Because last night had been one of our later nights of the trip, I let us sleep in slightly this morning. But only slightly.
By 8:00 we had the car packed up and we were headed to breakfast on the main street in Munising at Earl E. Byrd. We were able to snag the last two seats at the counter and we thoroughly enjoyed breakfast here. This was clearly a local spot, service was great, and the food was excellent. I had a caramel apple waffle. I think Nick had a breakfast platter and hash was probably involved. We both were really happy with this breakfast choice.
Breakfast finished, we got in the car and settled in for a lot of driving. Today would be a VERY full driving day. It was a little over 4 ½ hours of driving from Munising to Bronner’s Christmas World in Frankenmuth, MI.
Why Bronner’s Christmas World? Well, it’s the world’s largest Christmas store so it seemed like a logical stop. I’m not sure Nick agreed with me, but he’s a good passenger princess, so he humored me. We found a few ornaments here, including one that would finally allow us to have Snow (the dog) represented on our tree, so the stop wasn’t a total bust for him. And the store? It was definitely big. And there was definitely some unique merchandise. But it really was just a bigger version of our Christmas Loft stores at home. I had zero regrets about stopping though.
From here we headed into downtown Frankenmuth, Nick thoroughly confused by where we were. Frankenmuth is a Bavarian inspired town. I knew this. I had definitely told him this but…passenger princess.
We parked near the Bavarian Inn and headed inside to find their restaurant. After the hostess dealt with a couple parties of 12-20 (WTF), we were seated as soon as we made it to the front of the line.
It was around 3 so I was a little surprised to be handed a dinner menu when we were seated, but oh well. Bavarian Inn is known for two things: fried chicken and German food. I had assumed Nick would order German food, but he actually ordered fried chicken. We both did. He had a 3 piece dark chicken meal. I had a 2 piece mixed chicken meal.
I will admit that even having thoroughly researched this trip, the amount of food that appeared on our table after ordering was a surprise even to me. Maybe it was because we were given the dinner menu? I don’t know. But we were served an unreal amount of food.
First came the bread. Ok, makes sense. Then came the chicken noodle soup. Surprising but ok (and tasty). And then came a plethora of sides: cottage cheese, buttered veggies, buttered noodles topped with Ritz, cranberry sauce, pasta salad, gravy, cole slaw. And then the actual food plates showed up with chicken, mashed potatoes and stuffing. And then…after we ate, we got two choices of soft serve ice cream.
It was a LOT of food. We didn’t even put a dent in it. But it did taste really good. The chicken was shockingly tender and flavorful. Everything else we ate tasted good too. And for the amount of food? Quite a bargain. They offered to box up all of our leftovers too. Honestly, we were impressed.
Once we had eaten and paid, we headed downstairs. There were multiple shops, so we looked around and got some pastries in the bakery. Then we headed outside for a bit of picture taking before we finished today’s marathon driving day.
Picture taking complete, we hopped in the car and programmed the GPS for the last of today’s driving, another 4+ hours. We made just one stop, for gas right before crossing the border, and thankfully had an uneventful drive, including an incredibly easy border crossing into Canada at the Blue Water Bridge near Port Huron, a crossing my dad had specifically warned me about as a known difficult one. Today though? Easy.
We arrived at the Tower Hotel Fallsview in Niagara Falls, Ontario a little before 9 pm. Here we grabbed a luggage cart, unloaded all of the stuff from the car (woah), and handed off the keys to valet. Check in was quick, and we headed upstairs to our fallsview room on the 26th floor.
This was my first time to Niagara Falls and it had been a big bucket list item, so I basically dumped everything in the entry way of our larger than we expected room to check out the view!
We then unloaded everything and Nick announced he was hungry. So we took the luggage cart back down to the lobby and headed next door to the TGI Fridays in the neighboring hotel. We split mozzarella sticks and potato skins, both of which were different than the classic American TGI Fridays versions, but tasty. I had a margarita and I think he had a long island iced tea.
Then we headed back to our hotel where we settled in and watched the fireworks over the falls from our room before we crashed in a very comfortable bed.
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