Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
as the transportation lifeline connecting the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean; it now
boasts an indigenous culinary scene and Bohemian enclaves. Syracuse and Rochester are
both home to big universities.
Buffalo
This often maligned working-class city does have long, cold winters and its fair share of
abandoned industrial buildings, but Buffalo also has a vibrant community of college stu-
dents and thirty-somethings living well in cheap real estate and gorging on the city's af-
fordable and tasty cuisine. Settled by the French in 1758 - its name is believed to derive
from
beau fleuve
(beautiful river) - the city's illustrious past as a former trading post and
later a booming manufacturing center and terminus of the Erie Canal means there's a cer-
tain nostalgia and hopefulness to ambitious revitalization plans (one calls for a massive
expansion and relocation of the University of Buffalo medical school to downtown). Buf-
falo is about an eight-hour trip from New York City through the Finger Lakes region and
only a half hour or so south of Niagara Falls.
The very helpful
Buffalo Niagara Convention & Visitors Bureau
( 800-283-3256;
www.visitbuffaloniagara.org
; 617 Main St; 10am-4pm Mon-Fri, 10am-2pm Sat)
located in a
light-filled beaux arts-style shopping arcade (c 1892) has good walking-tour pamphlets
and a small gift shop.
Sights & Activities
Architecture buffs will enjoy a stroll around downtown - you can't miss City Hall - and
the 'theater district,' which has several late-19th-century buildings with baroque, Itali-
anate and art nouveau facades (for details check out
www.walkbuffalo.com
)
.
Once derelict, the city's redeveloped waterfront, now called
Canalside
(
www.canalsidebuffalo.com
)
, includes an attractive park space where you can board boat
cruises and rent kayaks. Also check out the
Naval & Military Park
(
www.buffalonavalpark.org
;
1 Naval Park Cove; adult/child $10/6; 10am-5pm Apr-Oct, Sat & Sun
Nov, closed Dec-Mar)
, a small museum with maritime war-related exhibits but more im-
pressive are the two huge WWII-era ships and submarine (museum admission includes
access to the ships). North of downtown, sprawling
Delaware Park
was designed by Fre-
derick Law Olmsted. The
Elmwood
neighborhood is dotted with hip cafes, restaurants,
boutiques and bookstores.
This is a hard-core sports town and locals live and die with the
NFL Buffalo Bills
(
www.buffalobills.com
)
football team who play in Ralph Wilson Stadium in the suburb of
