Exploring Buffalo, NY Online

I began planning for Buffalo the way I always begin vacation planning: by looking at the website for the local newspaper. In this case, you have The Buffalo News.

From there I learned that the September Buffalo News Book club section is Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond and that we narrowly missed the Dalai Lama's visit to the University of Buffalo. There wasn't much else of interest today. Perhaps closer to the weekend things will heat up.

Buffalo.Com - Everything Buffalo is an excellent starting point and provides the all important Event Calendar, where you might find the unexpected. There I found the first random event of our unusual trip: Dance Lessons by Jackie. So Monday night we'll be learning the Fox Trot and Cha Cha. Why not take a dance class in a faraway city? At least you know you'll never see those people again...

The best site I found (so far) for general travel information is Go Buffalo Niagra or "Wright Now in Buffalo" (playing off the presence of several Frank Lloyd Wright homes in the region). It's a very professional site that makes it easy to find information on historical walks, tours, etc. Many of the tours actually sound interesting. It seems there are quite a few museums in Greater Buffalo. Who knew?

One of the days, rather than tag along from school to school on Normal Girl's road show, I think I'm going to hop a cab downtown. Since many of the tours appear to have shut down in preparation for 250 inches of snow, I may be taking a self-guided tour of the city.

It never hurts to check out the nightlife (though since Normal Girl is there for work, we can't stay out late). Fortunately, I stumbled across Buffalo Bar Fly, which seems to have all the details I would ever need. For example, Sunday night we can "party with the hotties" after the "Bills kick the hell out of the NY Jets." Somehow I don't think that's quite what we had in mind. Merlin's Bar, though, has live music every night we're there, and an Open Mic on Tuesday. Maybe I'll hop on stage to sing "Free Bird."

That's as far as I've gotten so far... I need to start finding what Rochester has to offer and begin planning for the second half of next week. Is that feeling in my gut anticipation for a trip to Buffalo? I think it might be...