Week 43: Cross-Border Shopping in Buffalo/Niagara, New York

I've been listening to people boast about cross-border shopping for years now and how great it is with the deals and variety.  I absolutely love to shop!  Every weekend I go shopping and look forward to it as my highlight of the week.  It's my naughty little pleasure.  It's also a bit tricky to keep up this habit when you're frugal.  I seem to make it work though.

I've traveled to many places around the world but I've never driven to the U.S.  For some unknown reason I had this picture in my mind that once you crossed the bridge and entered New York, a huge bustling Buffalo metropolis would swallow you up or something.  That's why I've avoided going there all these years even though it's only about a two hour drive or less.  Anyway, now that I've been there I can totally say with experienced confidence that it's more like driving in the boonies than a booming city.

I think the key is to leave early in the morning because of the line-ups at the border.  We left at 7am but still had to wait about 30-45min. to get through.  It felt like hours though.

Once passed the border we drove a short distance along the highway and exited off for the Fashion Outlets.  This mall has over a hundred shops and restaurants, some inside one main building and many more outside in a strip mall format.  I wasn't overly impressed with this place.  Other than Tim Hortons, the food court was fairly disappointing and offered similar types of food.  For clothing, they had your typical stores but the prices weren't that great.  I bought a pair of jeans at the Gap and was shocked to see that they only charge 4% sales tax!!!  That's insane compared to the tax we pay.

We had lunch at Chili's (I was pleasantly surprised) and then checked out the Target nearby.  To be perfectly honest, I didn't see much difference between our Target stores and theirs.  Aside from paying less tax, the prices are the same.  Although, they had an excellent selection of flavoured packaged coffee (unlike ours which stocks the shelves with varieties of fair trade blends).  I went for gold and bought Dunkin' Donuts Strawberry Shortcake flavoured coffee.  I would never find something like that here.  It's quite good, by the way.  Also, there's no Starbucks in this particular Target store.  I'm not sure if it's just Canadian Target stores that have Starbucks?  After Target we tried out a T.J. Maxx.  I describe this store as a Winners clearance store.  Oh what fun we had here.  You have to search through a lot of "interesting" racks but I found a neat and different top.  Jeans, coffee, and a top, $55 in total...  that was my big shopping extravaganza.

Returning home was relatively uneventful with the exception of the extra cranky I-hate-the-world-and-everyone-in-it Canada border services officer.  I was ready for him with my receipts in hand and bags by my side.  But, I guess he just wanted to make us feel uncomfortable and anxious as he drilled us with questions and then accused us of lying.  Oh well, he let us go anyway.  I hope we made his miserable day a bit more doom and gloomy.

Would I go back?  Definitely!  Now that I know that the U.S. won't swallow me up, I can check out the stores I missed and even try one or two alternate malls.  My plan is to book a night or two in Niagara Falls, USA and make a weekend of shopping, playing slots, and checking out the falls from the New York side.  Four percent sales tax - I still can't get over it!