I’ve been in LA for 4 days now and I haven’t seen a single Blood, Crip, drive-by, car-jacking or any police brutality. I have seen a lot of wannabe actors and actresses with scary amounts of plastic surgery.

After a nasty coach ride from Vegas, we arrived in around 8pm on Sunday night. I was too tired to do anything so just popped to the liquor store and burger place across the road for some beer and burger nastiness.

Monday, we used the free tickets for Universal Studios I got from an internet points thing I’ve been saving for a couple of years. I had a great time and got to fulfill my lifetime ambition and go on the Jaws ride – which turns out to be not a ride at all, but part of the 45 minute studio tour you get. It was spoilt a bit because they where filming desperate housewife’s at the time so they had to keep stopping the tour. If you get the chance to go, I’d recommend the tour, the Simpsons ride, Waterworld show, the Mummy roller coaster and the
haunted house. If you don’t have much time, give the Backdraft show
and the special effects show a miss.

On Tuesday we got a bus down to Santa Monica beach, where I am convinced is where The Lost Boys was filmed… turns out it was at Santa Cruz which is about 6 hours north of here. The beach was really well kept and to too busy, but I guess on a Tuesday in late October isn’t exactly high Tourist season. We walked the mile or so north to Venice Beach which is a mix of cool little indie stores, artists, people hastling you to go on tours and the old hippies who have taken entirely too much acid and completely lost there mind, they are harmless enough but it’s hard not to laugh at them.

Yesterday was a quiet one. I’d been given a ticket for a preview screening of Role Models, for that evening by the guy in the bunk beneath mine. Spent the day hanging around Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard. We also did the tourist thing and went to the Chinese theatre where all the handprints are.

I’m catching the shuttle back up to San Francisco for a couple of nights now. I’ve got a tour of Alcatraz booked and I can’t wait to see the place on Halloween.

…and Canals, pyramids, cities and volcanoes

I flew to Vegas on Thursday afternoon, where I met up with Lisa again at the airport. We stayed at the Sin City Hostel which is in Downtown Vegas where all the wedding chapels (including the one where Brittany got married apparently) and a lot of the seedier establishments are. There is a bus called the deuce that connects the downtown area and the bottom of the strip and for $5 you can ride it as much as you want for 24 hours.

We had a wander down the strip going into a few casinos, but I’m not much of a gambler and found it hard to get excited about the gaming tables. All the different casino’s seemed to have free performances or exhibitions on which are quite fun to watch or wander around, I especially liked the fountain at the Bellagio which dances in time with music every 15 minutes. The scale of it is real hard to grasp, but it must shoot water up about 100 feet into the air.

Another pretty amazing thing was Fremont Street which I think is the original strip in Vegas. Now the entire street has been covered in what looks like white plastic, but every hour all the neon lights go off and it turns into a 1500 ft TV screen, apparently the largest in the world.

We also went to the LA Comedy Club at Planet Hollywood, the haunted bridge at New York, New York. And after Lisa convinced me that it would be worth it we went to see the Penn & Teller show at the Rio. I’m really glad she did, I’ve been a fan of theirs since they had a show on late Friday night channel 4.
I’m not really sure what to make of Vegas on one hand it’s the ultimate nightlife city with so many amazing things to do, but on the other hand the whole exuberance of it all made me feel a bit uncomfortable, that the casino’s make that much money from gambling and sex shows that they can afford all the life-size Eiffel tower replicas and 110m high pyramids. The other problem I had was with the amount of hassle you got form the people trying to sell you timeshare or much worse, the lines of people along almost every step of the strip trying to thrust cards in your hand with the promises of 2 girls for $69 or girls to your room in 20 minutes or less guaranteed.

We’ve now left Vegas for LA on a greyhound bus which was what I was originally planning to use for getting around the whole of the USA and I’m bloody glad I didn’t, the seats where uncomfortable with hardly any legroom and they are anally strict about the amount of time you’re allowed for a rest stop. The driver of our bus drove off with 1/3 of the bus still in the service station including a really old couple who had left all their bags on the bus. I felt really sorry for them for the rest of the day.

We’re in LA for 4 nights I got some free tickets for 2 days entry to Universal Studios from an internet points thing I’ve been doing and maybe having a day at Venice Beach or something.

I’ve been hanging out in San Francisco for the past few days, I’m enjoying the California sunshine and eating as many free pancakes as I can stuff myself with every morning.

I’m sharing a room with a guy from Korea called Kym and have spent a couple of days doing the tourist thing with him. We went down to see the Sea Lions on Pier 39, they are all wild and apparently they like the bay because the water isn’t salty enough for their predators(the great white shark and the killer whale). They are funny to watch, they seem to spend there whole time either sleeping, barking or trying to stop other sea lions from getting on their little patch of pontoon.

We also went got a bus up to the Golden Gate Bridge, which is amazing to look at, but full of tourists (and I guess I’m one of them) ticking it off the list.

After the bridge we went to the Golden Gate Park, which was much nicer. It’s very well designed and you can easily get lost in it all day.

I also took a walk through China Town, which had a nice busy feel to it. similar to the one in New York, once you get past all the tourist girt shops and overpriced restaurants you can get a real feel for life in the Chinese community.

The Hostel I’m staying in has a nice Atmosphere and seems to have things on most days and nights. Last night was a cheese and wine night (although in my case it was a slightly less sophisticated cheese and beer night). And there is also TV/Movie theatre in the basement showing a couple of movies every night if you can’t find anything better to do. There are a lot of Asian students staying in the hostel, far more than I’ve seen anywhere else, Kym told me it’s because it’s cheaper to stay at the hostel than it is to get accommodation in the area.

I spent most of the last two days in San Francisco either watching movies in the Hostel TV Room or hanging around the park or Union Square reading. I did make a little geeky pilgrimage to the CNET building in the business district where a lot of the Tech podcast’s I listen to every day are recorded. I guess it’s a bit like a “normal” person going to the set of Coronation Street or something. The evenings on the other hand were a bit more lively, drinking in the basement party room of the hostel, playing pool and table football.

According to my geeky USA by Rail book, the California Zephyr is one of the world’s great train lines. It takes 2.5 days to cross the 2,438 miles (3,922km) from Chicago to San Francisco, spanning 3 time zones, passing through Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, Reno and Sacramento.

You might think it’s a bit crazy to sit on a train for well over 50 hours when I could have flown in less than 10% of the time. But by far this has been the best train journey I’ve done in my life. The scenery is gorgeous and the trains not to bad either. The seats are comfortable and recline back with a footrest that comes out and you get about 3 foot legroom between you and the seat in front. There is a dining car for proper sit down meals with table service, there is a lounge car selling snacks and drinks and an observation car with huge windows and seats facing outwards. Sleeping on the train takes some practice, but it’s not too bad especially if you can get a double seat to yourself.

On the way I’ve travelled through Leafy towns, prairies, deserts, ghost towns, mountains, forests and canyons. The highlight was following the Colorado River from Denver to the state Utah state line. The conductor’s voice kept popping up on the PA with titbits of trivia about the local landmarks w and wildlife. Apparently there where bears running around, but I didn’t see them.

The windows of the train are quite scratched and when the sun shines on them it makes it difficult to take photos through, so apologies for the blurry bits and poor quality of some of the photographs.
I’m really glad I made the decision to take the train over flying and hope I get the chance to do it again sometime.

I’m just heading into San Francisco now, where I’m staying for 6 nights so should be a little bit less hectic than the last few places I’ve been to.

I arrived in Chicago early this morning and wasn’t able to check in to the hostel until 3pm. Luckily a couple of blocks away the city’s annual Columbus Day Parade was happening to keep me busy for a few hours. It’s organised by the Italian American communities and basically consisted of all the local school marching bands and a few local business putting on floats.

Chicago is a clean friendly unpretentious New York. I’d choose Chicago over New York any day.
After the parade (see previous post) I went to the Navy Pier which about a mile of funfair, theatres, restaurants and boat tour operators, unfortunately just as I got there everything was closing so I just had a nice quiet walk along the pier anyway.

The following morning on the recommendation of one of hostel staff I headed down to the Millennium Park. Parts of the park are still being built, but the bits that are finished look really smart and modern. It has a huge area where I guess they hold music concerts and in the centre of the park is a huge metallic bean. I’m not sure what the significance of the bean is, but it looks quite impressive. If you stand directly underneath you can see lots of reflections of yourself.

In the afternoon I visited the Museum of Contemporary Photography then got the metro down to the Museum of science and Industry. I love science museums, and this has to be one the best one’s I’ve visited. There are about 20 different exhibitions on ranging from Space exploration (which includes the real Apollo 8 landing capsule, to a mock up of the inside of a warship. It also has real submarine inside, but that cost extra.

The Chicago H.I. (Hostel International) is also one of the best hostels I’ve stayed in, it’s a bit shabby around the edges, but the staff where really friendly and they had a lot of organised activities, like free ice-cream on a Tuesday afternoon. That evening there was an organised trip to a bar called the Map Room. This is a bar in one of the suburbs of Chicago with an international theme; it’s got about 20 international draft beers and well over 100 bottles beers. Every Tuesday they invite a local restaurant to come over cater for the evening and if you buy two drinks you can eat for free. On the night I went they were serving Filipino food, I’m not sure what it was I was eating, but there was defiantly pork rice and some sort of Pasty. There was also a desert of “purple cake” which strangely was served on the same plate as the main course.

Wednesday morning was spent with a hangover in the Laundry. My train left a 2pm so I couldn’t really fit anything else in. I’m currently winding my way through the Rocky Mountains, 24 hours into the 54 hour journey to San Francisco. I’ll write another post about it.

New Orleans is a party city, at the same time there is an incredible amount of poverty. The cab driver that dropped me at the hostel told me “It’s a great place to visit but a bad place to live”. He also told me that the only safe place I town was the famous French Quarter. Everywhere else he recommended not risking it. Unfortunately for me, the India House Hostel I was staying in is about 2 miles from the French Quarter. The only real safe and cheap way to get between the two is by streetcar (really old trams like the one at the Beamish Museum in Durham).

Although the neighborhood was bad, the hostel was good fun. It’s made up of about five small wooden buildings facing onto a courtyard and swimming pool there is an outside big screen projector on which they show movies and college football. They are mad about it in New Orleans, they can fill a 90,000 stadium on a Saturday night to watch two state universities play each other. The Hostel put on a BBQ and for $5 you got a huge meal and as much margarita as you can drink.

The French Quarter of New Orleans is full of galleries, antique shops, markets and bars playing great blues and jazz. It’s full of tourists (mostly American) taking horse and cart rides around the tiny streets. Bourbon Street in particular is great, there are so many bars on that one stretch that they all have drink offers on. I didn’t go at night, but apparently it’s a lot seedier with girls flashing in exchange for bead necklaces.

There is also quite a nice little park in the middle of the French quarter called Jackson Square which provides a nice retreat from the buzz outside, although when I was there it was too hot to sit out in the sun. Around the outside edge of the park there is a host of psychics, astrologers and palm readers, but my favorite was the voodoo bone readers who claim they can read your future by the way some chicken bones land.
At the moment, I’m 10 hours into a 19 hour train ride to Chicago.  I’ve also decided to skip Denver and go direct to San Francisco for Chicago. It takes 54 hours, but I’m expecting some amazing scenery to keep me entertained. Failing that I could fill my time replying to emails and watching movies on my laptop, so please send me an email and let me know what’s happening back home and any ideas for stuff to do in San Francisco.

Its 14:00 on Friday afternoon and I’m in the middle of Alabama on the train from Atlanta down to New Orleans.

I Arrived in Atlanta on Wednesday morning at 8am. Trying to get some sleep on the train was harder than I thought. The Amtrak seats where comfortable enough, but I still found it difficult to stay asleep for more than about half an hour. I took a bus and then the underground to the hostel which was quite a strange place. The building was a big old house that had been converted. Antique bits and pieces where hung up on the walls all over the place, with messages telling you not to touch the attached. I noticed that there were not any locks on the room doors so that anybody could walk in and out of any room and that there was quite a few single middle aged men staying at the hostel. I’ve got to say, I never really felt at ease.

Whilst I was waiting in the station for my train this morning I read in my guidebook that Atlanta has the worst crime rate in the USA and from what I’ve seen I can well believe it. If you’re ever in the area don’t get off the metro at the 5 points stop. It looks like it’s the centre of the city, but it’s full of people waiting to prey on tourists (you know the sort: jeans down to their knees, most of their teeth missing and a glazed over crack zombie look that seems to say give me all your money and I might not stab you). You can’t stop to look at a signpost or a map without being surrounded by these people trying to give directions in exchange for a few dollars.

The area around the Peachtree Centre is a whole lot less intimidating; it seems to be more of the business district and is not too far from the Centennial Olympic park. I think the whole park is owned and kept by the Coca Cola Company; they even have a Coke museum. But also in the park is the largest aquarium in the western hemisphere. It’s a little expensive at $28 per person, but you can easily spend half a day there, they have beluga whales, otters, alligators, rays, a whole range of sharks (including 3 whale sharks which are about 30 foot long) and an amount of fish you’d have to measure in metric tons.

Also had a good night out with a few guys form the hostel, a couple of them is off to teach English in Korea (I’m assuming South) and had got for a visa interview at the Korean Embassy in Atlanta.

A quick update on Lisa’s bag; It looks like they have caught the guy who snatched it, they caught him when he tried to use her credit card. Lisa has been on the phone with our favorite detective and also to the assistant DA in New York. For a while they wanted her to go back, but they might be able to sort it out by email and phone.

Apologies that most of the photo’s are of fish, the Aquarium was really the only place I felt safe getting my camera out.

I’m writing this at 10pm Tuesday night on the train from Washington DC to Atlanta, I’m currently 3 hours into a 14 hour journey. The trains here are great; you get around three times as much legroom as you would on a British train. The seats recline really far back and the foot rest comes out like a lazy boy.

On Monday we caught the train to Washington DC. There’s only one night in Washington so had a little wonder around all the government buildings and monuments. The White House is lot smaller than you’d imagine, whilst hanging around outside a line of cars (about 6 police cars and a people carrier with blacked out windows) came by and drove into the white house gate, but I couldn’t see inside to see who it was.

Did I mention the other celebrities I’ve seen? I saw Chris Rock shopping in Hugo Boss and I saw Katie Holmes coming out of her theater show on Broadway.

Sitting outside the Whitehouse was a protester who between 2 others and himself had been there since the early eighties. I was quite a cool guy, not protesting about 1 thing in particular but more generally against war, nuclear weapons and poverty.

From the Whitehouse to the WWII Memorial and on the way passed the department for thrift which I thought was funny. We were actually followed down by a guy who I assume to be secret service wondering what I’m doing taking photos of government building. He actually followed us into the WWII memorial and just hung around next to us for about 10 minutes. From there we headed up to the Lincoln Memorial which is amazing to look at, but full of people that never take their eye away from the back of a camera.

I didn’t get much time to have a good look around and get a proper feel for the place, but it seems to me Washington DC is a much friendlier and cleaner place than New York, but at the same time its lacking hustle and bustle that gives New York such a great atmosphere.

After all the hassles of Saturday (see previous post), Sunday has turned out to be a hell of a lot better.

We visited the Natural History Museum which has got an exhibition on called “Cosmic Collisions”.   You get shuffled into a theater where the whole roof is the screen.   Robert Redford narrated a story about how the moon was formed after a meteor hit the earth and the fragments that where displaced merged together to form the moon. Apparently it only look 1 month.   They also had a cool exhibition on about marine animals which I had some fun photographing.

We also had a wonder down through times square and found the avenue Q theater. Apparently 30 minutes before each show they sell 12 front row tickets for $20 each (they are normally $110).   They do this by lottery, but it seems that on a Sunday evening, not that many people are interested in hanging around on Broadway for 30 minutes whilst they hold the draw. There must have only been 7 people waiting.   Anyway we got 2 tickets and felt very smug walking down to the middle of the front row.

If you haven’t heard of it Avenue Q is a bit like a musical adult Sesame Street, with songs like “Everyone’s a little bit racist”, “The internet is for porn” and “what do you do with a BA in English?” you get the point.

Today has been a bad day, but yesterday was a good one, so I’ll start with that.

We started off with a really nice breakfast at the Brooklyn diner on west 57th street. Followed by a trip up to the roof of the Rockefeller building. I’m not usually one for doing the whole touristy thing but I have to admit that the view from the roof was pretty breathtaking.

View from the Top of the Rockerfeller Building

After that we wondered around the Central Library and Grand Central Station. Both buildings where great for just sitting around people watching. Whilst sitting on the steps outside the library a line of about 100 police cars came past, thats not an exaggeration, it did literally take about 10 minutes for them all to drive past. At first I thought i was a motorcade for a politician, but I later found out it was part of a massive rapid response thing that they do to prove that if there’s another 9/11 then they can get a huge amount of cops in one place at once. It sounds more of a PR thing to me. The station felt so familiar, there must have been hundreds of movie scenes set there, but the only one I can remember is Kapax, let me know if you can think of any others

We spent the rest of the afternoon ambling through Chinatown, Little Italy and Greenwich Village. Chinatown and Little Italy where great once you get past the first few tourist streets and get into where they locals go about there lives. Loads of tiny shops selling weird and wonderful vegetables and various unidentifiable meat products. My favourite was a little plastic box with just the words “Chicken Parts” written on it.

Greenwich village was quite a cool area. It’s quite a young vibrant place, apparently it’s where Friends is set. Everyone seemed a bit more genuine and friendly that in other parts of the city.

We ended the night in a tiny comedy club which has a special discounted rate for people staying at the hostel. I met up with a couple of others form the hostel (an Australian and a Portuguese girl). The comedy was OK, but nothing special, but the atmosphere was quite nice. I got picked on a couple of
times, but nothing too bad.

In an attempt to have a bit of a cheaper day today, we went to the supermarket and bought a few things for a bit of a picnic in central park. All was going great until a wanker snatched Lisa’s bag. I tried to chase after him, but he was a bit too fast for me.

I wasn’t really expecting the police response that we got, 7 policemen and 2 detectives who where really amazing. One of the detectives was like something out of a movie. He was half Saprano, half cop, but really helpful. he even let Lisa use his personal mobile to phone the credit card company.

It looks like Lisa is able to claim everything back on her insurance so the only thing that was lost was a sunny day in New York and if it wasn’t for the unpleasantness of it all I think I would have found in quite fun.

We’re off out now down to Broadway to watch a movie and have a drink, hopefully the new Chuck Palahniuk one, choke.