Itinerary help
 

My husband and I will be in New York city on October 3rd and like to rent a car and drive to Quebec city, Montreal, and on to Niagara Falls.
My questions are: 1) Is this doable in 9 days? 2) In what order should we see these places and how many days of stay per place? 3) Is it acceptable to take a rental car across the border? 4) Any lodging recommendations in the $150 area?

Any suggestions are welcomed and appreciated.

That is a ton of driving on highways that not very exciting... the route is NYC to Quebec City, back to Montreal, back to Toronto, then to Niagara Falls...

You also dont mention if you are driving back to NYC from Niagara (that alone is a 9 Hour drive)...

Taking a rental into Canada is easy as long as you have the proper ID and clear it with the Car Rental Company...

A much easier and cheaper way to do this is to fly from NYC to Buffalo and rent a car there... Niagara is 30 minutes from there and the flights are inexpensive... then Toronto... then Montreal and then Quebec City... then back to Buffalo for a return flight to NYC...

You could also fly to Toronto from NYC and do a similar trip

By taking the one flight, you save almost 3 days of driving...

Thanks garyt22 for your suggestions. I failed to mention that we would be flying back home(Colorado)from Buffalo. How about if we fly from NYC to Quebec city, rent a car and do Quebec city, Montreal, Niagara Falls, and then fly home from Buffalo.

Driving in Montreal and Quebec City is no fun, especially finding places to park, but there certainly are good highways all the way. Even though you seem to be skipping Toronto, you will have to drive past it so build in extra time for its chronic traffic jams which can extend all the way to the Falls (only a slight exaggeration.)
United flies non-stop from Newark to Quebec City. Other airlines make at least one connection; Air Canada, for instance, would route you through Montreal.

You will NOT be able to rent the car in Canada and leave it in Buffalo... you can look into possibly leaving it in Niagara Falls Canada and cabbing to buffalo but I have never checked out that possibility...

You may also find that the Drop charge for one way rental car is higher than just round tripping from Buffalo... a few agencies will let a Buffalo rental drop in Canada but its rare...

...you could break up the drive by starting in buffalo and heading to toronto (90 minutes)...after two days there, head up to Montreal for two nights(6hour drive)...then Quebec City for two nights(2 hr drive)... then head back to toronto for one more night and finish in Niagara for two nights... that puts you 30 minutes from Buffalo airport on flight day and maximizes your time in each city... plus no drop charge...

good luck planning...

If you are skipping Toronto, please reconsider, as Toronto is a diverse interesting and cultural world City... if you want an alternative, consider Niagara on the Lake, a wine region famous for Icewine and the Shaw Festival Theatre Series that runs into October...