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.

Yesterday I thought it might be a good Idea to have a wonder down to Wall Street to see what all the hoo-haa is about.

Wall St is located in the far south of Manhattan Island. The hostel we are staying is on 103rd St which is around the north west of Central Park, between the two is about 6 miles of Broadway.

It was so interesting walking from one end to the other watching how the character of the street (and colour of skin) changed as we got further south. I really enjoyed all the little parks the city has, they are are great for people watching.

It took about 4 hours to get down to Wall St, the place was teeming with media vans, police and people from Fox News with balloons saying “We own this story” eh? Anyway, the police had the whole thing barricaded off, so we couldn’t get any where near.

Manhattan From the Ferry

Lisa suggested we take the Staten Island ferry. It’s free and it sails past the Statue of Liberty on the way out, which I wasn’t too bothered about, but the view of Manhattan on the way back is amazing.

Found a falafel bar for supper. It was really nice, we should have more of them in the UK.

Well, I made it past the US immigration people, which was a lot less painful than I thought. it must have only been about 20 minutes from leaving the getting off the flight to walking through the arrivals gate to meet Lisa.

we decided to be cheapskates and use the airtrain and subway to get to the hostel. the ssubway was full of weird and wonderful people, but at no point did I feel like I was in any danger. We asked a guard how to get to 103rd street, but forgot to say that we wanted west not east, so we ended up having a nice little stroll through Central Park.

Just arrived in Central Park

By the time we found the hostel, got checked in and showered, it felt like i’d been awake for a week. We both felt that we should at least make an effort to go out, so we found a little cheap Vietnamese restraunt. We both spent the whole meal glazed over and whishing for our beds.

I’m writing this now on my phone from my bed. it’s 5am and I can’t sleep.

The plan for me today is to head down to Wall street and see if I can see any stock market traders crying.