Family Friendly Buffalo, New York

Buffalo, New York, is the closest city to one of the most popular tourist attractions in the United States, Niagara Falls. I’ve always felt sentimental toward Buffalo because it was my very last overnight as a flight attendant. I was almost seven months pregnant with my first son. A month after he was born I took an “early retirement” and left my beloved career for a new exciting life of motherhood and freelance writing. Ironically, I never did venture out of the downtown Buffalo hotel where the airline’s crews stayed. Normally the overnights were short and were just long enough to grab a bite to eat in the hotel restaurant and sleep. I was always disappointed I never had the opportunity to explore the area or see the Falls. That changed this summer.

My family recently visited the area and had a great time. While Niagara Falls was the highlight of our adventure, we also had the opportunity to see some Buffalo highlights since we stayed at the (really nice) Hampton Inn and Suites in downtown Buffalo and it was perfect for our family, especially because we stayed in an extremely spacious suite. The bathroom was bigger than some hotel rooms I’ve stayed in and the suite was complete with a kitchenette, breakfast table, Jacuzzi tub, and a (free) tasty hot breakfast, featuring eggs and hash browns though I opted for the Kashi cereal. The kids’ favorite feature was no doubt the heated indoor swimming pool. It was tough trying to get them out. My favorite detail though, besides the space, was the leather laptop pad for working in bed (that’s the writer in me!). And coffee drinkers, you will appreciate there is a Starbucks and SPOT coffee shop right across the street.

While we stayed downtown, we didn’t really explore that area much, but we see other parts of the city. My husband has ties to Buffalo. He went to school at University at Buffalo and hadn’t been back since. Therefore, we made it a point to see his old dorm and visit the two most popular Buffalo wings restaurants each night of our stay: Duff’s and Anchor Bar. I’d love to do a side by side taste test one day, but I truly enjoyed the wings at both places.

Our first morning in town we visited Niagara Falls then kicked off our afternoon at the Buffalo Museum of Science. The kids really enjoyed the new hands-on children’s area. My favorite were the display halls filled with native taxidermy. What is really impressive is that the museum boasts 700,000 specimens related to the Greater Niagara Region which tie into the area’s fascinating natural history. If you visit the Buffalo Museum of Science soon, you will have the opportunity to see the Robotic Dinosaurs exhibit. Each prehistoric animal comes to life and I could have been easily convinced the T-Rex was looking me right in the eye as he roared in my direction.

Next, we ventured to the Buffalo Zoo, an easy-to-navigate, quaint zoo with plenty of attractions for the kids such as a kiddy train and carousel (both cost an additional but minimal fee). We were lucky and visited on a beautiful day and many of the animals were out. One of the highlights was feeding nectar to the colorful lorikeets. Be careful though, those sneaky birds will snatch the cup right out of your hand as my little girl discovered. One of the features of this zoo that I really enjoyed was the color coded signs that coordinated the animals with a particular geographical region: Blue – The Americas, Green – Australia/Asia and Orange – Africa. Family favorite: watching the two elephants nuzzle (see photo).

Our stay in Buffalo was short but we had a grand time seeing the area on such a gorgeous day. Thank you to the Buffalo-Niagara CVB for hosting some of the above activities during our stay.