N'Olans

Apprehensive I was and I won't lie. Having read about places to avoid due to post-Katrina related crime etc, I hoped we weren't staying in any of them.

It turned out that 1 day prior to our arrival, we had nowhere to stay. Luckily, our good friends in St.Louis came to the rescue by hooking us up with their friends couch in New Orleans who, luckily, didn't live in one of these places-to-avoid.
Infact, he (and she, for he lived not alone) lived an a beautiful part of New Orleans called the Garden District, located about a mile away from the French Quarter.

Some pictures to illustrate...

A very relaxing few days in the Garden district along with several trip to the French Quarter.
On advise from pretty much every local, including our host John, we avoided drinking on the expensive and tourist driven Bourbon Street in favor for the much more recommended Frenchman St. A walk along these streets explained why and although Bourbon street had the layout - Bar, Strip Club, Bar, Bar, Strip Club, Strip Club, Tacky shop (which also had a mobile bar setup inside), Bar etc... which in my opinion was ideal for an easy night night out, lacked anywhere actually 'nice' to drink in so we stayed on Frenchman. (Although if I return and am not restricted by this budget, I shall enjoy a night out there!)

So, as that was a long paragraph, and I've run out of steam, we'll carry on my picture story telling format that I found preference for only 20 minutes ago.

Exploring the French Quarter outside of the bars and shops..


The graveyards are unique. Due to the swampy foundations, graves have to be built above ground. This makes for some creepy exploring..

We also went to explore these swamps, complete with Aligators and other nature (watch out David Attenborough!)
Bike riding around the city...


With our new hosts, Chris, Savanna, Cassie (and Snake)....


Mardi Gras after-math...Beads in trees on Charles St.

And ofcourse, drank more. Although I seem to have no 'good' photos of these events. I'm sure you've seen enough of beer photos for now anyway.

So, go visit New Orleans. I thoroughly recommend it. And eat Cajun food, because it's awesome and don't seem to have it properly in Blighty.

Walking in Memphis

Another Greyhound later...

A little confusion over our couch surfing arrangements. Richard had organised this one but hadn't managed to get final confirmation from our host so whilst on the bus, I phoned and arranged to stay with someone else.
We got to the bus station to find the original person, Tucker, waiting for us to give us a lift. Nice.

Memphis felt like the true South (Not that fake stuff they try and sell on the streets of St. Louis).

The streets were full of balls....

And Rock 'n Roll...


A night out on Beale street (THE place for blues music) which incidentally, is the only real place to go in Memphis...
They serve good sized beer though...

Which made us smiley...

We then stayed with Matt, the guy I had arranged whilst on the bus. He was a hero who drove an Audi TT but couldn't afford to feed himself.

He did invite us to his brothers leaving party though so an evening of free food and drink. I also had some 'Smores' (sp?). Basically, roasted marshmallow with hersheys chocolate (yuck) between 2 Graham Crackers. This would have been brilliant with Cadburys!

We met up with other couchsurfers...

And drank beer in not so good sizes...


We also went to Graceland (ofcourse) but my camera decided it was too tacky to picture so faked a dead battery. We had words later.
So, no pictures of this. I had hoped to try harmonising 'Since my baby left me' whilst at Evlis' grave. Richard didn't want to humour me on this. (Spinal Tap reference to those who haven't a clue)

A bar we went to with over 200 beers available. If you could drink them all within a certain period (3 months I think), they honoured you with a plaque on the wall...

Memphis is clearly full of drunks.

I like this new format of picture story telling. Especially how behind I am with these things. I may do the New Orleans one straight after this...2 blog posts in 1 day, aren't you lucky!

Further notes - so I don't appear too lazy with this post.
I had a nice time in Memphis although maybe a week was a little too long. The food speciality there is BBQ pork which we had a few times. The dry-rub ribs were amazing!
Our 2 hosts, Matt and Tucker were incredibly friendly (this couchsurfing is going well so far!).

And further down the Mississippi we go. Wheeee....

Along the M i double s i double s i double p i

Arriving in St. Louis to a spectacular lightning storm, we feared the weather was not likely to be favourable whilst here. This was certainly the case when the next morning, awakening to some of the largest thunder I have ever heard (shaking the house and setting car alarms off - the cool 'apocalyptic' style thunder!) we decided to brave the rain and wait it out whilst watching the new Star Trek (nerd) at the movie theater (learning this Yank speak).

I don't think I could have gotten much wetter on the way and if the film hadn't been so enjoyable, I may have noticed that we had formed a large puddle of rain water around us.
We left the Cinema no drier but to a complete change to sun and clear skies. Typical.

Sock drying time.

And I promise that will be the last talk of the weather on this post, other than to say, the rest of the time, it was beautiful.

We had originally planned to stay with a friend of Richards, PJ, but it turned out, he didn't really have the space and had arranged for us to stay with some of his friends, Liz and Ann Marie. They were great hosts and although vegans, were very friendly!
They had a cardboard coffin in their front room but we were assured this was normal. There is a story behind this but not one worthy typing. Infact, I'm not sure why I bothered mentioning it if I'm not going to explain it..maybe I should take it out, but I've already written all this now so I'll just leave it in a keep you guessing. HA.

St. Louis also has a "Church" of Scientology.

I saw students protest outside here everyday. I'm not sure what they think they'll achieve, but it keeps them off the streets. As it were.

PJ had invited us to a Jewish Banquet he and his housemate had organised. This turned out to be a very enjoyable night and I got to sample alot of Kosher meals and less than 'Kosher' beer. We also met some friendly people who invited us to their place the following day. Here, we got drunk and ended up playing guitar til wee hours. Most fun.

No Pictures of these events as the camera wasn't Kosher...it's a Nikon.

St. Louis is also home to Blueburry Hill, a bar where the legendary Chuck Berry still plays once a month. Needless to say with our luck, this would not be whilst we were there.

Where I found my thrill...at Blueberry Hill.

Downtown St.Louis doesn't have much 'happenin' apart from the arch so we stayed around the university area mostly.

The Arch. Interesting aye?!

The campus is incredible and the surrounding parks have many attractions.

We went boating.(Reinventing the rowing method)

And zooing. "I think it's a rock"

And so concludes my tale of St.Louis. Our journey continues down the Mississippi where I walk in Memphis and feel a good song could be made about the experience.

Windy City.

The long Greyhound journey was less painful than expected. As we had to be up at 4am, sleeping took up most of the morning. We had a 2 hour stop over in Cleveland in the afternoon, during which time I became pretty knowledgeable about the Greyhound Station in Cleveland.

We arrived in Chicago at about 10pm and called on our host (again, we were couch surfing) for directions. A short tube ride (called the 'L' here) and we were greeted by Morgan who would be our guide for the next couple of days.

First day, we ventured to the downtown area and became familiar with the infamous 'Bean' Sculpture in Millennium Park. Hugely impressive and great for photo taking.
A few highlights from around the park:

The Bean

Jay Pritzker Pavilion

Crown Fountain

The weather was abit unfortunate on our first day, experiencing first hand why they call it the 'Windy City'

A trip to the Art Institute of Chicago (free on Thursdays after 17:00!) got to see Nighthawks (Edward Hooper)...

I never understood why people take photos of painting, it seems to defeat the whole point to me, but I had to take one of this!

As the weather cleared I decided to embrace the sun by hiring a bike to do some city cycling. Chicago is apparently USA's most cyclist friendly city. At $30/day rental, it's no wonder they are friendly!

The longest bike ride I've done in years (about 7 hours) and managed to find myself in the middle of a ghetto. Being naive I felt this would be a great place to stop and get lunch. A Chicago style hot dog with relish that resembled the result of a sneezing attack upon a turd. The 'joint' I got it from was also uncomforting...The entire counter being shielded with a bullet proof screen and a large black lady screaming about the amount of salt on her fries.

A few shots of my otherwise pleasant bike journey...

Roundabouts do exist in America!

We also managed to check out a superb nightime veiw over the City via the bar at the Hancock Observatory...
The drinks were ludicrously expensive ($12 upwards) but the view was stunning. Once again, photos do this no justice.

The striking thing about Chicago compared to its bigger rival, New York, is the architecture. Truely spectacular buildings, one of my favourite being the Tribune Tower which features in its lowest walls, stones from around the world. I was very happy to see this...

"Give us back our stone you theiving yanks."

More great couchsurfing. After staying with Morgan for a couple of nights we were handed over to some friends of hers to put us up for the rest of the week. They couldn't be more accommodating and on picking us up from Morgans, took us to a house party of someone no one really knew (when does that ever matter!?).

And so we were ready to contunie our jourey South down Route 66. Next stop, St Louis (pronounced with the 's').

The Mega [cheap] Bus!

Peddle Backwards to Stop..

In the interest of saving $10 (£7app), we decided to bus to Chicago via a short stay in Buffalo. I'm glad we did this.

Buffalo was our first CouchSurfing experience so we were a little apprehensive when we arrived. We needn't have been as we were greeted at the door with a beer, a sure sign of good hosting in any part of the world.

Our first CouchSurf

Our hosts, Mike and Maura, were great company. On our first night, Mike took us for a bike ride to show us the local area (and his local pub for a beer). We were given a couple of old style 'Cruiser' bikes (like those used by American kids in 1980's movies). These bikes were a little older though, mine being around since the early 40's.
If you aren't familiar with these style of bicycles, they have no brakes on the handlebars which I failed to notice when I first took off Luckily, I hadn't left the driveway where Mike was nearby to shout stopping instructions at me "Peddle Backwards!" - seems logical.

A short ride down the road and with the first junction approaching, I managed to steadily come to a hault in time...Richard did not.
In his moment of panic at realising the breaks aren't where they used to be, he decides the best method to stop for the junction, was to ride into the back of Mike who was waiting patiently for a gap in the traffic. HA! Great mockings over a pint later.

Journey to the Falls.
The convinient thing with being in Buffalo was its proximity to Niagara and thus, the falls, and so on our only full day we had there, I went for some tourist fun.
The weather was shit on the day (the day prior had been beautiful - such is my luck) and I ended up getting wetter on the way to the falls than on Maid of the Mist. Moan aside, the falls were spectacular and I don't think any picture can do it justice. I'll throw one in anyway.

Maid Idiot of the Mist

Another Canadian/US border crossing (which I had to cross to see the falls from the Canadian side - argued to be the best) caused much confusion and of course, discourtesy from border patrol who were confused as to why I had just come back into the states the day before. This happened on both the US and Canadian sides....I hate them all.

Walking the bridge to freedom?

That night we were taken to sample some of 'the best Buffalo wings' at a pub nearby. It is fair to say, they were bloody good wings. The sauces ranged from mild to Suicide. We figured it was too early in the trip to die, so went for a slightly less intense sauce, 'Atomic'!

And that just about wraps up our short stay in Bufflao. The next day we were destined for Chicago with an 11 hour Greyhound to look forward to.

Idiot out.

Toron'o

"Pardon"

Although I felt my French didn't let me down too much in Montreal (I could at least order beer and basic food. My pointing was also top-notch!) it was nice to be able to talk freely without accidentally slipping into an awful french accent, like Thierry Henry on that Renault Clio add...Va Va Voom.

We got another ride-share from Montreal - Toronto with a driver who must have thought he was driving on an arcade game. Did get us there pretty quick though.

Due to a later than expected arrival, we spent the first night in a Downtown Hostel. This luckily meant we could meet up with the Danes we met in Montreal for some drinking, an activity the Danes regard not as a past-time, but a full blown commitment to their National pride. We got on well with the Danes!
We met them at their hostel, a much nicer one than ours I might add, and joined them on an organised hostel outing to a club. The club was impressive, the music not so and the drinks prices even less. Met some cool people though including Dave, a fellow Welshman who had packed everything in and was traveling the world for 2 years. Crackin'.

Ball(s) game.

The following day we caught the Toronto Bluejays baseball game. The tickets had been given to us by a couple of guys in Montreal who were meant to go but lost their car keys and so had to remain in Montreal for the weekend. Denied.

Spot the ball.

The game itself was immensely dull with 3 runs being scored in 12 innings. If these number mean anything to you, you'll appreciate the tedium. We did get to see a home run...after 4 hours. We left.

The Uxbridge Experience.

After the first day, we traveled an hour North to a small suburb called Uxbridge to stay with some family of Richards. Rick and Kim were both very welcoming and it's a shame the area itself wasn't quite so.

A pictoral represnation of the beauty of Uxbridge

We stayed there for a few days and were treated to pool, beer and BBQ steaks the size of the average American. A nice relaxing few days.

The Royal City.

A grander sounding name than the town itself I feel. Guelph is a University town where everyone we met seems to work in a bar and knows everyone else that also works in a bar which incidently, is everyone. We stayed with a distant cousin of Richards who was great to hang out with and show us the bar in which she and everyone else she knew worked.

A band we heard on the first night dedicated a song to us, I think it was a Beatles number...obviously.

The not-so Beatles.

We were given a tour of the university and were amazed by it having 2 ice-rinks. They take Ice Hockey seriously here. They also had a crazy art garden full of crazy art things...

Crazy artists.

The Chinese Cell.

For the last night in Toronto, we went back into Downtown and stayed at the Chinatown Hostel (this was the cheapest one going!).
A couple of picture to show what we [didn't] pay for:

Cell Block H

You may like to see what delightful picture they have put up for decoration:

Click to Enlarge.

And that pretty much concludes our Toronto visit. I'm not sure it ranks among my favourite cities. Things are too far apart and it doesn't feel as comfortable as previous big cities. I think if I were to ever go back, i'd stay in Guelph and get to know everyone, that is, everyone who works in a bar.

Our next destination was Chicago, with a short stay in Buffalo to sample their wings and visit the falls.

The French side of things.

I've sat in this 'cawfee' house for 10 minutes looking blankly at this screen wondering how best to start. Seems like the best way I came up with is to tell you how difficult I'm finding it. Meh, it's a start and hopefully I'll think of a more interesting way to begin as I continue writing (although if you're reading this, I've either failed to conjure up a better one or forgotten that I had left a really boring opening!)

So we left the last chapter of our tale with Richard playing the honky tonk piano in Boston (in actual truth, as my blogs are rarely written in chronological order, this wasn't how we ended our stay in Boston but for the purpose of continuity, it will do)

Next in line on our journey was Montreal. We were able to find a ride share on 'Craigs List' from Boston to Montreal with Phillipe, who apparentyly makes the Boston - Montreal run every fortnight so was an accustomed ride sharer (offerer?!). Passing through customs was smoother than anticipated, a few questions to ensure we weren't smuggling/comspiring/emmigrating/going to enjoy ourselves etc. and we were in.

Hostel Alexandrie


By FAR the best hostel experience yet. Upon arrival, Hernan aka 'H', the hostelier began by introducing us to all the other guests and explaining the area (mostly best pubs) and inviting us to a pub crawl he had arranged to get everyone friendly. It worked. (For those who have seen the photos on Facebook, you may recognise H as the guy who looks like Hurley from Lost). He also began introducing me as Frodo to all new arrivals.

The Hostel itself wasn't the cleanest of places we've stayed at, and we had to move rooms several times as we kept extending our stay but the socialness of the place was incredible. Many 'nights' out would end as late as 6/7am as parties continued in the Hostels basement. It did mean most of the day time was written off to sleep/recovery for the first few days. Good times and lots of great people met.
We also discovered the Hostel used to be a Morgue which inspired great confidence late at night! In one of the bathrooms, there remained one of the old lifts they used to carry bodies between floors. Lovely.

Old Montreal

Downtown Montreal is what most people know as Old Montreal. Beautiful streets lined with magnificant buildings ofwhich the French/European influence is prominent.
A few piccies to highlight my point.

Notre-Dame Basilica
To avoid having to pay to look inside, I attended Easter Mass (In French..I had no idea what was going on!) Morally wrong? Maybe, but worth it...
Not a great picture I'm afraid as I got told off for taking this one and was too scared to take another!

Mount Royal
A few miles North of Old Montreal, Mount Royal dominates the skyline. An hour walk to the summit provides an awesome view of the city...
And just for the purpose of cool photographs -

Viewing Highlights
A few photos taken around Montreal.

The old 1967 World Fair Biospehere. Mostly burnt down in '76, this is what remains.
Crazy accommodation. Designed by a 21 year old. Show off.
Stade olympique. Looks like a UFO. Nuff said.

Poutine
The 'delicacy' in Montreal is a dish called 'Poutine'. Roughly translated to English means chips, cheese and gravy. To sample this delight, I went to Montreal's most (in)famous Poutine establishments, serving no fewer than 60 different types of Poutine. For a completely unbiased (and cheapest) option, I went for the standard sampling. My review:
The cheese used is actually cheese curds that tasted and felt like eating rubber. The gravy was scarce and bland whilst the chips served only as a stodgey medium in which to transport the dissappointing toppings to an even more dissappointed recipient. (I don't think being a food critic is my thing!)

Shit.

Overall, I loved Montreal. A fantastic city rich in culture and architecture, but by far the best thing for me was the social element. We met some great people (some of which we managed to meet up with in Toronto..see next chapter) and had some fantastic nights out, which I believe photos on facebook have illistrated.

On the next FGW...
We meet up with the Danes in Toronto, students in Guelph and family in Uxbridge.