Day 14: Can we get any cheaper?

So -12 degrees celcius appeals to you eh?
If it does, you are a crazy soul.
We were hardly dressed as we intended to just cross the road for breakfast for a $7 buffet and even just the walk across the snow covered road and car park we literally froze. It was killer.
The brekkie was okay, but so far every meal we notices includes +tax + tip + hidden costs like drinks (Even water!). It seriously costs too much to eat out.
So we went back to the hotel after and dressed up a bit more warmly then caught a cab to the factory outlets center where we figured we'd do some shopping. Instead it was just brand-name outlets..cheaper yes, but not by enough to warrant us buying stuff other than for when we get to NYC.
So we caught another cab to the budget food outlet.

Let me reiterate where we are staying. We are staying at the Mariott. $350 per night on average. More for a room as big as ours. http://www.niagarafallsmarriott.com The place is seriously for businessmen, rich families and crazy people. As such, the place has huge showerheads and shoe polisher's and does not have a kitchenette in any of the rooms as the regular clientelle are usually endowed with enough cash to eat out for every meal.
We are backpackers.

So now we put our heads together and decided to get a $25 electric stove, pots and pans, some cooking utensils, and a bunch load of ingredients to be able to eat our own food. We embarrassingly took all this into our elaborate hotel in a massive cardboard box. Our home-made kitchen is situated in our toilet to avoid setting off the fire alarm, we are using hotel-provided shampoo for dishwashing soap and a hotel-provided facewasher to clean our dishes with. Meanwhile we look across our room and the 3 queen sized beds to our panoramic window out at the brink of the niagara falls lit up with floodlights. It is the most surreal experience as a backpacker ever :D

After procuring a meal fit for...backpackers. Spag bol. We went down to the gym, had a swim, and spent a good 20 mins in the sauna :D

Spoke to a friend on facebook who lives across the border in Buffalo NY. Greg was one of the exchange students i knew from first year when i stayed at student accommodation. I didn't really know him that well other than getting along with him well when we were both appropriately drunk. Either way, he gave us some good suggestions. It now looks like on Wednesday he's going to come pick us up and we can go snowboarding during the day, and at night there is an icehockey game which he should be able to hawk cheap tickets for us. Will be awesome if it all goes to plan.