New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS the Big easy.. Ok so Katrina hit some time ago and there is a lot of places in New Orleans that are still bored up and looking very dilapidated.... but i don't think its all Katrina's fault most of it looks as though it was run down a long time ago. The road on the way in was like a 70mph car park full of speed bumps every 50 meters. Sitting in the back of the van was like riding a rodeo bull, it was quite funny at the start but after about 1 hour of bouncing it got a bit crap! Our sat nav guided us into a derelict warehouse district and said we had arrived! The house turned out to be next to the warehouse district but it was quite acceptable for a hostel. We then headed into Bourbon street for some food and a Hurricane or 2.

Jazz Fest followed the next day and i bought a huge hat for the occasion. we basically spent the day eating and listening to music.. The Gospel tent was actually really good when they had the whole choir up there. People in the crowd were dancing (most of them white?) it was a really good atmosphere. It was quite warm as a huge sweaty blob waddled into the tent letting us know of the temperature in the sun was. We ate quite a few tasty foods of craw fish, fried chicken, po boys, iced teas and all of it was good!

The next morning we went to an air boat tour to see some gators. The air boat was loud and quite fast. Once we found a gator he loured it in with marsh mellows and by calling it in french! So yeah gators aren't that tough! It was pretty cool being so close to a gator though. At the end of the tour our guide pulled out a gator that belonged to his daughter, its name marsh mellow! it was quite docile and we all got to have a hold. It was softer than i imagined a gator would be.

Memphis

Ok the next morning we work up and headed on out to Memphis. So when in Memphis you have to go to Graceland! Surprisingly it wasn't as cheesy as I thought it would be. There was no life size Elvis' no fake sideburns to buy it was all kinda respectful. So Graceland is defiantly an equal opportunity employer as Laura found out quite quickly ;) The house it self was quite modest in to days standards in terms of size and fit out but I'm sure in the day was quite out of this world! The front area of the house was a nice lounge and sitting room and a nice dinning room.

Downstairs had the TV room with 3 TVs because Elvis heard the president watched 3 news programs at the same time so he wanted to be able to. The pool room was cool with its all fabric ceiling and walls. Then there was the jungle room with its green shag pile carpet on the floor and ceiling and some cool wooden carved chairs. The rest of the property was pretty cool with a racket ball court with its own lounge and bar and an office/firing range out back. Then there was the area in which Elvis and his parents are buried. The whole thing was an audio tour which was interesting and which Nate had all in french! Did you know Elvis made 31 movies?!

After the house is a car museum and the private planes and the film museum. His planes were quite cool and apparently he took Lisa Marie all the way to Colorado just to see the snow one afternoon because she had never seen it and then flew straight back after just 20 Min's or so!

That night we headed into town to have a look around and get some food. To our luck there was a bike show on in which they had blocked off Beale st to just bikes and pedestrians. It wasn't just Harley's either there was plenty on jap bikes many with extended swing arms. We ate at one of the places in the guide book "Pig on Beale" and it was delicious! BBQ pulled pork, ribs,wings ah so so good!

Nashville

Ok so a one night stop in Nashville occurred. We decided to do a tour rather than just head out by ourselves. So we did the "Honky Tonk City" tour. Led by our tour guide Rex (he had a voice that only smoking 2 packs a day for 40 years could give you. We headed out to the Honky Tonks, basically all the bars that country music singers go to get famous.

Listened to some music and drank some drinks. One of the bars was filming a tv show called "can you duet?" basically American idol but duets. Met some random guy who dragged us all into another club that he "owned" but he did seem to know everyone and they didn't care that he was walking on the bar and stuff. We then headed to coyote ugly where Laura got up on the bar and had a dance with a hottie and Nate tried to hula hoop, needless to say it was a fun night.

O yeah that afternoon we also got a bit of a tour by a park ranger (who was armed to the teeth) at one of the parks in town who told us some interesting thing about the place.

Gatlinburg

Ok sorry again for the huge time delay between posts just been so flat out. So we stannardsville the drive wasn't meant to be that long so we started off mid morning. On the way we stopped off at FOAM HENGE an apparent life size replica of stone henge. It was quite impressive for a tourist trap along the way. So about that drive. It was meant to be about 5 hours, then we hit Pigeon Forge that was meant to be about 15 mins from our destination, but due to CAR SHOW our 15km drive took 2.5 hours. It was a "Rod Run" so there was plenty of very cool cars and trucks but the traffic was terrible!

The cabin was just awesome! Again 3 floors of 3 rooms each with spa baths then a down stairs den with a pool table, poker table and a video game machine! and of course the out door 7 person hot tub. The weather on the first day was a bit poo so we went and had a game of mini golf and looked around the town. The main road into the park through town is littered with mini golf, Ripley's believe it or not attractions, pancake places, it was defiantly cheesy and tacky to say the least. The next morning we headed into the national park and went on a hike up to chimney tops. It was a quite steep uphill walk for about 3 miles. The rock at the top we needed to scale up was quite slippery due to the constant drizzle and I wasn't willing to take the risk of the slide and huge looking drop off the side.

Stanardsville

Ok so the road trip begins! We all pilled into the van in the morning to head to Stanardsville. Its about a 2 hour drive from Washington, nothing to huge. Laura took the first shift of driving the van. Just near or Washington hotel there was a disk golf course so of course us and our Frisbees got out there to tear it up. due to all the rain the day before the course was a bit water logged and apparently Frisbees aren't what the pro use to play disk golf. Two nerdy looking guys with a bag full of "disks" came to play just after we had given up. Basically disks go a million time further than Frisbees so of course we never even came close to making par on even one hole.

The drive was quite nice and uneventful. We stopped at a winery on the way that had a few nice wines. We checked into our cabin which was really quite awesome! I think I could defiantly live in one. Three floors Three bed and a pool table and hot tub on the bottom floor. The next morning was a wine tour. We went to four winery's and had some nice sandwiches for lunch but none of us got all that trashed :( It seems that the tastings are a little bit smaller over here(credit crunch)..

Washington DC

Ok a bit delayed but here it is. Washington DC. First day was a look at all the monuments statues and all that jazz. The weather was a bit poo, some kind of constant drizzle but not rain. Had a look around the air and space museum which was quite interesting due to all of the space craft and things from the Apollo missions. Then to the Native American museum. I ended up buying some good shoes. Some Salomon Gortex ones like Neils. Super comfy and nice and dry. That night we had dinner at a collage sports bar, cheap beers and cheep burgers. We also went for a game of "bowling" but with "duck pins" which are really small and tiny balls with no finger holes! Kinda strange and harder than normal bowling

Day 2 we tried to go to Arlington Cemetery but the weather again wasn't on our side neither was the pentagon by being in our way. So more rain everyone decided to head back but Neil and i had a walk through the cemetery and then to the Iwojima memorial. It turned out to be worth all the dampness as it was huge!! We also did a quiz night but having basically no knollage of USA we didn't win, but we didn't lose!

New York New York!

The Big Apple! Ah New York sooo many stereo types! Getting food from the street vendors is a must. The one near our subway on the upper west side had bagels for $1 and bacon and egg rolls for $2 plus a sugar and coffee for a buck! Eating a slice of pie and having a fillie cheese steak! All the food was good and BIG!

First day was a trek out to the statue and Ellis Island. After a bit of a line and some airport style security and some yelling via mega phone to walk faster and take bigger steps (ah the land of the free) The statue was quite cool as was Ellis island. I did have a LARGE sea gull try to land on my head in its attempt to get my chips! We then headed up to the "Top of the Rock" Awesome views but again another que to get there :(.

Friday Mornin headed to Ground Zero. Just a big construction site for me. Hard to imagine how tall the towers were. Off to Times Square! Neon lights billboards etc! People selling knock off merchandise and Homies selling there demo CDs. Went into "Toys-r-us" and saw the Rockefeller center and the Chrysler building made out of lego! We then went and saw M&M world! Just 3 floors of everything M&M. Soooo many colours of M&Ms but at $12 a pound it was quite expensive. Speaking of expensive we lined up for an hour and a half to get discount tickets to a Broadway show. Our hostel staff told us that the tickets are usually $70-$80 so they said normally a 20-50% discount. We Finlay got to the window and were told the discount price was $120!!!! So we didn't go :( o well. Ended up getting some good Mexican near the hostel.

Saturday was the relaxing day. Had a sleep in then headed to MACYs the bottom floor was full of flours, including some large pink flamingos. That night we all headed out for dinner for Neils birthday. Went to a Brazilian Sushi bar. Strange combination but awesome food and a tv screen showing Carnival. Sunday was a trip to Coney Island, a very run down half closed amusement park. I won a stuffed doll on a ball rolling horse race game. Headed to Katzs deli for a fillie cheese steak! So next stop Washington DC and to pick up the van. Remember to check all the pics at my flicker site on the link on the right.

Vancouver

Hi again. Ok this update is about our week in sunny Vancouver. It started off with a pretty rubbish flight from Tokyo to Portland Oregon in which our dinner salad had HALF a grape! Then just a skip up to Vancouver. The Hotel was quite awesome for the money. At the bottom end of town so it was just a short stroll to most of the shops. The first day we did all the important bits such as back account and SIN number which were a breeze! The next day we traveled across the harbor via sea bus and up to Capalano suspension bridge. Quite beautiful with the snow capped mountains in the background.

Then a day riding round Stanley park on some rent-a-bikes. The weather was quite fantastic! 12'c and sunny! But it felt quite warm in the sun. And being a weekend there was plenty of people out and about walking riding and roller blading. We even saw some guys doing some trials riding on mountain bikes! Then the next few days were spent just looking around town and the shops. Next stop New York!

Tokyo

Hello all and welcome to the first post from overseas. We spent the last 3 nights in Tokyo staying just 2 stops out of Shinjinku at the Hatagaya station. It was a relatively quiet neighborhood but still busy to Perth standards. The flight was quiet good as we all were in an emergency exit row so had plenty of leg room and no screaming kids. The train ride from the airport to the hotel took like 3 hours though. Our first day was spent wandering aimlessly and ending up in Shinjuku for dinner.





The next day was spent at Tokyo Disney!!! The world busiest theme park!!! There was a line for all the popcorn stands that would have been at least 30 mins long!! So the day was spent lining up for rides, lining up for food, lining up for the toilet etc. The longest line we saw was for the Big Thunder Mountain roller coaster, 240mins!!!! We embraced the line for Space Mountain for 2 hours! was hard at times but the end result was worth it! One very cool roller coaster that was.



The Following day was spent sight seeing around Tokyo. Ueno Park was first up to go and see the cherry blossoms. Then off to a big temple. Then Venus Fort shopping center. As it was raining we didn't bother to go up Tokyo tower. Ok the internet where we are staying in Vancouver is rubbish! so i will upload some pics later