Take a train from Washington D.C to Baltimore for a quick one hour flight to Buffalo, followed by a bus trip to Niagara Falls. This was the fairly simple plan relying on a whole multitude of America's public transportation for Wednesday.

I missed breakfast on my last day in the D.C hostel in exchange for some extra sleep and had the already tiresome job of packing my backpack which seems to get more difficult every time I have to do it. Laura did most of the packing for me on the rushed eve of my trip. She's a lot more organised and well, just better at packing than me. I'd like to just throw everything in and forget about it, but with even with Laura's great organisation skills and packing abilities, my backpack only just managed to be zipped up. So each time I get things out, and have to repack it gets harder and harder to fit everything in. It's like playing the most annoying real life version of Tetris every week. Laura and I had used several elastic bands to squash together my pair of sandals and now all but one elastic band had snapped or been lost, so obviously one couldn't do the job and so a little extra room was now needed; things like this happen each time I have to repack, more and more room is needed.

Elastic bands still give me a slight sense of anxiety because of Gemma at my old place of work. She was seemingly trained by the SAS in firing them because she could hit me in the face/head/neck no matter what I did to try and avoid and deflect them. I was just starting to become an okay shot myself before I left; so she was lucky. I did accidently hit Keeley in the face once at work and she's a good friend of Gemma's so my motto is - if you can't beat a woman because she's too tough, beat her friends instead.

It's really hard work carrying my big backpack and my daypack all at once. It's around 20kg on my back and around another 6kg on my front; with all four straps on my shoulders. Luckily this only happens in transit between places but unless you spend a fortune and get cabs everywhere, you're going to have to lug it all around on buses/trains/walking etc.

I had a 10 minute walk from the hostel to the local metro station and then a short ride to the big Union Station where I would locate a proper train going to Baltimore Airport. My shoulders were already hurting by the time I wandered around the Union Station and found out which train I needed to get and where to pay for it etc. I had a 40 minute rest whilst on the train though before I had to transfer to a shuttle bus and then check in the luggage so I was rid of it for a while.

The flight was straight forward and only took the hour expected and this time my luggage arrived with me yay. It was the third bag out onto the runway thing too so I grabbed it quickly and made for the information desk to see where the buses ran from.

Unfortunately the bus that I'd researched on the internet didn't start running until the week after; it was some kind of summer bus to help tourists… so I would have to get two different buses on a longer route that didn't stop as close to my hostel as the original. I went towards the bus stands and asked the driver when he would be setting off and he told me that there was an express leaving right now behind his bus, so I ran to it and piled on just as the driver was about to set off. I needed cash obviously so I had to drop my front daypack and look inside for some. The large black lady shouted ''what ya'll doin'!?'' I told her I was getting some change out and she replied ''Well why din't ya'll do dat befou!?'' Surely looking at me, with all my luggage she could have been more understanding; I told her I'd literally just walked out of the airport so she said okay go sit down then pay once you're on. She wasn't rude in the way that English people would be, she was just… loud and to the point I guess.

I wasn't even bothered by that, but this bus driver had to be the worst bus driver in the world. Throughout the entire journey she was shouting back to us, the commuters, asking for the correct directions! Luckily there was one local who seemed to get this route quite often and he told her most of the right directions, although she did take one wrong turn and so had to go another way for a while. While all this mess was going on I chose to hold on to my $2 for a while, then when my stop finally came I just wandered off and she of course didn't realise. Bad bus driver zero - T one.

I had around a 40 minute wait at the Buffalo bus station for my next bus and then a 50 minute bus ride, finally arriving somewhere near the Niagara Falls - apparently. I say apparently because this area that I arrived in was supposedly close to my hostel and the falls, which you would imagine being a nice, clean, modern suburb. It was not. The place was rundown, with dozens of boarded-up closed down stores, shabby looking houses and what looked like your typical gangsters hanging around on street corners. I'd been to some run down areas of New York and seen the homeless of D.C but this area seemed different, everything look old; like it had been left alone since the 80s or something. Obviously there wasn't anything necessarily wrong with the place; it just wasn't what I imagined it to be. It didn't feel safe to be wandering the streets as a tourist.

Which is what I ended up doing - it was still light, but there was maybe only an hour left of daylight so I wanted to find the hostel pretty sharpish. I was wandering the streets looking like the biggest tourist in the world with my backpacks front and back. I thought at least if someone tries to stab or shoot me it would be really hard to actually hurt me as nothing will get through all this baggage.

All I had was the street address so after aimlessly looking myself for about 20 minutes I decided to ask for some help I wandered in to a Burger King to ask for directions. The nice staff in there pointed me in the right direction after they stopped being amazed at my accent, but their directions weren't the best in the world, they informed me that I would come to a fork in the road and I should take the right. After the 15 minute walk I got to the fork; there was a left, a straight, a diagonally right, and a right… I was pretty sure it wasn't the right-most street and the diagonal right looked dark with no stores or anything so I stuck straight ahead and headed to ask at another store as at least I was closer than I was before. It was getting dark now, and I was starting to slow down with all the heavy baggage pulling down on my shoulders.

KFC was the second place of help. There was a pretty hilarious comedic moment in the KFC; I entered and there were four black people using raised voices, almost shouting about something; it turned out there was no chicken left and they were really properly gutted. They were all mad at the lack of KFC, and so discussing where to go instead to get some chicken. I was too tired to properly take it in, but I had a mini inward Lol and I set off with my new directions. Stereotypes just love to be the truth in America - comedy gold is everywhere.

The feeling of relief when I saw the street sign for my hostel was amazing. I'd made it. I had an ironic thought that fast food had saved my life. Carol the hostel owner was waiting at the porch for me as I had to email ahead with my intended time of arrival. She looked relieved to see me as, but I'm pretty sure I was more relieved to see her. The hostel was a nice homey family run place with just three or four bedrooms. My room had two sets of bunk beds in it and the other three were already in use by a group of Korean guys. I got settled in and said a few hellos to which were answered again by amazed/intrigued looks at my accent. I could tell I'd left the major cities now; a lot of people here had never met someone from England before, and for whatever reason, they are fascinated by it.

Once I was rested I realised how hungry I was, and I felt more comfortable now I had a local map so I set off back to the Burger King for a familiar first meal. The walk there and back was rushed to avoid the curious long looks from certain individuals stood on street corners but I felt confident enough now I had no bags so I could at least run if anything happened. I returned to the hostel after a, well I have to say, a pretty crap burger. Probably the worst Burger King I'd had but when you're new to an area, the big chains just feel familiar and comfortable until you get to know the area better. I would have had KFC, but someone ate all that.

Bed time and tomorrow would be my one and only full day in Niagara to go see the falls.