This is just a short rant. A rant about getting sick. I hate catching a cold, a good one takes weeks to fully get rid of. I am currently incubating my third of the trip. That’s three colds in seven weeks. I had a cold in London that lasted for almost seven weeks, that was pretty bad. This isn’t so bad but it’s really getting my goat.
I want my goat back.
We're currently in the town of Twentynine Palms, just outside the border of Joshua Tree National Park. At 20:18, there we were, enjoying a dinner at the 29 Palms Inn with a groovy local band entertaining the crowd, when ... zomg... there was a (very tiny, please don't worry mum, we're fine) EARTHQUAKE!!!
It wasn't very strong. We were sitting down at the time, and I thought that it must be a train travelling through (very stealthily and rather close by). Niall thought that it was someone trying to walk behind our chairs and not doing a very good job. Then, the band stopped playing mid-song and announced "hey, it's an earthquake!"
I have to admit, that's not a phrase I expect to hear being yelled out in a jovial manner. They must get them all the time here, because nobody freaked out. People started cheering and clapping, and the band resumed their song. About 5 minutes later one of the other diners had checked it up on the internet and announced that it was an aftershock from an earthquake in 1999 measuring 5.5 on the richter scale.
:-O
So of course, after we got back to the motel we had to read all about it on the internet, and we discovered how organised all these Californians are. If you go to http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/ they have current data on any earthquake that's happened in California and Nevada in the last week. The big blue square in the image below is what I will affectionately call "our quake".
You can also report your experience of the quake online which is collated and added to that earthquake's report.
SO AWESOME. Most definitely a unique and interesting Californian experience!
It's 2:20am in Arizona, and we've specifically woken up to buy tickets to Britney Spears and Porcupine Tree concerts which were being released this morning at 9am... London time. Bloody time zones.
Happily, we've managed to purchase tickets to both events (woohoo!) and I guess we should be thankful that they were released on the same day, so that we didn't have to get up at 2am twice.
I'll let you guess who wanted to go to which concert. :)
Every time I type this into google, it hurts.
If there's only one thing I've learned, it's this: if you're planning to travel during a worldwide financial industry meltdown, buy some traveller's cheques for your target currency a few months before you leave - ideally when the exchange rate is at a 26 year high - before your local market dives like an Italian football player.
“Wrap that up for you?” is a line we’ve heard quite a few times on our trip. Seeing as all the meals are enormous, it’s very common to take half or more of your main course (remember, that’s an entrée) with you when you’re finished. The difference is that you never have to ask for a doggy bag – the waiters assume that you want to take it with you, and so ask the aforementioned question when coming to clear up the table.
Taking food with you isn’t really that easy when you’re travelling through the place, so often we felt quite guilty saying no. The waiter at Peter Luger's in Brooklyn was a little miffed we didn’t take the rest of the steak with us. It was touted as NY’s best steak, and we almost finished the enormous steak for two. With two slices left on the plate, the waiter still asked if we wanted it wrapped up. The steak was pretty good, though we actually had better in the Paris casino in Vegas. I know, I know.
So this brings me to the point of this post, and only two paragraphs in! We’ve been on the west coast for a while now, and we’re getting very close to leaving the US completely, but it feels like I need to give NY a bit more air time, to wrap it up. If I could wrap some parts of NY up and take them with us, it would be these:
Election Plaza – Watching the election coverage here was great. There was so much energy and people were really keen to see Obama come good. In the UK and Australia, elections are generally swapping one con man for another, and maybe the same is true of the US, but at least they really do seem to care about their politics, even if ironically so few of them actually vote. So perhaps with that sentiment and the campaign Obama ran, we’ll see something good come from his time in office.
Central Park – I love Hyde Park in London. Hyde Park in Sydney is a postage stamp compared to its London namesake. In London it’s a place where everyone comes to worship the sun for those three lovely days of summer which can occur anywhere between May and September. Central Park is a much nicer, though with a slightly less “sit on the grass” feel to it. It’s groomed and landscaped, whereas Hyde Park is just open space for all comers. Central Park really is a lovely place, especially in the Fall. There are people happily strolling through it in the middle of the week, tourists and locals alike. It did leave me wondering how I can be one of these rich people who can just stroll through a park in the middle of Manhattan when everyone else is out earning their living. The sky scrapers are a funny sight from the middle of such a large park, but I think it’s great that they have such a large piece of land set aside in such a small, bustling city island.
Brooklyn Bridge – We didn’t end up eating at Grimaldi's, the famous pizzeria at the Brooklyn end of the Brooklyn Bridge, but we did make time to cross the bridge on a rather frigid night. It was pack with local joggers and cyclists, and camera armed tourists (including us). It has a great view of Manhattan and is well worth the time for a walk.
New York was a great experience. I really enjoyed our time there, I think it’s been one of the big highlights of the trip for me. If you like cities, you’ll love this place. It has such a buzz about it, partly to do with the general enthusiasm Americans seem to have, and partly just because there’s so much going on. Definitely go if you can, just take someone to share the food servings with.
So a year ago, pretty much exactly to the day, I went to southern Patagonia in Chile for a photography workshop in Torres del Paine National Park. Afterwards I spent time in Argentina in Los Glaciares National Park.
And now I have finally finished the pictures and site, so go forth and check it out at http://www.patagonianreflections.com if you’re interested.
In our wanderings through New England, during which we drove 2000 miles in just under two weeks, we saw a lot of countryside. Perhaps countryside isn’t the best term. In Australia we have city and we have country. Country is sparsely populated, away from the coast, and the pace of life is slower. Where we travelled in Maine was still coastal, and we were never really passing through areas where simply no one lived. But the pace of life was slower and the people less rushed. So it’s still countryside to me, despite the big towns, enormous walmarts and biggest yet, the breakfasts.
Despite from the differences throughout New England, it was all thrown into stark contrast by our arrival in New York city. Quite simply, New York runs on raw energy, and nothing is done half way. If it’s small, it’s tiny. If it’s big, you can fit your whole head inside it. People are generally really switched on and quite engaging. A bit contrary to expectations, I found more extroverted, friendly and cheerful people than I found angry, impatient and rude. I’d have to give them the prize for most zealous car horn users in the world, though.
Food was generally pretty good, and there was so much to do. Daph had organised us an apartment downtown on 14th street, which was a great location, and we spent more time wandering around and soaking it up than we did hitting a tourist checklist. We still managed to cover quite a few tourist highlights without feeling like we were following a Lonely Planet itinerary.
One of the things that hit me is that this place never sleeps. London is in the list in ‘I still call Australia home’ as one of the cities that never close down, but that’s a blatant lie. It closes down early and hard. New York just changes shifts and keeps going. Bars, restaurants, cafes, shops – they’re all open late. You don’t get the impression of being around when people are trying to wrap things up, it’s just non stop. Speaking of which, the subway runs 24 hours. Hello TFL, are you reading?
Walking through the city on the first night to find the election plaza, I was staring around like a wide eyed kid in a lolly shop, and when I think back to Manhattan now, I still feel the same way.
I’m currently on a flight from New York to Los Angeles, where they are expecting a heat wave, with temperatures in the mid thirties (in the nineties if you speak foreign degrees). So it seems appropriate to write about the opposite end of the scale, which we encountered in the White Mountains in New Hampshire, and the Adirondacks in New York State.
I mentioned foreign degrees, which I have slowly been getting used to. New York has been mostly high fifties and early sixties, which is mid teens in non-gibberish. 32 foreign degrees buys you a flat zero degrees outside the States.
We had intended some hiking in the mountain trails in New Hampshire, Vermont and New York, hopefully through autumn foliage. As it turned out, the foliage up north had definitely turned a lot earlier than in Maine, and most of the vivid colour was gone. Instead, we had an unusually early snow storm, with a foot of snow falling and daytime temperatures around 25 in the mountains.
In normal person degrees, that’s… well, it’s cold. Less than zero just fits in one category: cold. Definitely cold when you’re not skiing.
We were driving through low mountain passes that were being repeatedly plowed as the snow fell. We mostly kept to the car, it wasn’t the most pleasant weather for hiking. The White Mountains and Adirondacks are popular holiday spots for the locals, especially in summer and the fall. They have old covered bridges, which I never did find out the story behind, but they’re a nice sight:
In winter, people come to ski. Lake Placid in the Adirondacks has been host to the winter olympics twice. Of course, if we’d known this, we might have been prepared for the snow…
We arrived in Old Forge in the Adirondacks on Halloween. We coughed up a few dollars more for a room with a view, and we got a lovely one:
We headed into town, which was small and sleepy. But even here, people were out in costume everywhere. We spent the evening doing our washing and swimming in the pool…
I was looking at an email for phil’s comment on the lobster lobster lobster post, and google’s advertising came up with a link to lobster dinners from Maine Lobster Direct. Check it out! See if they ship internationally…
PS: Late breaking news - there's more of them! I just got this on gmail - lobster guy.
Maine is known for its seafood in general, and lobster in particular. You can get it just about any restaurant or take away joint, in all sorts of forms.
Our first taste was in a lobster chowder from Bob’s Clam Hut on the side of the road in Kittery. The place was pretty much just a shack, but the food was good!
The best part, though, was the day we managed to have lobster for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Breakfast was lobster scrambled eggs at the Blue Hill Inn, lunch was a lobster bisque, and dinner was lobster linguine for daph and lobster in a herb butter sauce for me.
After all that lobster, you might think we’d be sick of it, but nope! It was good stuff, and tastiest when done simply I think. And it was not expensive at all, so it felt a bit ridiculous to be eating so much lobster all the time.
What is ridiculous, though, is the lobster worship you see around the place. Daph had to claw me away from taking photos of everything lobster (yes, that was a pun, just for you, Phil). There is lobster paraphernalia everywhere, and we got more than a couple of strange looks while we took photos.
But who could let these photos go?
Maine number plates have lobsters on them!
One thing that I’m still adjusting to over here is the friendliness and attentiveness of the service over here. Maybe this will change in New York, but so far it’s been pretty good. People seem to really want to go the extra mile to help you. When you walk into a shop, they’ll always say hi. I guess a lot of it is to do with the tipping culture, but usually it doesn’t feel like they’re only doing is so you’ll pay them more.
It’s quite a difference from the UK, where getting service from people requires skillful manipulation or clear and obvious signs of wealth. It is a bit odd sometimes when people want to help you with things you’re pretty capable of doing yourself, like picking your size off a rack of clothes.
But the first prize, the championship cup, must go to the toll collector we passed on the bridge near the US-Canada border at Niagara Falls. In a stark comparison to the situation we’d seen so far, where any odd request you might have was quickly pounced upon as an opportunity to help, this guy was not going to let his job get between him and a good read.
I pulled up to the booth and wound the window down. The guy was reading a newspaper. After a few seconds, he was still reading the newspaper. A few more seconds inspection revealed that, yes, he was still reading the newspaper. After some careful consideration, he turned to his left to address us… silently. I handed him the money, which he took… silently. The change came back, and despite his continued muteness, I couldn’t stop myself from saying “thank you”. I really wish I hadn’t, because like a British Palace guard, he kept his iron strong demeanour and simply turned away.
Daph and I were just watching a poker tournament on tv. Maybe we’ll see this guy on the next episode. I think he’d be an ace hand.
We were hoping to get to see the vivid colours of the fall as we drove through New England, although we knew we were arriving towards the end of the season. While the trees in the mountains have been largely bare, we were lucky enough to catch Maine still in bloom, so to speak.
The variety of colours is really amazing – bright reds and yellows, deep oranges and crusty orange browns of leaves that have almost finished for the season. It’s really nice to be driving under such a colourful canopy. Sometimes when the wind picks up, you end up driving through a thick shower of falling deep orange leaves.
Catching good photos of the leaves can be tricky, but here are a few we prepared earlier:
One of countless beautiful houses in Maine
The entrance to our hotel in Bar Harbor, Maine
One thing that has caught us off guard over here is the naming system for courses in restaurants. We were in a nice restaurant in Blue Hill, Maine, and had some trouble deciphering the menu. it offered both appetizers and entrées, with no sign of main courses.
The dishes listed in the entrées sounded rather large… but everything over here is rather large. Everything. And almost everyone, but hey… I’ll probably be part of that slur before we’re done here.
I asked our incredibly friendly, cheery and personal space invading host to explain, and to her credit she did explain, with no sign of indignation, what must be the equivalent of asking whether “dessert” is meant to be the “pudding course.” We were told that we could choose to have the appetizers as well, or just the entrées. We nodded like we understood and later there was food.
We’ve seen the same thing many times since then, and so it led to some research. Wikipedia tells us that, indeed, North America is unique in its interpretation of the word. However, I’m coming to appreciate that North America is just unique. Full stop. Or should that be “period”?
Ironically, the "entrées" here are enormous – far bigger than normal main sizes in the rest of the world.
I think it sums up the level of quality we're probably going to eat for the next couple of months. Let's hope you still recognise us when we return to Sydney...
Hello and welcome to our new blog! We’re currently a few days into our trip through the US, and just sitting around in our room in Conway, New Hampshire. So it seemed like a good time to get the ball rolling on this thing.
We’ve just come from Maine, where lobster and fog were the maine-stays. Get it? I made a funny. But I’m not the only one to pull this pun. It’s all over the place, usually as the name of some business, such as ‘Mainely Used Cars’, ‘Mainely Antiques’, etc. There are a lot of antique shops around, but at least one of them had the honesty to call itself ‘Antiques and Junque.’
Anyway, I hope you tune in for the ride. It should be an interesting journey, as long as daph doesn’t kill me before it’s over.
Niall
