Living in rural Pennsylvania, it was difficult to find friends that I really connected with, but during my last semester working there, I made friends with a visiting research associate who was Albanian-Greek. Let’s call her Nana for this story. We had a lot of fun together and some enlightening cultural exchanges. I really valued her conversation and company. Fast forward over a year later, and she had come back to the U.S to continue her research. We reconnected and I invited her to my home in Pittsburgh over the Thanksgiving holiday.
I had a few friends over for a Friendsgiving – two from in-town and two from out-of-town. I picked up the first friend on Wednesday. I was so excited to see him, and was actually in slight disbelief because it had been about 3 years since we last spent time together. Calls, but mainly text, was how we communicated. We ended up having some honest dialogue, but with honesty sometimes comes hurt; especially because I would have never fathomed what the conversation actually ended up being about. Silly me, I ended up having to remake a pot of greens and another vegan chocolate-coconut pound cake because my mind wasn’t necessarily in the best place as I was trying to process all the information I received earlier in the day. I wasn’t mad, but I felt a lot of ways.
“Do you want to go for a walk,” he asked.
“No, I just want to step outside for some fresh air by myself.”
I guess I was gone a little too long for his comfort; as I came back inside he said, “I was about to go out and go look for you.”
I was looking forward to the forthcoming festivities, so I tried my best to “get it together” without completely avoiding my feelings.
On Thursday, we picked up my other friend from the train station. So many long hugs and cheek-kisses ensued. As the evening approached, I began buzzing in my friends/classmates and the fun times began.
“This is my best friend,” I introduced my man-friend – we’ll call him Kevin – to the girls.
I later laughed when one of my girl-friends realized an hour later that it was that friend.
We had a feast of pot roast with potatoes and veggies (I’ve never cooked a turkey, and Thanksgiving is NOT the day to give it a try for the first time), yams, collard greens, stuffing, mac n’ cheese, and peach cobbler and ice cream.
“I hope it’s good; this wasn’t my best cooking,” I apologized.
After dinner and dessert, we had a robust conversation about Beyonce – specifically not being a vocalist, but being a performer. One lone friend who absolutely stans for Queen Bey held her ground. Then, we got into a game of Late-Night Taboo – you know, the adult version. We laughed for hours, especially because of the language barrier with my foreign friend… but we got all the sex cards! Clearly, sex and sex-related words can be translated across cultures.
I found out about this conversation later, but at some point, after dinner, Nana and I stepped outside and Tanya expressed her concern. Tanya was in a completely separate friend group than Nana and Tia, but I knew it would be fine. However, Nana can be eccentric and is super bubbly, and we shared a pastime of lots of nights out dancing, which she had clearly communicated was a plan for our trip.
“She (referring to me) is laughing now, but she has this under control,” Kevin comforted Tanya.
Around 12:30am, I decided it was time to go to bed.
“Alright, ya’ll. It’s been wonderful, but it’s time to pack up; I need to wake up early.”
We said our goodbyes and Nana, Kevin and I headed to bed.
Nana and I had decided to go to Niagara Falls when she visited – neither of us had been before. I spent the past month researching, planning our trip and collecting money from everyone; I paid for it all upfront. One of the friends from Friendsgiving – let’s name her Tanya – was also coming, and we planned to meet a fourth person, Tia, at the hotel. Weather in the Northeast is pretty unstable, in my opinion, so I was hesitant to drive in case it snowed, but the weather was set to be mild and clear.
Friday morning, I awoke around 6am to get ready because two other people needed to use my single bathroom.
“I heard you crying this morning,” Kevin said as I came back into the bedroom.
“I’m fine,” I tried to assure him.
On the road by 10 – that was the plan. Earlier in the week, I had sent a whole itinerary to everyone going on the trip, planning enough time to eat and drive to the different locations we were visiting.
Kevin, Nana and I got into my SUV and I stopped for gas. Kevin got out and started washing my windows.
“See, Shuku – ” that’s what Nana calls me – “Who is he to you? You need a man like that; he would be so good for you!” she exclaimed.
I shushed her between giggles because the windows were cracked and I figured he heard.
“Oh! Shuku, but he will,” she whispered.
Our next stop was to pick up Tanya, who lived about 5 minutes away from me.
“Coming!” She said ten minutes after I texted here… after texting 15 minutes before, on my way.
Heading downtown, we stopped at the bus station to drop off Kevin. He and I hugged; and, Nana hopped out the car to give him a hug as well. As I got back into the driver’s seat I sighed deeply and intuitively jumped back out the car and noticed that Kevin was also coming back. We intensely embraced. I kissed him on the cheek.
“Let me know when you make it there safely,” he said.
“Yeah…”
We were on the road to Canada by 10. We chose the Canadian side because, why not cross the border if we were already near there – and from what I read it was a more beautiful view than the New York side.
About 30 minutes into our drive we pulled off and grabbed muffins and coffee at a Starbucks and embarked on the last three-and-a-half-hour drive to our destination. Tanya, in the back seat, had slept most of the way as Nana and I caught up and sang along to a bunch of early 2000s pop songs.
“Aye!” We shouted as we approached the border. “Passports out!”
The border patrol guy had a stoic face and was rather quiet and quite intimidating, to be honest. I was all nervous as we answered his questions about the reason for our visit and how we knew each other, and why Nana handed him 2 different passports and a handful of papers. I was kind of sad that when you cross by car, you don’t get a passport stamp – I was definitely looking forward to filling my book a little more.
As we drove through the checkpoint, I soon realized the speed limit signs were in kilometers. “Y’all, I don’t know how fast I’m supposed to be going, so pray I don’t get pulled over; but I’m keeping up with traffic,” I told my friends. It took me a second to realize the speed in kilometers was on my dashboard, or whatever it’s called, so I kind of attempted to look at the right numbers and not speed too much.
It wasn’t too long until we pulled up to our lodging, Vittoria Hotel and Suites. I had booked the room for 2 nights – Tia and Nana were staying an extra day and heading home together – but it was only $207 for the stay. I stopped in the loading zone and we noticed a black squirrel! I didn’t know those existed but it was so cute! I checked to see if our room was ready, and it was, so we were able to go in and get settled.
There were a ton of restaurants on the strip where we were staying, so we took a stroll and ended up grabbing a bite to eat at a pizza joint. During my research, I had discovered that we were in wine country – yes! – so I had pre-booked a few wine tours for us.
Our first stop was Konzelmann Estate Winery, which was about a 25-minute drive to an area called Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.
The 45-minute tour was $10 per person. The estate was beautiful! It was right on the lake. We got a historical overview of the property, which the owner still lived on, and learned about the agricultural process before tasting four of their wines – white, red, sweet and semi-sweet. In the gift shop, we picked up some gourmet chocolates (for later) and I bought a magnet that said “Will work for wine and shoes,” because… accurate.
Next, we drove another ten or so minutes to our next site, Between-the-Lines Winery. I chose here because they specialized in ice wine, something I was unfamiliar with. Apparently, it’s a rare find and dessert wine that is produced by grapes that have been frozen on the vine. Canada is the largest producer of ice wine in the world, so of course we had to try some! As dusk approached, we pulled into the gravel parking lot.
“Hi, I made a reservation, but we’re a little early,” I explained to the host.
“I was just setting up for you! You can take a seat.”
The place was cute, kind of rustic. We sat on metal stools around a wooden barrel table. I had booked the “Decadent Tasting,” via viator.com. At $15 per person, it was listed as luxury tasting, pairing 3 of their wines with chocolates. We had the Outset Sparkling Wine with savory roasted nuts, a white chocolate with their Vidal Icewine – and I don’t ever eat white chocolate, but I had to admit it was really good; and the last pair was one of their award-winning reserve Icewines with sea-salt sprinkled, dark Belgium chocolate.
We might’ve had just a tad too much wine that evening, but Nana bought a case of Icewine and we headed back to the hotel.
After a short rest, around 8pm we decided to check out a Mexican restaurant I had spotted on our way into town earlier in the day. Tacos and a margarita…or two… are always a good choice. We chuckled the night away for a few hours and walked back to the hotel. At some point, Nana and I got a whiff of marijuana and instantly looked at each other. We breathed in deeply, savoring the smell, trying to find the culprit, but decided to just keep it pushing.
At the time we visited, the Ontario Power Generation Winter Festival of Lights and nightly Falls Illumination was occurring. It’s an 8km long route that travels through the Niagara Parks and surrounding tourist districts and features unique light displays. We considered actively trying to see this, but opted not to.
Back at the hotel, we toyed around with the idea of going out dancing.
“Shuku, come on!” Nana pleaded.
“Look. Y’all, I’m tired. If you guys wanna go out, please do – don’t let me stop you, but I’m about to get in this bed.”
I dozed off and ended up waking up about an hour later. Everyone was in bed fast asleep. Mm-hmm. Tanya rolled awake and I laughed at them all knocked out.
“Yeah, we got in bed like right after you did,” Tanya said.
“I bet.”
At some point, Tia got to Canada, and the hotel during the night.
The morning was so beautiful. From our hotel window, you could see the Falls just beyond the barren trees. We opted to skip breakfast and drove towards Niagara Parkway. The main area of this part of town reminded me of a mini-Las Vegas. We found a parking space and looked for the Hornblower Niagara Cruises kiosk. This was the only activity we didn’t purchase tickets for in advance. The cruise leaves every 15 minutes – we missed the 11:00am cruise, so we grabbed some coffee and waited in the tented area.
Once out on the water, we realized we were happy we stayed on the Canadian side because the best part of the Falls fell from the American side. The sun was shining, birds skimmed the top of the water. I had observed the route of the previous cruises, so when we got on board, we headed straight to the top deck and strategically placed ourselves on the best side for pictures. The Falls were absolutely stunning and so powerful! The boat got pretty close and we definitely got wet standing towards the edge of the deck. Even though I had on gloves, the mist and wet railing made my fingertips a bit frozen.
We had picked the perfect weekend to go – the weather was crisp but clear, and it was the last weekend before the cruises stopped for the winter.
After this adventure, we parked my car back at the hotel and walked back to roam the Vegas-y area, where we decided on a diner to get a quick bite to eat. I had planned on leaving around 1pm so Tanya and I could make the 4-hour trip back – I wasn’t too fond of having to drive at night, especially if I didn’t really know the areas I’d be driving through, so my goal was to beat the moon.
I was on the road close to 2. The border patrol coming back into the U.S was a lot nicer, very playful, so that was appreciated. We hit a little traffic along the way, so it took a little closer to 5 hours to get back home. Once again, Tanya feel asleep, but she didn’t mind me blasting West Coast Hip-Hop, mainly YG and the Game, to keep me energized and awake. I was so, so happy as I approached familiar territory and shouted in glee.
I’m back in Pittsburgh, I texted Kevin. I hadn’t spoken to him all weekend. I needed that time away to just enjoy and be present with my girlfriends and be mindful of where I was, which was not with him. I didn’t want my energy and focus to be on that situation and take away from the happiness I was sharing with my friends. I had decided not to let him know when I had made it to Canada, or update him throughout the day, as I would have typically done.
My phone rang.
“Hello?”
“I had typed this long paragraph but decided, bump that, I’m just going to call her.”
“I see…”