Th-th-tha-that’s All Folks

So obviously I have spent this day in LA writing blogs rather than playing with their public transport again. It’s been nice and relaxing, and I managed to write alllllll the way up to here with a bit of time to spare before I have to check out of the hotel and hop on a shuttle bus to the airport.

This trip has been great, if a little tiring. I’ve had to balance getting everything I wanted to done with not burning out, and not always been successful, but it’s been a fun time.

I’ve still got a bunch of photos to post, and I might post some ghost stories from Savannah, but they will probably be done during jetlag or after.

Thanks for reading, it’s been hard getting the motivation to write sometimes, but I’m told that people do read and enjoy it, and it should be good to look back on this later down the track!

Home time!

Mesa again!

I had a bit longer to mess around in Mesa than I had in San Antonio before going on to LA, a whole 5 days, in fact, considering I got there in the morning after a somewhat harrowing 24+ hours trip over (I’m not sure exactly how long it was, mistakes had been made with my tickets and in between being told that there was a potential they might not be accepted due to a missing itinerary and time differences between the tickets and actual running time of the buses, I was not keeping track) on some scungy buses (including one that smelled of pee with a woman who did not realise that everyone on the bus was not interested in listening to her music let alone her singing along to it).

We started off with a nice lunch at Mimi’s cafe that I vaguely recalled from 2007, and then dinner at Chillis, where I once again managed to order something spicier than I probably should have given my (in)ability to handle spicy food.

Tuesday saw Tiffiny and I head out way out into the middle of nowhere, where some crazy scientists thought it would be a great idea to seal themselves in a massive biome for a few years without enough sugar (spoiler: While they don’t consider it a failure, they had to stop because they were not getting enough calories). They call it Biosphere 2 these days (Biosphere 1 being the Earth, we’re told), and it was pretty damn awesome! Tiffiny had been before when the place was still sealed, but now that it was open to the public, it was pretty cool. It’s now owned by the Arizona University (ASU), and they still run experiments in it (they’re about to start one called “LEO” which involves studying rainfall on slopes). They have 5 environments - a rainforest, a savannah cliff, an ocean, mangroves and a fog desert. You get to go from super humid to nice and breezy! We got to go underneath to see all the climate controls too, including a wind tunnel that we weren’t really expecting! One of the coolest things we saw was one of the ‘lungs’, a system built to maintain pressure in the building when it was sealed, now just used as a reservoir for sprinkler systems. The acoustics were a-ma-zing with echoes that lasted for about a minute. Tiffiny and I wanted to sing. There was also a pretty cool bit as we went through pressure changes into the outer chamber of the lung (air pushing us through the door) and then outside (air pushing us back!).

We also saw a project they were running about rooftop gardens (which apparently do a lot to cut down on energy costs in Summer) and we got to see the Ocean environment from underground (…a bit underwhelming, actually HAHA). But it was well worth the drive, even if the drive back saw us stopping in a prison town for food (fun for the whole family).

Wednesday I was sick for most of the day so let’s not go there…

Thursday was a paaaaarty day. Lauren, along with some other people that had been invited over, came over to play “Tower”, a tabletop game which is sort of played like Dungeons and Dragons, except with less stats and dice, and more trying to make each other laugh. We each picked characters from books, TV, movies, etc. and then set them against each other in a paintball game/present delivery mission in a shopping centre. It was a lot of fun, especially with Amanda’s character (Hamel from Violinist of Hamlin which I haven’t spelt right sorry) had to be mercy killed by my character (Tomo from Azumanga Daioh) after sliding around in slime for who knows how many turns, or Tiffiny declaring on the part of her character (Dick Solomon from Third Rock from the Sun) “GOD I’M GORGEOUS!”… While wearing a tutu if I remember right (it was pretty crazy). Tiffiny ended up winning earlier than we expected the game to end, but it was still a great night!

Friday was a pretty lazy day, for a few reasons I was meant to share a bed with Tiffiny (mostly because getting out the couch bed was a pain, nothing else going on there, thanks Dad), but she ended up moving to the couch because I snored apparently (sorry, sorry). But I got to spend another full day with friends before giving my lame ass goodbyes at the airport, and flying off to LA, spending one last night in the US :)

San Antonio Part the Fourth

So over New Year’s I received the exciting news that Kristy and Andrew (well… More Kristy than Andrew) were going to have a baby! Dad had been telling me that I should attempt to convince them to drive over to a Doughnut shop out past Austin that he’d seen on Man vs. Food, but seeing that

a) Kristy was having trouble with things like coffee even on a good day and

b) Andrew was also not having a great time of things and

c) Man vs. Food is a pretty sickening show in general…

…I did not expect much.

We did order Thai food that was spicier than I expected but ended up being pretty damn good, though.

So we had excited talks about babies (by the way, Kristy, while premature babies aren’t usually a good thing, there’s a day 9 days earlier than your due date that’s a pretty good day…) and watched TV, and I packed a whole heap of stuff in a box that would beat me home by a few days.

Then after some goodbyes (which I am not very good at, not because I cry - the exact opposite, I am entirely un-gushy which seems inappropriate considering I HAVE NO IDEA WHEN I AM GOING TO SEE THESE PEOPLE AGAIN) I was off on a bus to Mesa again.

Spooked in Savannah

Alright, this and the next few posts are going to be short, half because there is not much to tell, half because I have to check out of this hotel and get to the airport for a plane to Australia in the next few hours. But we’ll see how I go finishing up.

My plans in Savannah were cut a bit short. I had two and a half full days there, but the first day and a half I spent being exhausted from NYC, and I was prevented from going into town on the second due to severe thunderstorms. Luckily, there were only two things I REALLY wanted to do while I was there: Go on a ghost tour in what was supposedly the most haunted place in America (at this point I was under the impression they ALL were given claims of various ghost tours, but I would soon be put in my place), and sit in the park that Tom Hanks sat in for most of Forrest Gump (I’d already had one Forrest Gump related disappointment when I learned that they frowned upon people trying to recreate the scene at the reflecting pool in DC - and it was kind of too cold). I knew the latter was going to be hard as it was, given that the original bench was supposedly in two places (one in Paramount Studios that I’ve already sat on, and another in a museum in Savannah), but it would become harder when I discovered that there were actually no chairs at all around the edges of the park. So the disappointment on the second is caused by poor tourism planning rather than the storm.

I did manage to go on a ghost tour though! A lady called Laura picked up myself and a couple from Michigan up in a real hearse that really had previously been used as the car company had intended for it to be used. There were rollers on the floor and everything. She had a low voice, and with her Southern accent could do the most awesome spooky voices. So I was pretty amused until I learned why Savannah is called the most haunted place in America - turns out that 6% of the soil (that is, an amount that would be unhealthy to build on if that percentage referred to something like lead or petroleum) is made up of uh… People. The town suffered several plagues of Yellow Fever, a lot of fires, not to mention the murder of slaves who owners were allowed to just bury in their backyards, civil war, executions in both gallows and guillotine, and general murder and death. This was before most of the town was built, by the way. As they built it up, they moved (some) tombstones, but not the bodies that went with them. So it is, as they say, “A Town built on its dead”. Almost every hotel has a story, and there are streets where ‘poltergeist activity’ (moving furniture, misbehaving electronics) are a normal part of life.

I was very glad at that point to be about 20 minutes South of the main part of town.

I might come back and add some ghost stories, but beyond embarrassing the hell out of myself by choking on a piece of chicken at Outback Steakhouse, there is not much more to tell! I decided that I didn’t want to spend 33 hours on a bus to San Antonio, so I took a much shorter trip on a bus to Atlanta… And then caught a plane.

Here we go

Sorry for the wait!

If I had the choice, really, I would just talk about some of the awesome food I ate in NYC, because really there are few things I like better than feeding my face with good stuff. But I did some other pretty awesome things, mostly spurred on by anonymous comments (thank you for those, again). There were a few things I would have liked to do that I just didn’t have time for (it would take a loooong time to cover it all, and a bit of luck to get things like tickets to The Daily Show/Colbert Report)

So here’s what I did in the few days of the New Year I spent in New York City once I recovered from my hangover:

January 2: I had planned to buy a Metro ticket, but by the time I realised that the ticket machines weren’t accepting cards because it was a public holiday and the banks were closed, I had walked up into Times Square - it felt a bit silly to purchase a ticket when I could look around now that it was empty and the walk to where I was going next was not exactly far off:

Photos will show this better than I do (at this point they will probably go up after I return, we’ll see), but the views you get up there are spectacular! It was a great way to really start properly touring the place, because I could really get a sense of what it ws like, even from so high up.

Down the bottom, I went to the first of three skating rinks I’d visit and not actually skate on for various reasons. The reason I didn’t skate at Rockefeller is because they were making a large crowd wait to get in a line to buy tickets, and then wait in another line to hire skates, and then wait in another line to actually skate… There was not point in waiting all that time when I could

Which was interesting seeing as none of the trains that left from there were going to take me where I wanted to go, so there was almost little point in being there, haha! Still, it was nice to go see the roof, just that main central foyer, still looking like it’s a piece of unchanged history. Really cool!

A lot of things were closed this day, so unfortunately I didn’t do much else besides sort of addressing this one:

Truth be told, even at home I am not big on shopping, and over here I do not have a lot of ability to haul much stuff around with me. So I compromised on this one and just looked in some trendy places, including Saks on 5th avenue where you can buy a thin piece of fabric that looks vaguely like a summer dress for $2000. You know, if you are that kind of person.

January 3: Tuesday I headed out first to a second ice rink, this time the one at Citi Park, where I looked at the prices for tickets on top of skate hire and decided to go spend the money on a crepe instead (it was pretty damn good too). Back in DC I bought some pencils and a sketch pad, because silly me when packing thought that I wouldn’t feel the need to draw and write stuff when I was out and about. So I attempted to do some drawings while sitting in the park, but it was really quite cold, so that idea did not last long.

The NYPL was right next to the park, so after being disappointed by the large, closed doors yesterday, I went right in today! The place was big and huge, and even though I had been sent here on a specific mission, I did have a bit more of a look around, and became rather disappointed by the restrictions on photography (you can’t take any in most places inside). I didn’t bring a book with me, but I did sit inside the vast, oddly quiet room inside the library and read a bit of Tennyson that I’d found on the shelves.
On the first floor, they were having a 100 year anniversary exhibition, with everything from the original Winnie the Pooh toys that have always lived there, to Kerouac’s harmonica and some of his original drafts, and things like really old anatomical illustrations.

I’m not sure how well they maintain the mural in here, or if it was meant to be as dull as it was - it didn’t seem it was meant to though, which was a little disappointing that the colours have faded. The upkeep of the 1920s art deco architecture and detailling was, honestly, a bit cooler. The part of the mural that impressed me the most was the part depicting the Chrysler Building itself, that looked great! (and yes, there are photos).

It was pretty damn cold on this day, mind you, and my thermals were well and truly getting a work out. So I wanted to head somewhere that was inside and warm again. I found myself over at the Ford Foundation building - What the Ford Foundation is isn’t actually important - the building looked like a pretty standard office building until you got inside, and realised that the offices are only around the outside of the building: The entire middle of the place is taken up by a large garden which they change up seasonally. It was a nice place to sit for a while, and is free to the public during the day all year round. Really nice.

It was still early but also still really cold, so I went a few blocks down the road to a cinema to see Hugo after that. It is a pretty awesome movie and kept me out of the cold air, and was much better than the cramped quarters of the hostel.

January 4: I’d been looking forward to Wednesday since I had really organised myself on my hangover day. I was only doing two things on this day, but they were both pretty cool.

I started with the second of these, but getting there was a bit of an effort - I went to the wrong subway station - it was one of the few manned ones, but the lady there was unhelpful and rude when I tried to ask her if it was the right station, being told it was by her and that it wasn’t by someone else… Anyway. By the time I’d finished there, I was not going to make it there by Subway, so had to take a Taxi.

The thing about NYC is that most of Manhattan is on a numbered grid - easier to follow than Melbourne. Greenwich Village, though, is right at the Southern end where rich people used to live on massive fields, and wouldn’t let the government put them on a grid when they were making all the roads, so it’s a curvy mess. The Taxi driver got lost several times over and actually tried asking me for directions… He did not get a tip.

Somehow I managed to meet up with the tour just before they started, so that was OK in the end!

It was a fantastic tour too, we ate at some great places, from famous pizza places to some absolutely delicious olive oil (and honey with white truffle in it). Needless to say, by the end I was stuffed, and quite happy to roll back to the hostel for a while.

Not for the rest of the day, though. That night I was off up Broadway, way up to the Gershwin Theatre to see Wicked. I’d somehow managed to get front and centre on the mezzanine level, just above the top-paying orchestra seats. It was only a little above the amount I’d budgeted for tickets, but I’d been pretty good with spending up to this point, so it wasn’t an issue (then I went and spoiled myself on a couple of souvenirs afterwards). The show was amazing even if it didn’t include any of the actors that my theatre friends rave about - Chandra Lee Schwartz was Glinda and Jackie Burns was Elphaba (The wicked Witch of the West, for those not in the know). It was a bit slow at the start but they definitely deserved the standing applause by the end of the show, it was brilliant. I hung around for signatures afterwards and got to meet Chandra Lee Schwartz and Etai BenShlomo (who played Boq, a munchkin boy that finds himself in a one-sided relationship with Elphaba’s younger sister) as well as one of the chorus members… They closed the stage door for signatures early though, which was unfortunate!

Still it was a good day and I’m pretty happy to rub it in people’s faces about how lucky I was!

January 5: After the great night on Broadway, I found myself having trouble sleeping in the hostel - it wasn’t quite as cold as the night before, but someone had left the heater on before turning the lights out - a bit of a no no, because it had a habit of rattling loudly, whining, and every so often sounding like it was about to explode. It was not something a normal person could sleep through, and turning it off when it was making those sounds was often dangerous - it was all metal aside from the plastic knob that did not give much room for hands, and it was all to easy to burn yourself, especially when making those noises (when it was at its hottest).

It didn’t help that my half of the room was woken by someone turning the lights on, and then the rest of the place was woken by one of my room-mates stomping around and then spotting me sitting up to see what the hell was going on - he asked me if I spoke French, I said “Not really” in English, which apparently did not do, so I made the mistake of saying “Not much, very bad” in French. He then started spouting rapid fire questions at me in French, a few of which I understood but had no clue how to answer beyond “I don’t know”. He grew more frustrated, but finally in the end decided he was done and asked me a question I finally knew how to answer - should he turn off the light? “OUI.”

Not a good start to the day.

Seeing as I’m not a blonde in a blonde joke, this was actually difficult, and admittedly I failed. I got on the Ferry, at least, and froze my face off on the outside of it, taking photos of the Statue of Liberty and looking at the city getting further away. As the ferry was free, stowing away was difficult, but I figured they would want everyone to unload before it went back, so I did see if I could find somewhere to hide, and that would be, I supposed, equivalent to stowing away on a free trip.

The problem came when they announced that that particular ferry was docking at the island for the day, so there went that idea. I caught a different ferry back in the only way available, which is to say, legally.

From there I made my way towards the 9/11 memorial, cold and again grumpy and tired. I didn’t end up going in, because apparently you need to book tickets in advance… I could have done so on my phone right then and there, and gone in an hour or two later, but I felt discouraged when I looked inside and saw a gift shop… Moving on, I thought.

Being tired as I was, there was not much else I wanted to do that day, so I ended up heading back to Greenwich Village and having a brownie that has apparently won awards at a place called Milk and Cookies.

Back at the hostel that night, there was talk of a pianist playing downstairs that night. The Hipster cafe had a little balcony overlooking the performance area, so I set myself up there with my laptop and dinner, and later regretted it when it turned out he was apparently of the post-modern movement in music, and his playing involved sounding classical for a moment before what sounded like he was bashing his head on the keys repeatedly. I’ve listened to music like this before and it can be done right, but not when you have fancy wording all around your name and apparently take yourself very seriously. What a noise…

January 6:  Back to this one:

So with the inconsiderate Frenchman gone, the next day was a lot more pleasant to begin with! I headed Uptown to the Frick Art Collection, another really beautiful place that I am unable to share visually because of camera restrictions.

The gallery is in a house once owned by a rich guy called Henry Clay Frick, who was a massive art collector - all the artworks in the gallery now were owned and displayed by him. It hadn’t been intended to be a gallery - well, aside for two of the rooms which he did open up to the public - but the house is very well set up for it, especially with some paintings either taking up whole sections of wall, or being painted directly on to them, and the architecture of the place being subtle but unbelievably well thought out - almost everything from the marbling on the floors, to the sculpting on the fireplaces to the skirting on the ceiling are art pieces.

Frick’s collection mostly consisted of Renaissance art, though downstairs the current owners were hosting a Picasso exhibition - they had more of his realist pieces than the cubist paintings that made him famous, as well as some stuff from when he was 9 (even at a young age he whipped other kid’s butts at drawing, by the way).

Next I headed all the way to the Southern end of Central Park to see the last ice skating rink, and again did not go skating because the price did not outweigh the fact that I’ve been ice skating before with different scenery and it tends to be more fun when you’re with other people. But anyway, I was in Central Park, and had just as much fun looking at still-frozen lakes, statues and getting lost in general. I made it up to places like “Strawberry Field”, the spot where John Lennon was assassinated that is now the place of a mosaic tribute, the Alice in Wonderland statue and many other places that you see in movies and on TV. Basically, I only wandered around the Southern half (if I was lucky) and my legs were tired by then. The place was bigger than I thought.

Tired as my legs were, I still had one more place to see for the day.

A disclaimer: While I can look at architecture and say ‘oh that looks nice’, I am not well versed and so as my dad said:

“Here’s this huge, ornate, historic Cathedral, that took 50 years to build and had stone hacked out of centuries old quarries in Italy, craftsman who were specially bred for the job……   …. ‘stained glass was nice I suppose’”

That was in response to me actually saying that last part, sorry to everyone for my ignorance on this part, haha (note - most of what he says is not true at all please don’t be fooled).

But it was a beautiful cathedral, even if I feel St. Pat’s has it beat on the interior. They had some art exhibition on the importance of water, some of which was nice, some of which was probably a little too modern to look great inside such an old building. There was someone playing piano in one of the rooms at the very back of the church, and they really showed off the amazing acoustics of the place - you could hear it clearly at the front entrance, without speakers.

So that was that!

January 7: What I thought at the time was going to be my last proper outing in NYC but I’d prove myself wrong the next day. I gave myself the whole of this day to visit the Museum of Natural History, which looked almost disappointingly different to how it appears in Night at the Museum (I’ve had to watch the film enough times for Cubs, the place could be decent enough to look the same!), partly because there were a number of areas going through refurbishments in the off season.

Even so, the place was pretty damn cool, and I saw a lot of neat stuff - I didn’t realise there would be a place that could beat Bass Pro Shop (an outdoors store Amanda and Tiffiny took me to in 2007) with the sheer amount of taxidermy! I probably liked the section on evolution best - it was great to really see the connections between sets of skeletons that have been dug up, and the museum has really gone to some effort in recreations of faces and bodies. I really liked their Big Bang timeline as well, it was a bit of fun and pretty cool the way it was done (you started off watching a movie, and then the timeline was a spiral starting from the Big Bang at the top, to the present day at the bottom).

I probably would have like the dinosaurs a bit more, but by the time I got up to them, it was a bit later in the day - on a weekend - and the families complete with young children and older people with mobility issues had come out in force. Trying to move anywhere was frustrating, and it became difficult to get a proper look at some of the stuff.

Still, it was a pretty cool day :)

January 8: There had been talk of going to have breakfast at Tiffiny’s before I left, but lack of space and the cold weather tended to mean that I wore bulkier, warmer clothing for the bus, and check out meant not opportunities to really change clothes unless I wanted to go through the ordeal of re-packing my bag in a public bathroom. So lumped with clothing that was not looking to great, I scratched that out, and headed over to Hoboken over in New Jersey instead. There was only really one mission for this - visit Carlos Bakery for mum, who likes to tell people she’s not a fan of Cake Boss even though she watches it all the time. Knowing their reputation for using more rice k(c?)rispies than actual cake (as seen on TV), I decided not to go for cake and had a rather average chocolate chip cookie instead. But hey, I’ve been there.

I still had a bit of time to kill, and felt it was best spent eating better food, so I went and had some strawberry crepes at a nearby cafe, followed by ice cream at the Ben and Jerry’s store down the road.

Soon enough, it was time to head back over to NYC and start a long trip (on nice buses, at least) to Savannah.

Photos!

In a change of pace, I am going to promise writing for later and give photos now.

ALL of the photos I’ve taken up to today can be found at http://cherrykittennet.com/america

There’s also a few videos there, so have a look around. Sorry that it is a bit messy, without Dreamweaver on this laptop, I handcoded the entire thing and that took long enough as it was without buggerising around making it look nice. Clicking on the photos will bring up bigger photos, and you should be able to click on the left or right of the bigger photos to move through the galleries.

Apologies for a lack of captions on the newer photos, they are coming too!

Enjoy!

Shout out to Anon

Whoever you are, single or multiple person(s), though I’m guessing sommmmeone who as A) Been to New York and B) Knows that I get called “Reni” and writes it with that spelling, so that narrows it down a bit for at least ONE of the suggestions! Thank you for all the challenges on here, I don’t know if I’ll get through all of them, but rest assured they’ll get up on here, probably starting tomorrow when I won’t be feeling so sorry for myself, haha!

NYE in NYC

Yesterday mostly consisted in me doing my best to make good of unfortunate situations, that ended up mostly working. I was so determined because this was really the bit I’ve told everyone about, and it would really suck to start 2012 on such a low note, when I had such high hopes for it! Perhaps it was a sign that I was well and truly ready to be done with 2011.

First, I wasn’t allowed to check in before 3pm, something that I’ve supposedly encountered a few times but always managed to get around. It was even odder this time, because I’d only paid for a bed in a hostel room… I went to what I will only describe as a hipster café next door, full of people with ironic glasses, skinny jeans, Macs everywhere and Modest Mouse blasting non stop (much to the horror of an older couple who walked in a song that showed the owners were not at all concerned about swear words). The coffee was not the best, but I spent a bit of time working on something that followers of this blog will be happy to see, even if it is a bit slapdash in an effort to cut down on the time it will take.

Another woman was manning the counter two hours later, and she let me check in if I was willing to pay a small fee. I wanted to get to Times Square, so yes I was. My room-mates weren’t upstairs, but a maid did walk in while I was sorting myself out, trying to get around the annoyance that it was a room with 8 beds when the website had said 4 - something they supposedly get around by putting a wall between the sets of bunks, with a wide gap instead of a door. They all seemed to be female at least, or the kind of guys who liked to wear very feminine ugg boots and use shampoo aimed at women. I wasn’t going to judge. I claimed one of the empty beds by chaining my bag to one of the bed posts. It seemed a logical thing to do. Anyway, off to Times Square.

After a couple of hours at Times Square, I left. Turns out that running to get to a street that was still open, being pushed and squeezed and yelled at while being unable to move on my own terms, in a throng waiting to be released into a pen with an even bigger crowd… Police officers who seemed to have no idea what was going on or any concept of how to address a crowd like this (no megaphones anywhere, no cops down the sides of the crowd to stop people crushing children that people had been stupid enough to bring to this place)… All culminating in me getting my leg crushed into the side of a barrier when the crowd was finally released. It later turned out not to be very bad, but I was so terrified of the push of the crowd that the pain was intense, bad enough that I cried a little, something I just don’t really do when I get hurt, especially not in public. The cops luckily grabbed me until I got pushed more, and broke my leg or something, and let me out a side way. All of that was, surprisingly, enough to turn me off the idea of standing in a bigger crowd with people straining to see Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga.

I hobbled down the road to a place called Dervish, who were kind enough to give me a spot at the bar for their celebration dinner if I was kind enough to pay them a lot of money. I thought they were going to play the Times Square celebration, but they had their own live music which I think I preferred. I quite happily settled in, the people were friendly and the food was awesome. We went out in the last three minutes before midnight to Times Square down the road, at the edge of the crowd, and while I was too short to see the Millennium ball, I could still see the countdown on the screen. The atmosphere was amazing, and it was great when the confetti exploded everywhere and rained down. I think they played a few bars of “Auld Lang Syne”, but more people were excited about “New York, New York”.

After heading back in to have a complimentary champagne (adding to a number of drinks I’d already had…), I headed back out to beat the bigger part of the rush for taxis. I took a pedi cab which was a bit cold, and the driver seemed to be suicidal, but it was faster than a normal taxi because part of those suicidal tendencies involved weaving through cars and running red lights. Probably a good thing that I was a little drunk and found it more fun than terrifying. For some reason it cost me $80, which I still don’t entirely understand, but it had something to do with it being New Year’s, and the fact that he had to go through certain districts. I don’t know.

My room-mates still weren’t back, so I went to bed, they came in gradually throughout the night, including the girl who was on the bed above me and had no idea how to act in a place inhabited by more people than her (she had put the bag behind the bed so that she had to get me up to get it out, switched on the lights, was generally noisy and left her phone on loud which we discovered this morning). She was like a few girls who were obviously just staying that night, and slept in clothes with the grotty hotel blanket. I finally had a use for my sleeping bag and towel that I’d been lugging around.

Sleep was not exactly uninterrupted then, in between arriving room-mates and taxis beeping horns/people blowing little trumpets into who knows what hour in the morning, I am not surprised that I did not feel so great when I got up this morning (barely morning) and am just satisfied with sitting in ‘library’ section of the hipster café.

Da da da daa da daaa, da da da da da daaa (That’s the Presidential Theme, right?)

While Texas was certainly doing its bit to get a bit chilly for Winter, it really has nothing on the Eastern side of the country - luckily I had rugged up in anticipation, but every day was a day for thermals and a windbreaker. I would have almost considered a balaclava, but it probably wasn’t the best idea considering where I was, and people’s tendency to get a bit jumpy around them. Plus they look stupid.

It was sooo cold that I didn’t particularly want to venture outside in the mornings and evenings. I ended up getting (thankfully cheap) room service instead. Have to work my way up gradually to the NYC-level cold, I figured with my ability to make wussy excuses. The food was fairly nice, but my parents are not, and convinced me to go on a night tour so I could take photos (more on the tour in a bit!)

I had intended to go into the White House, which does, I was told, run tours for the public… Apparently security measures have been tightened, and in order to get one of those tours, you have to apply to your Congressman (or in my case, the Australian Embassy), and wait about eight months to get approved for permission to get a tour pass. So instead I stood outside what I thought looked like a rather odd view of the White House, not what I was used to, and I wouldn’t find out why until later.
The Washington Monument was also closed due to the earthquake that hit recently„ but luckily is is probably best viewed from the outside anyway.

This was turning into a longer walk with not much to do than I expected. But I kept going right on towards the museums in the National Mall (a mall in the same way Bourke St has a mall. Only cars still drive down it). I started, once I got there, with the Air and Space Museum that had been highly recommended to me over Christmas (not by the reindeer, he was useless). All the Smithsonian museums are free, which is fantastic, but I only had two days. So picking and choosing was necessary. The Air and Space museum was pretty damn cool, I went in to see a film on collisions in space in a round topped planetarium which was kind of cool (I was going to write about it but it made me sound like a nerd, and I felt that was clear enough already to not reiterate it). In the end, the stuff that disappointed me by being absent from the Kennedy Space Centre was present there, so that rounded off things nicely for me. I’ve never been terribly excited by planes, but even so, it was interesting to see the Wright Brother’s plane, and all the stuff on Amelia Earheart. No Transformers or models waking up to roam around though, so Hollywood let me down there a bit.

That took a lot of time to get through, but once I got there, I realised that the Air and Space museum was completely dwarfed by by the National Gallery. I only got through most of the Eastern, and a part of the Western part of the main floor of the West Building. My God. I took a tour on the development of Italian art and how it influenced American artists later (namely Gilbert Stuart), so in my skimming of the gallery, I was at least able to learn some more about the artworks. There was also a painting by Da Vinci there (Ginevra), which is apparently the only one in the US, and I got to see that. Unfortunately I missed pieces by Degas and Dali, which I would have liked to have seen, but even so I saw a lot.

Then, instead of having dinner at a reasonable hour, I went on a night tour of the city’s major landmarks. Fairly early on, I discovered that the reason the White House had looked so weird during the day was because I was looking at the back of it. So I got to see the front. The tour went a lot longer than I expected it to. Towards the end, there were quite a few people who stayed on the bus, tired and cold instead of getting out. I wasn’t one of them, but the idea of staying in that seat was certainly tempting! In the end I got to see a lot of the places I was hoping to see, but probably wasn’t going to have time for (and later found I definitely wouldn’t have had time for). I saw them at night too, which is probably a view most people wouldn’t get. Not during Winter, anyway, because they have more sense than that.

the next day I had a teensy little sleep in, knowing I would probably miss out on something, but too tired to care. I had intended to go to the Natural History museum, perhaps see more of the Gallery… Instead, I ended up at one of the few museums that charges money to get in, “The Newseum”. If I call it research for my Masters, maybe I can claim it on tax. Anyway, I spent the entire day there and saw none of the other things I was planning on. Among other things, I managed to see a show on “The List” in the Washington Post, which was filmed but I doubt it was broadcast. For one, they had cameras there that were preset (normal), but the only floor crew present were the ones giving out microphones to the audience so they could ask questions (not normal from what I’ve learnt…). Still, it was a bit of fun. They also have a wall up there for journalists who have died on the job - mostly foreign correspondents, unsurprisingly. My first thought was :gee, for a while there - still sort of now… I was heading down a road that would likely get my name up there.” So that was fun. I saw the front page of the Herald Sun for that day, and what a proud day it was when Australia’s offering to the world is a picture of some cricketers and a report on record numbers of drink driving.

I came back and finished writing the entry I’d been writing on San Antonio… For anyone who didn’t pick up on it, I lost interest in writing it fairly early on. You can’t force this stuff and expect quality, you know! I wrote this entry, originally, in a notebook at a bar in NYC because I felt a bit more like it, and even this is not that great.

Yesterday, I got up ridiculously early to catch a bus to said NYC, talked to my parents and some friends as they rang in the New Year (they had to ring me, my American phone number cannot make international calls). The best part was seeing the New York City skyline come into view for the first time, Flaming Lips “Suddenly Everything has Changed” playing the title lyrics coming on at that exact moment. It was just a little perfect and awesome, and a good spot to end this post and move on.

San Antonio Part 3 of I forgot there were going to be 4

While I have breakfast, two things that I should have mentioned about my time in Orlando too:

1. The bus driver played a DVD of some benefit concert in Carnegie hall on the way back from the Kennedy Space Centre. Towards the end of the DVD, some singers came out and sung “Guantanamera”, of which I’ve never heard the original words. I was so confused when they weren’t “One Tonne Rodeo”.

2. Part of the reason I was so exhausted at Disneyworld was that the night before, some genius set off the fire alarm just before 3am. The woman at the lobby couldn’t shut it off for 20 minutes, because the lobby is locked at night, I just stood there and watched her through the windows trying to take directions from someone who seemed to be telling her to press the same buttons that weren’t doing anything over and over again. No one was out to tell any of the guests who had emptied out of the rooms what the hell was going on, there was a small crowd growing behind me. In the end she switched it off, and a security guard came in shaking his head “This thing came up ages ago and I told her to switch it off then”. That was about as close as things got to an apology. Just so everyone knows, I was staying at Days Inn on International Drive, can’t say I highly recommend it!

Anyway, after that I headed back to Texas for Christmas which was pretty exciting, considering original plans involved me being on a bus to Washington DC on Christmas Day, because I’d somehow come under the impression that Kristy was heading to the other side of the country to visit her parents. I got the ‘parents’ and ‘visit’ part right, but in the wrong order, and Texas was not so far to travel back to.

After two unsuccessful attempts, Andrew and Kristy’s brother Bill managed to pick me up from the airport after what was apparently some miscommunication on the other end… After a bit more getting lost, we managed to get home and had tamales that Don and Kathy (Kristy’s parents) had been making up. Then a magnificent Reindeer appeared at the door and told us that we had to save Christmas - (sorry, I was told to make some stuff up so that might not be entirely the truth).

So after that little adventure, Christmas was saved so Santa went on to Australia and we got on with Christmas Eve. For this, we headed over to Andrew’s parent’s place and had an awesome dinner, drinks, and tracked Santa on NORAD (they have an app, of course).

We all saw Karen and Joel (Andrew’s parents) and Andrew’s brother Brent again the next day for Christmas. After presents, there was a Christmas movie marathon to be had, and it was brought to our attention by Kristy that Tiny Tim is actually a zombie (“And Tiny Tim, who didn’t die…”). We had Goose for dinner which was a new and wonderful experience!
More Christmas movies came afterwards, watching them being all we could really do after the massive dinner.

I was asked by Dad what they call Boxing Day here, and all I could answer was “Monday”, because they have nothing of the sort here. That was pretty much Christmas wrapped up in a neat little package, Kristy’s family went to a hotel so they could catch a train the next day, and I did very little of anything else.

Except for going Eagle fishing, but I don’t think anyone wants to hear about that.

City of Theme Parks

Honestly, they should really rename Orlando to something like that, I’m amazed that there’s actually a functioning city somewhere in between the Tourist traps.

Due to my changes with transport, I’d bought myself an extra day in Orlando, which was great! What wasn’t great was that if I thought Memphis was bad as far as families (and not just children) having little respect for guests, I was about to learn that I had another thing coming. Which was fantastic, considering that I was exhausted after getting in rather ridiculously late, and it seemed they had given me a room two beds for some reason, so I knew I would have to get up in the morning to find out what that was about.

Thankfully I didn’t have to move rooms the next morning, and I decided to go to the theme park with the latest possible shuttle bus departure so I could get some more sleep, a rather unsuccessful venture as adults swore at each other and their children and children yelled and doors were slammed all over the place. So instead I booked a bus to the Kennedy Centre for the next day, even if it left at a ridiculously early hour.

Anyway, after all that, I ended up at Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure. I was on a mission because I had read that if I wanted to do things I wanted, I would have to power on past all the things to look at, and get right up there in the back of the park. That was where the Wizarding World of Harry Potter was! The day, and the next three, was sunny and humid, much worse than that morning in New Orleans - “OK,” one would think, “It’s a theme park in one of the sunniest places in the US. They have tons of ways to combat this”. You’d be right until you got to the Harry Potter bit - it is really, beautifully re-created, and if the sky were a bit less blue, you might believe that the snow on top of the buildings was real, and that you were in England. Unfortunately, the Wizarding part of England, as depicted in the Harry Potter films, doesn’t have a whole lot of shade, and neither does its recreation. Lines hugged buildings for the tiniest bit of protection, and it was always a relief when you got to the bit of the line inside a building!
They are, apparently, expanding this part of Universal Studios to cover both the parks (Islands of Adventure as well as the main Studios theme park) - pretty cool I suppose, the section was actually a bit smaller than I expected, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Considering the length of the lines, I still spent most of my day there, and I could have spent longer had I waited to see the show in Ollivander’s wand shop (wasn’t particularly keen to wait an hour in line for a 10 minute show about one audience member, unfortunately!). The line waiting was well worth it though - the ride inside the Hogwarts castle is a LOT of fun, as are the twin Tri-Wizard Tournament- Dragon Challenge Roller Coasters (I went on both the Hungarian Horntail and Chinese Fireball tracks, the latter being the faster of the two with bigger drops. I felt like a champ afterwards). You don’t have to wait in line to look in the shop front windows, or go in the lolly shop, or Wizard Wheezes either, so they were pretty cool as well!
It didn’t quite take up the whole day though, so I got to go back and visit some of the rides I had been eyeing off on my way through (…After palming off my Harry Potter loot to someone so I could collect it later). Favourites of the day probably included the Hulk Rollercoaster, and while some other rides were more fun, I can’t get over the amusement factor of sitting next to a girl who was so terrified that she closed her eyes and burst into prayer while riding on the least scary drop ride I’ve ever been on.
On the ride back, I caught up with three girls from Australia who’ve been doing a trip that rather resembled mine, though they had spent a lot longer in Florida (and had to sacrifice their original plans in Memphis to do it). We had a fairly decent chat and discussed which places were the worst (I’m not alone on Las Vegas being overrated), and despaired being constantly mistaken for British people. It was pretty fun, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for them in New York!

The next day I was up ridiculously early, partly to chat to the family, but mostly to catch a bus out to the Kennedy Space Centre. I’ve told my parents that I was a bit disappointed by it, but I’ve found myself unable to shut up about stuff I’ve learnt there since, so I suppose it wasn’t that bad. I slept through a pretty decent portion of the bus ride, but I did manage to catch the driver acting as an early tour guide, and telling everyone on the bus how NASA is the single greatest institution to grace the Earth… Which I guess was almost true, the space program that NASA run was pretty flipping amazing. They take you through a recreation of what it was like to be in the control room during the launch of Apollo 7, and the energy captured in that moment of human achievement really is electric. When you think about it, I probably wouldn’t have been able to travel here, certainly wouldn’t have been able to have an extra day in Orlando, if it weren’t for NASA.
Also they have a shuttle launch simulator and you get to hear an astronaut talk (Charles Walker, the first non-government employed astronaut was in on the day I went), and that is pretty cool. I was tired and grumpy about the whole day when I got back to the hotel, but looking back it was actually pretty awesome.

I had one more day in Orlando, then, and of course it would be pretty sad to go there and not end up in Disneyworld. I only had the money for one park, and so while I would have liked to go on over to Epcot, I chose to stay in Magical Kingdom instead - although similar to my experience at Disneyland in LA, it was still fairly different and it had been a few years.
The first big difference was that I had to wait in lines, and I wasn’t used to that. You see, when I went to Disneyland in California on my own, I did buy a Park Hopper ticket. This led to me being in the right place at the right time in California Adventure, and a lovely staff member gave me a little ticket that said “Millennium of Dreams” (or something like that), and hanging off it were tags, which were Fastpasses (tickets that allowed you to get into a much shorter, faster moving line) to every ride that you could use a Fastpass on, whenever you wanted. I won’t go into the mechanics of how a normal Fastpass ticket works, but let’s just say it’s not nearly the same! Still, I managed to go on all the rides I wanted, and even got photos with some characters who I didn’t get photos with last time (Mickey and Minnie probably being the most important!). My favourite part of the day was probably a chat I had with Princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), who liked my hat. She told me that Prince Phillip was a fan of hats, and she keeps asking him for one, but they can’t find one to fit over her crown. We decided that perhaps she could just get any hat, and poke a hole in it. I couldn’t stay for the fireworks this time around (a combination of me being utterly exhausted and the shuttle bus leaving while they were going), but that was really quite OK - seeing the beautiful lights on the Cinderella Castle was really enough!

Then it was time to head back to Texas for Christmas (and that might have to wait another day because I left this much too late!)

Viva Memphis

…Or how I learned that Elvis Presley is actually a deity with pureness on a level that Kim Jong Il would have have his followers believe (until, like Elvis, he screwed up by dying, revealing that he wasn’t actually immortal). OK, enough with that comparison, Kim Jong Il was a monster and Elvis was just a celebrity, and I am just asking to get kidnapped by North Korea at this rate.

I woke up in the morning to signs that either the hotel staff were really not respective of their guests at 6am, or it was getting close to Christmas and families have no respect for other guests at 6am. Or both, which is more likely. I managed to go back to sleep a few times, I was soooo tired.

Eventually I did get up though, there were things to see and I had paid an awful lot of money to get tickets to them. First on the agenda, of course, was Graceland - the intro to this post is rather misleading, because Johnny Cash is not enough of a presence in Memphis to make it worth the trip if I was not a much bigger fan of Elvis (I have put a lot of money down on music and merchandise and the hotel I stayed at to back up this claim, unfortunately for my parents).

I had a VIP ticket for Graceland, which gave me access to a special room at the mansion, as well as all the exhibits that led to gift shops (my wallet was very sore, but not as sore as it could have been - I’m quite good at self restraint to an extent). Graceland is actually not quite as over the top as I thought - most of the stuff that is was put there after Elvis passed, such as the walls of what was once his raquetball court being covered in awards. That’s not to say there wasn’t anything that wasn’t ridiculous that he did himself - like the Jungle room, the stairs that lead up to it have the floor, walls and roof covered in green shag carpeting, and the room has a mini waterfall in it. He also thought that it would be cool to turn his dad’s smokehouse into a shooting range for reasons that are not explained. It is kind of nice how he kept his family all together, and even though his father only had Elvis’ body moved to Graceland’s backyard because someone tried to steal his remains, it’s nice that his whole family is out there too now - with the exception of Elvis’ twin brother who died at birth (though there is a plaque for him).

Other exhibits were for his cars, his planes, his clothes, his toilet habits… More or less anything you could think of, unless it involved funny stories that might suggest he was less than perfect - the closest you get is a video where Priscilla (Elvis’ ex-wife) describes how he came up with the ‘TCB’ logo, and rang his Manager in the middle of the night, demanding that it be made into jewellery for his friends then and there. Priscilla somehow managed to turn that around into a good quality, I am not quite sure how.

I still had some time left to make it out to the Stax Museum, right next to where Stax Studio - the place where people like Otis Redding and Issac Hayes, among many, many other artists got their start - once was, and in front of where the school they sponsor now is. The museum is full of Memrobillia, and really goes into how when it came to music, Memphis was one of the few colour blind places, especially in Stax, and that it really got a lot of the music styles we still listen to today started. Stax shut down shortly after the riots in Memphis that followed Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination in the city. It’s also in an area that suffered the ‘urban renewal’ that the city put on, which involved demolishing a lot of places. The taxis had trouble with my card here, so I had to venture out to find an ATM - a lot further away than I thought. I had to walk through the scariest area I’ve ever had the displeasure of walking through - I’ve been trying to take pictures of abandoned places for Tiffiny, but when I saw the one of the boarded up houses had crime scene tape on it, and signs that said ‘stop the killing’, and realised there were people eyeing me as I walked, I decided it was time to move it. I ended up finding an ATM at a Walgreens a few blocks away, and waited nervously for a Taxi that finally came after spending a while trying to avoid a guy who kept trying to scam me by asking me to take his money, or his hat (the idea being, I’m told, that I will be distracted and he could make off with my stuff, or he will tell the police that I stole it and he’d get a reward or something). I’ll be happy if I don’t have to repeat that sort of adventure again.

For the evening, I meant to the much safer Beale Street for dinner, and while I could have certainly gone to an authentic, Southern place for dinner, I had a meal at Hard Rock Café paid for already, so I went and ate there, and for most of the time stared at the Johnny Cash memorabilia they had on the walls (the rest of the time I was looking at the Blues Brothers stuff, I think). Afterwards, I headed back up the street - bands were well and truly into it, even for a Sunday night. Laws were similar to those in New Orleans, and I was able to wander up to the other end with a drink that I managed to finish before getting to Blues City Café, host to the band Freeworld who have been playing there every Sunday since the ’90s, only missing 5 performances. They were pretty damn cool, as was the shuttle driver who took me back to the hotel, the only person on the last bus back, and shared a lot of local knowledge as well as stopping so I could take a photo of Sun City records at night.

Sun City Records was my first stop the next morning (another morning that was this time definitely interrupted by the staff yelling down the hallway to each other!). It was a lot smaller than I expected, but it was super neat hearing the history of the place, and I got to stand where greats such as Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash have stood, and I touched the microphone that they touched (I did not feel compelled to put my mouth on it as many people apparently do).

After that, it was off to the Rock n’ Soul museum, in case I had not learnt enough about the history of blues and rock and jazz and everything else that is credited to the South. Actually, it filled in some of the gaps pretty well. I feel like a bit of an expert now (not really).

I went off for lunch at BB King’s Blues Café, went to see the big Elvis statue they have in the park across from the Orpheum Theatre, and was going to go down to the Civil Rights museum, until I saw the state of the street and decided I really did not want a repeat of yesterday’s experience. Instead I headed down to the Gibson guitar factory, and had a tour which I’m legally obligated not to talk about, apparently (they make you sign a contract before they let you in). I think I’m allowed to say that seeing how they made everything was insanely awesome, though.

Then it was time to move on again, off to Orlando… That post might have to wait for tomorrow!

Nights in New Orleans

One thing that I was set straight on almost immediately is that it’s not pronounced “New Or-Leans” as one would think Americans would pronounce it if they had an Australian accent, or even how you think a French person might pronounce it (“New Or-Leons”). It’s not even “N’Awlins” as people selling T-Shirts would like you to believe (so they can make fun of you). It’s got two acceptable pronunciations, and they are “New Awlins” or one I can’t remember. This seems to be a pattern with a lot of things in New Orleans, and I’m told Louisiana… Things are not pronounced how you think they should be pronounced. Burgundy Street is pronounced “Burr-gun-di” rather than “Burr-gen-dy”. It’s odd, and involves locals looking at you crazy while they try to figure out what you’re on about.

But I guess that’s to be expected, after all, the State has been owned by several different people - The French took it from Native Americans and owned it for a long time. When they went to war with the British, they gave it to Spain in case they lost the war, which they did, preventing the British from getting it. The Spanish gave it back to France, sort of as a gift, and then France royally annoyed Spain by giving it to the Americans (for more than they could afford to pay for it, but still!). There are actually three names for every street - two are on black signs on poles, the French name printed just above the English, and then you have large tiled signs on buildings with the Spanish name. The French Quarter has also burned down several times, so there aren’t many buildings left from the original version.

I got to New Orleans very early in the morning, with a dead phone and a growling stomach. I wasn’t able to check into the hotel, so half asleep I tried to find somewhere to eat breakfast - I knew I’d been recommended Beignets at some place by my friend, but of course my phone was dead and I couldn’t refer to her SMS, and didn’t realise at the time that Café Du Monde was so famous I could have just asked people about where to get Beignets and they would direct me there. I ended up in IHOP to get a pretty boring crépe breakfast that just made me realise how tired I was! In the end I went back to the hotel and told them I was sick. They were a bit embarrassed when they discovered my room had been ready since the day before, and let me in so I could sleep.

I had limited time though, so I booked in a bus tour of the city. Our driver was a guy called Jason, and I learnt a ton of the city’s history (including all the stuff above) from him. Probably the coolest things I saw in the first part of the tour were the supposedly most haunted house in the city (Owned by Nick Cage and then bought by some obscenely rich people: It was originally owned by some people who were chased out because of their mistreatment of slaves. People could hear screaming and rattling chains for a long time after, and assumed it was ghosts. To the next owner’s surprise, it was slaves chained inside the walls who went on to die because no one bothered to check what the sounds actually were. Very possible that they are ghosts now. Speaking of Nick Cage, he has a tomb in the cemetery across the road because apparently he’s a bit insane or something), and the beautiful houses in the Garden area (big houses, but all smaller than the houses that used to take up a block each. Anne Rice’s old house is also in the area, but I stopped caring about Anne Rice when I discovered that she hates editors and believes her work to be perfect… Her later books are certainly anything but!).

The owner of the tour apparently directed that we should visit Katrina affected areas last, after paying, so the tour wouldn’t begin on a low. Instead it makes the tour end on a real downer… To be honest, I was a little apprehensive of the tour when I found out it was going to such areas - I am not big on the idea of touring disaster areas, especially when it means that a company is making money out of other’s misery, but the tour was quite highly recommended. In the end, despite my doubts, I think it was worth seeing - I was under the impression, as it was, that there was not much of New Orleans left. Seeing the Ninth Ward where the worst of the damage happened was a mild comfort, and things are a lot better than I thought they were. People are starting to rebuild - projects helped by Harry Connick Jr. and Brad Pitt are doing lots of great things in the upper part of the area, especially. The Lower Ninth ward is the worst. A lot of people are living in poverty, or at least the ones who are there are… Not many people live there at all, because no businesses, especially not supermarkets have returned (the nearest is 15-20 minutes away, assuming traffic is good and the bridge over the Mississippi is not up). It’s a Catch-22 as well, because businesses won’t return if there aren’t people there. I will upload some photos, and they can really speak for themselves… It is quite clear that, as I was told, the real disaster was the Government’s handling of the situation, very little seems to have been done, and insurance is apparently hard to come by as it is.

So after that wonderful bout of depressing content, I went for dinner at a place called Herb Saint, which was close by and served Gumbo. It was a lot fancier than I expected, and became the only time I’ve really felt awkward dining alone. The gumbo was served as a starter, but it was delicious (and so was the chicken I had after!)

The next day I managed to get down to Café Du Monde for Beignets and Café au Lait and wow, was it worth the walk. New Orleans, people say, should be experienced on foot anyway. There are things happening everywhere, and the reason it’s called the Big Easy is because you can do very little - like entertaining on the street - and still make an OK living. But breakfast was great. Café Du Monde is crowded, and eating outside in the stupidly humid weather was great, the shade was wonderful. Beignets are ‘French doughnuts’, little square, sweet pastries with powdered sugar on top. Sooooo good. I headed back past tarot readers, and on Royal Street (“Rerl”. No, really, rhymes with “Pearl”), beautiful art galleries and antique shops. I tried a praline on the way - as different to the pralines I’m used to, these ‘prah-leans’ were actually bikkies with pecan nuts in caramel. Really sweet and delicious.

After going back to my room so I could dry off (it was grossly humid, emphasis on the ‘gross’) and grab some (more) snacks for lunch, a tour bus came to pick me and a Swedish couple up to go out to swamps out in Honey Island. The locals defined the weather as cold, so there weren’t many animals out. We did see a gator, some nutria-rats (they’re pests in the same way rabbits are pests, only more viscous), a few birds and our tour guide’s Cajun uncle, though (he threatened to throw one of the 400 blue crabs he had in his boat at us… They were pretty big, we weren’t gonna risk it!). There are houses on one side of the swamp that are only accessible by boat, though some have obviously been unoccupied for a while and are returning to the ground. We also saw the famous “whiskey tree”, a very old gum that is hollow, on one of the few sections of solid ground in the swamp where people once made moonshine, and then proceeded to make tons of movies in that location (it’s where James Bond jumps on Gators).

Dinner was pizza, and I spent some time adjusting travel arrangements (I needed a break from Greyhound buses!) before heading out onto the town again. To Bourbon St, you ask? No actually, Bourbon Street has long taken advantage of how people are drawn to it for its reputation, as well as to New Orleans for its lax alcohol laws (you can walk around the streets with whatever drink you like, and there are actually drive-through places that sell daquiris). The places not filled with cheap bars are strip clubs, and the place is not what it used to be at all (they have to hose it off every morning, and the smell still permeates). Instead I went to where New Orleans has apparently gone to, Frenchman St. The moment you get there, you are very aware that you are in New Orleans - music is everywhere. People are everywhere having a good time. It’s amazing. I made my way down to The Spotted Cat, apparently the best place on the street for drinks and music. It was cool. I have some videos I took in the Spotted Cat and on the street to show off, which’ll go up soon enough.

I was planning to do some things that I never ended up doing the next morning (a sleep in and then breakfast where I discovered that Grits are Not For Me saw to that), so I ended up turning in a bit early, a pedi-cab was the same price as a normal taxi, so even though it was starting to drizzle, I had some guy drive me home using a bike. It was a very different experience!

The next day it was time to move on, this time by train! The train was soooo much better than buses. Much more room, and I could move around, have a decent dinner (I sat with some folks from Austin and a theatre student from Alabama, and we all had a really great chat), and slept much more comfortably than I did on the bus. We got in late, and there was only one guy manning the station so it took forever to get my bags and get to the hotel, but I was in Memphis and I was comfortable and relaxed, so I knew the next day was going to be pretty damn good!