Travel Logbook

New Orleans & Chicago, USA: 20th-26th May.

Later that afternoon I took a bus heading north and the next morning I was at the US border in Nuevo Laredo. I picked my way carefully through the discarded syringes littering the Rio Grande bridge and crossed back into the States. I got straight on a Greyhound bus and next morning I was in New Orleans.

I stayed in the Big Easy for three days but to be honest, I was a bit disappointed by the place. I was expecting there to be buskers and entertainers on every corner but there wasn't. There were one or two in Jackson Square, which was otherwise full of portrait artists and fortune tellers. On Bourbon Street I went into a bar with a live Jazz band playing and ordered a beer. I paid for my $5.75 beer with a ten buck note and the change came in a little tray with a message reading "Your bill does not include service or gratuity". I thought, at $5.75 for a half pint of warm beer, it bloody well does. New Orleans is probably a fantastic place to visit with some friends and with some money to burn, and of course everyone raves about Mardi Gras, so hopefully one day I'll go back and give it another try.

Next I was back on the 'Hound and off to Memphis. I arrived in the afternoon, hoping to visit Graceland the next morning. But when I arrived in the city I discovered that the only hostel in town had closed down, and the Tourist Office told me I probably wouldn't find a room for less than $50. That was more than I was prepared to spend so I bought my ticket on to Chicago straight away and just had enough time for a quick beer on Beale Street before the bus left.

Next morning the bus arrived in Chicago. I stayed there two days, and found it to be a really pleasant surprise. I had a preconception of Chicago as a rather grim, polluted, industrial city on a muddy swamp of a lake, but in fact it is a bright, youthful city, fairly clean even, and the lake is as blue as the Carribean, with a lovely sandy beach to sunbathe on. There's loads to do in the city; I went to the zoo, which was free, and I also went to the Field Museum where they have the skeleton of Sue the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the largest and most complete of its kind ever found. There is also lots of great nightlife in the city, not least of course the famous Blues bars.

Toronto & Niagara Falls, Canada: 27th May-1st June

From Toronto it was on to Niagara Falls for a quick visit. I didn't go on the Maid of the Mist but I did take a walk down behind the falls and got drenched at the lookout. Apparently, 15 people have intentionally gone over the falls since people started to take an interest in these things; of these five have died. But if you take away the nutters who went over in a polypropylene kayak, a jetski, and a "thing" made of rubber inner tubes held together by fish nets and leather straps, then the odds of survival lengthen to 10 in 12, or 83%... I was tempted to give it a try myself...

Washington DC & New York City, USA: 1st-5th June.

Perhaps luckily then, I had a bus to catch, and next morning I was in Washington DC. The capital of the US is a fascinating place but as I was getting very close to going home I only had an afternoon and a morning there. I think if I'd been there a week I wouldn't have been bored for a second. There are so many things to see and do, and best of all, most of them are free. I went across the Potomac River to Arlington National Cemetery where I watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns before going to see JFK's grave. Back on the north of the river I walked the length and breadth of the National Mall, visiting the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; I had a peek at the White House, tried to go up the Washington Monument (it was closed for renovation) and had a look at the US Capitol. I also visited the National Air and Space Museum where they have the Wright Brothers' Flyer, the Bell X-1 (the first aircraft to break the sound barrier in level flight), and the Apollo 11 lunar module that returned from the moon.

In the afternoon I returned to the Greyhound station to make my last bus trip, a short four hour hop up to New York City. I arrived on the friday night, and my flight back to Heathrow was on monday morning so I had two whole days in the Big Apple. I stayed in a hostel up on West 103rd street, just off Central Park, so on the saturday morning I took a walk through the park for a couple of hours. After that I walked down to Midtown Manhattan and had a look at Times Square, Union Square, the Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Station, the Chrysler Building and of course the Empire State Building. I wanted to go up to the observation level at the ESB but the queue was way too long.

In the evening I went back to my hostel and changed rooms because the Brazilian bloke in my dormitory had snored all night long and kept me awake almost the whole of the previous night. Sleeping in dormitories will be just about the only thing I'll be glad to see the back of after this trip; if people aren't snoring then they're coming in at all hours and turning lights on, rustling plastic bags in the middle of the night or moaning at you for opening the curtains at 11.00 am because they're trying to sleep the day through... Give me my own room any time. That said a dormitory is of course a very good place to meet people when you're on your own in the big city.

Having said that, I made my last friend of the trip on the ferry to Liberty Island the next morning, a German girl called Silke. We were on the 9.00am ferry to see the Statue of Liberty, which I thought was pretty early, but by that time all the passes to climb the statue had already been given out. So instead Silke and I had a look around, took the obligatory photos and then moved on to Staten Island and the Immigration museum. After that we took the ferry back to Manhattan and walked down Wall Street and halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge. We then spent the rest of the morning wandering around Greenwich Village and Soho, and spent most of the afternoon in Washington Square Park listening to the fantastic musicians there. These guys weren't busking as such, it just seemed to be a musical free-for-all but the sounds were great and it was the best possible way to spend the last afternoon of my journey.

I was in bed by 10.00pm because I didn't want to oversleep and miss my flight which left at nine the next morning. So, I was up at six, on the Metro at six fifteen, and got to JFK airport just after seven a.m. The Virgin Atlantic Airbus took off on time and five hours later landed at Heathrow, fifteen minutes early. I reclaimed my tired old rucksack and cleared customs, got on the Underground and soon I was at Charing Cross. Then, the final journey; 45 minutes on the train to Greenhithe and the short walk from the station. Home Sweet Home.

I reserve the right to exaggerate for comic effect. All photos by the author. Except those with the author in them, which were taken by someone else. Obviously.