Holiday in the USA

After 3 weeks of wrangling I actually managed to get two weeks off work all in one go. A good amount of time to make my first visit to the States. We flew into Chicago for the start of our trip. During our two and a half day stay we had a look at some of the local sights including the aquarium and Sears Tower. However perhaps the most impressive were the sculpture called Cloud Gate and the view from the pier. Cloud Gate is a piece of modern art that I actually like and judging by the number of people looking at it, so do lots of others. The most difficult thing about it was getting a photo that does it justice. The pier where the aquarium and planetarium were gave brilliant views of the cityscape which were uninterrupted across the lake. So impressive in fact that we thought it worth a visit in the dark to see it all lit up. Even if our taxi driver thought we were mad, it was worth it.

From Chicago we drove in a hire car East towards Buffalo. The idea being to take four days and stop at anything interesting along the way. We soon discovered that interesting things were lacking so apart from a night in Cleveland we decided to speed up this part of the journey and got to Buffalo in 2 days. Perhaps the most eventful part of the drive was getting a flat tyre which had to be changed and then swapping our rubbish Chrysler for an almost as rubbish Hyundai. Oh well.

Once in Buffalo we made the trip to the Canadian border to see the Niagara falls. There was still snow on the ground when we were there so some of the best look out points were closed. Unfortunately there was ice in the water too so the famous Maid in the Mist was not running trips for tourists to see the falls from the bottom. Still worth seeing though. Strangely enough there seemed to be a lot of static on one of the viewing posts, mine wasn't the only hair standing on end. Of course as were were on the Buffalo part of the trip, we had Buffalo wings for lunch.

A day early we made our way to New York City on a night bus. It seems they have the Megabus in the States too. In our five days in NYC we made a point of seeing all the sights including the statue of liberty from the Staten island ferry, the Guggenheim museum of art, the Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, Times Square, China Town, Little Italy and of course Broadway. By the time we had finished in New York our feet well and truly ached. I did manage to get James to watch Chicago so I can now say I have seen a Broadway show! We also met up with one of James' friends from his time living out in the States. It was a fun night and ment we were able to see part of NYC that was off the tourist trail.


To See more pictures click on this link.

From New York we caught a second Megabus to Philadelphia. We struck lucky and were upgraded to an executive suit in our hotel which acted like a cherry on top of the cake. Whilst in Philly we visited the Liberty Bell, the museum of modern art and the Mutter museum. Of course at the museum of modern art we had to walk up the steps from Rocky and stand in Sylvester Stallones footsteps. The Mutter museum was put together by a doctor who thought the only way to study medicine was to see real diseases. Therefore it was full of jars of specimens, just on a much larger scale than the old library at university. I was surprised at how clean everything was in philadelphia. Considering it was a large City it didn't feel it. We also met up with one of James' old work collegues for dinner which was good too.

In summary,I think the most impressive thing I saw was the skyline of Chicago at night. The best meal was some amazing ribs in a small brewery/pub found in a back street in Philly - I only had the starter but still couldn't eat it all. The nicest thing was how friendly everyone was and how willing they are to help, e.g the guy who insisted on helping change the car tyre. The funniest thing was how people didn't understand what I was saying unless I spoke slowly. Seems they don't hear our accent that often especially outside of the cities. I only got an "I love your accent" once.