Over the Easter long weekend, we embarked on a mission to improve our health & longevity. Although perhaps they didn’t take into account sitting in a car for several hours in their study.

Our goal was to stay in the US over 48 hours so that we could get the $400 personal exemption, and we accomplished that by staying over for about 48 hours and 30 minutes! We started out on Thursday night and crossed at Fort Erie at about 9PM. There weren’t many cars at the border at that time so it was smooth sailing. We headed all the way to the Erie to stay at the Sheraton Erie Bayfront because I got a good deal with SPG cash+points.

Although the Bayfront is only a 3 star property, it was quite nice. The decor is modern with lots of wallpaper, but feels very warm. It’s also on the lake and lit up at night, but unfortunately it was raining a lot so that was not conducive to going outside to take pictures.

We spent the next day shopping at Grove City (0% tax on clothes) before heading back to Buffalo for…more shopping. In the end we were limited to what we could buy because we ran out of trunk space, but the good news was that we were all under the $400 exemption limit still!