Travelling Hopefully but Expensively

Cleveland Airport is quite a nice little place.  Cutesy sized little planes take off from a modest and restrained runway.  Even the TSA officials sound like they mean it when they say "Have a nice day" after they've finished probing your body cavities with a pair of latex covered fingers.  Unfortunately my appreciation of this hidden gem of airportdom was soured by the fact that I was there at all.  Sadly Cleveland's amenities don't appear to extend to a particularly responsive taxi service.  Having taken forty minutes to arrive the taxi driver then took a wrong turn trying to find the station.  Since Amtrak chose that morning to deliver what can only be termed a spiteful level of efficiency I missed my train and was stuck with finding another way of getting to Niagara Falls.

Cleveland Airport came to my rescue.  In return for nothing more than virtually all the cash I had on me I was provided with a ticket to Chicago O'Hare with the promise that another plane would then take me to Buffalo, New York.  From Buffalo the latest in a long line of suffering Airbnb hosts would collect me and take me to their home.

By contrast with Cleveland Chicago O'Hare is so big I'm surprised they've got space for the city as well.  I think I've been in smaller countries.  I didn't like it as much as Cleveland, everything was quite impersonal and the cavity searches were perfunctory to say the least.  Nevertheless they did manage to herd me on to the right plane and by looking out the window I was able to see something of Lake Erie (or possibly Michigan) which I'd been hoping to see from the train.

At Buffalo I was told to look out for a white Kia which would be my steed to Niagara Falls.  Not knowing what a Kia was meant to look like I simply threw myself in front of every white vehicle that approached with a hopeful smile.  Eventually one of the drivers stopped issuing death threats long enough to ask if I was Neil.  Indeed I was and indeed still am.  With that out of the way he drove me to one of the habitable portions of Niagara Falls.