waterfall. The little town immediately next to the falls is a very family friendly resort with lots of restaurants and arcades as well as having some good shops, bars and pubs for the adults. After drying off at the hotel and making ourselves look a little nicer, we headed back down to the Falls for dinner in the restaurant overlooking the lovely water. I think this was the Sheraton though I can't quite remember! The sun was going down and it was perfect lighting to have some nice photos taken with the Falls right behind us. We were even lucky enough to see several rainbows going right through the Falls! So cool! So we had dinner which had the best view I've ever had while eating a salad - the Falls light up as it got darker which was very impressive!

After dinner, we checked out an outdoor karaoke bar which had cheap drinks and a nice, local atmosphere with lots of 'talent' on stage. Myself and my tour group were obviously a bunch of 20 somethings so this was fun for us.

I don't think you can ever get tired of looking at natural beauty, especially when it is something so beautiful, elegant and powerful as a waterfall. I loved this experience so much that I'd love to go back and maybe do the helicopter trip over the Falls. I would consider it one of the wonders of the world, it truly is a bucket list must therefore, yes, Nigara Falls really is as great as it is made out to be. It is not a holiday destination though, you wouldn't want to spend a long time here but a must see if you're passing nonetheless.

I hope this has been of interest to you guys and somewhat informative. Have you been to the Falls? Was it as you expected?

Museums and things to do during the day

I only had two nights and one full day which was absolutely no where near enough time! To explore everything Washington D.C has, I needed so much more time! I completely missed out on the majority of museums and didn't even get a sniff and the shopping or restaurant facilities! However, in the full day I did have, me and my wee chum crammed in so much we developed colds by the evening we were so tired! We got up relatively early, and jumped on the metro to visit the Zoo! The metro is like the underground and really simple to follow - red lines, yellow lines and clearly marked stops so super easy and inexpensive to get around. The Zoo is so impressive! You literally need the best part of the day to see everything there! The usual lions, tigers, elephants but also orangutans, pandas and much more! We just picked a few that we wanted to see and were in and out in about an hour or two, so it is possible if you don't have time! Oh, and the Zoo is free entry!! 

Next we headed to some museums! All of which are also free! Well most, I think there are a few that you have to pay for, Smithsonian ones are all free. We checked out the Holocaust Memorial Museum first, which you can imagine was very chilling as well as extremely interesting. Note, it left us feeling a little deflated, it is so hard hitting. You see real artefacts from the Holocaust, real personal items, shoes of the victims, hair, beds, chambers and hundreds of pictures. There is a really beautiful memorial room where you can light a candle to remember the victims. The advice given to us was to go get a nice ice cream afterwards to cheer you up as it really does leave you on a downer - but again, a must see! 

After that we visited some more museums - I loved the Air & Space museum! There's also a Maccy D's in there, which was our pick me up from the Holocaust museum. If you're a super geek like me, this place is heaven. You see the very first plane ever made - made out of paper! Famous planes like that big retro red one Amelia Earhart flew. You can go inside aircraft and even touch a moon rock! And there's tons more spacey, planey, sciencey things to read about, learn and interact with. Loved this museum. 

Another must-do is the National Museum of Natural History. Loads of animal and natural specimens, loads of info and lots to learn. It is super huge so you could spend all day here too. You can even see real diamonds, worth millions of dollars which are so sparkly and pretty!! 

All of the main and best museums surround the Washington Monument (the tall thing with the spike) in a square so they are super easy to navigate but it is a very long distance the whole way around. Good walking shoes deffo needed to get from museum to museum at the least! So, after the museums, the sun was starting to go down and it was a really nice time to visit the Monument in the middle. If you get to the memorial for about 6 or 8 am (I can't quite remember which) you might be lucky enough to grab some tickets to go up the top of the monument which would be so fantastic! But we would not be able to make it around all those museums if we had gotten up that early haha. 

Our last visit of the day was to visit Obama at the White House! It is about a 10 minute walk from the monument, maybe less, you can see the back of it from there. We had some photos by the back gardens and then it was another 10 mins or so walk around to the front. You see some cool buildings on the way round too! It felt kind of surreal visiting the White House. You see it in so many films, all over the news etc, etc, it was amazing to actually be there! You need to visit this place, even if you have to squeeze it into your last 10 minutes of being in D.C! 

Temperature and how much money to take to Washington 

So I went in mid August and the weather was really hot, 30 degrees plus and it was really tiring and hot walking around from the zoo, between museums and then to the White House so it may be best to go when it is slightly cooler as it is a very busy, full on experience. I crammed so much into one day and an evening but I could easily spend perhaps 5 days to do everything at a leisurely pace. You don't need a lot of spending money with you if you visit Washington D.C because, as I said, most of the main attractions are free of charge. Of course, you need some dollar for food and more if you plan to go shopping. 

This has been just a very brief over view of everything there is to do in Washington D.C., there is so much more I didn't get a look at and I will certainly be returning in the future to do it all again and more. Have you every been to D.C? What museums did you visit/love? 

Beth x