Niagara falls from New York City

WE ARE PLANNING A TWO WEEK HOLIDAY IN APRIL TO NEW YORK CITY, WASHINGTON D.C. AND FLORIDA DISNEYLAND FOR OUR KIDS AGED NINE AND SIX. MY WIFE WANTS TO SEE NIAGARA FALLS AND I THOUGHT WE COULD FIT THIS IN AFTER NEW YORK AND BEFORE WASHINGTON?

C. CHAU, LIVERPOOL

The NYC-Niagara Falls-Washington D.C. route you're proposing would work, but it involves some backtracking. The other issue is that the classic view of the falls is from the Canadian side.

The view from the US side is pretty spectacular, but the postcards are shot from Canada. By the time you add the border crossing to Canada and back again into the equation, you could be wasting a lot of your precious time. What you could do instead is start your North America journey at Toronto.

You can get there on a one-stop flight from Sydney, same as New York City, and from Toronto Airport take a shuttle service direct to Niagara Falls. The trip should take just a little over two hours. See Viator (viator.com) for various transfer options. You'll need to spend one night at least at the falls to recover from your journey. From the falls, you have a couple of options for getting to New York City but the quickest is a bus to Buffalo and a flight to one of NY's airports, and preferably JFK, which should take around four hours according to Rome2Rio (rome2rio.com).