Week Two (and a half) July 19, 2006
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It is much harder than you would think to find an internet cafe in the States. Hence the lack of updates on here. But at the moment we are in Pittsburgh airport where our flight to New York has been delayed for three hours.
So what have we been doing? Last week we were in LA for my cousin’s wedding. We were too busy to get to see much of the sights but where we were staying at Palos Verdes was amazing. The apartment had a view right out over the Trump golf course and the ocean. We will try not think about that when we go into our first hostel tonight in New York.
The wedding was great (the photos are on Flickr which I am still trying to link to this blog). Then on Friday night we flew to New York with Mum and Dad. We stayed in a great cheap hotel on the Upper West side (Seinfeld area) called Hotel Newton.
We went up the Empire State building and shopped- more about that later.
The last couple of days we have been in Pennsylvania where we went to see Falling Water, the house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. That was a real highlight. We also stayed in a great little town called Ohiopyle and went to a battlefield from the French Indian war called Fort Necessity.
Today we fly back to New York for five days staying in the East Village- should be fun. See my other posts for more detail about the specifics.
Greyhound tales July 12, 2006
Posted by Amanda in Travel Diary, Uncategorized.3 comments
My cousin said to me once that only criminals and crazy people travel on Greyhound buses in the US. Needless to say, Chris and I ignored that and caught the Greyhound from LA to Las Vegas when we first arrived. Maybe it was the jet lag but it seemed ok. So we booked to catch the bus back to LA on Monday morning.
We arrived at the station and were each promptly charged $20 more than what we had been told when we booked. We dealt with that and then were told that the bus we booked on to was full, but then they put us on because we had booked through Amtrak. We couldn’t get seats together so I decided I would sit next to a harmless enough looking woman in her mid twenties. She argued that she didn’t want me there but there was nowhere else- oh how I wish there had been.
The people around her who had been on the bus for four days from Philadelphia started telling me she was crazy and had nearly been put off the bus previously. But I thought, she doesn’t seem that bad, and she wasn’t for the first hour. She did keep drinking out of one of about seven different bottles of coke that she had but that was ok.
It was when the bus got a flat tyre about an hour out of Vegas that she started to get agitated. We were stuck by the side of the road for a couple of hours during which time, she started having a conversation. I got to hear both sides of the conversation because they were quite loud, and both sides were coming from her. Mainly it was about welfare benefits.
She got more agitated when she accused everyone around her of stealing one of her bottles of Coke. I just kept the headphones on.
At the food stop someone was taken off the bus with a full compliment of police, fire and ambulance. It wasn’t my seatmate but at least it meant Chris and I could move to sit together.
The four hour bus ride took seven and a half hours but it least it yielded a story.
Australia references July 8, 2006
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See if you can match the media reference we have heard about Australia to the American network we heard it on.
1. Interview with Tim Flannery
2. Johnny Howard condemning the missile test by North Korea
3. Two people kicked off Big Brother
4. Hillsong music
A. Random Christian radio station
B. CNN
C. Fox Radio News
D. National Public Radio Network (NPR)
The answers are
1-NPR
2-Fox Radio News
3-Random Christian radio station
4-CNN
American radio stations July 8, 2006
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We have been listening to the radio as we drive around and it is amazing to hear the vitriol that is broadcast night and day. Almost every talk station seems to be conservative and they go on and on about the ‘liberals’, ‘the left’ and ‘the Democrats’ all day. They also seem to all have the same stories that they are instructed to talk about. I heard Madeleine Albright’s comments about North Korea being ripped into on three different programs, all with different presenters and yet with very similar things being said on each. If we think Alan Jones is bad, he has nothing on this lot.
There is also a lot of conspiracy theory presented by the hosts and callers alike. So far we have heard that oil regenerates itself and there is no such thing as peak oil, that aliens are invading and populating the world with hybrids and that China is responsible for the North Korea missile strike. It is all very amusing.
One week in … July 7, 2006
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Here we are in Utah with free copies of the Book of Mormom to be had for the taking whereever we go.
But first a quick update on the last week.
We arrived in Las Vegas last Friday and checked into the Sahara which was quite tacky as we had hoped. We managed to avoid being sucked into the casino although to get anywhere in Vegas you have to walk through one. We checked out all the usual suspects, going to the Luxor, MGM, New York New York and the Bellagio. The first day we managed to be out for 12 hours- the evening spent watching the fountains at the Bellagio and chatting to Jay who works in the taxi industry. He gave us the low down on everything Vegas. It is always great to talk to a local. It was here that we heard someone complaining that it took her two days to find her way out of the hotel/casino she was staying in because no-one would tell her where to go. Very amusing.
Since Monday we have been driving through some of the most spectacular scenery we’ve ever seen. We went to Zion National Park first, then Bryce Canyon and now are in Moab which is near the Arches National Park. It has been incredible to watch the landscape change throught the different parks. Although it would be easy to say it is all red rock, each place has its own distinct features and is quite different to all the others. Today has been fantastic- we did a self drive audio tour of the Arches and did a lot of walks. I have wanted to come here for a long time and I am not disappointed. Tomorrow we will head to Monument Valley and then to Scottsdale and the Grand Canyon.
Hopefully I’ll upload some pictures soon.
