Apologies once again for the late update, considering that I arrived home over a week ago, but as I said last time: it's better late than never! I cant load any photos onto this update as they're not saved on this computer, but I have set up a Flickr account where I have uploaded the 'best' photos of my travels. http://www.flickr.com/photos/61942528@N04/
I flew from San Diego to Baltimore on the 18th March. For some reason I'd chosen to take a flight that arrived at 1.00AM, so had to book into a cheap hotel near the airport for a night. I had two days to 'explore' Baltimore, but having watched 'The Wire' I knew that I was likely to get shot at at some point, so I stuck to the Inner Harbour area, which looked pretty safe. The National Aquarium was located at the harbour, so I upped my yearly aquarium count to a nice round 2 and joined the thousands of other people who had the same idea. As part of the entry I got to watch a dolphin show which, whilst very impressive, looked a tad cruel. The weather on the East coast was significantly colder than in San Diego, so walking around in the cold was not particularly welcoming.
I got the local train down to Washington DC, where I had booked into a hostel for a week, so I certainly had enough time to visit all of the free museums. And I did visit them. All of them. Mostly out of principle rather than any actual desire to see their contents. However, after 3 months of travelling, my brain was in no fit state to read all of the blurb that went with each exhibit, so I just looked at the models and pictures instead. On the Friday night I met up with a fried from Reading Uni and experienced Ethiopian cuisine for the first time, which was a change from the normal! I was surprised to find that the England v Wales football match was being shown on US television, however this prompted the following, confusing conversation with the locals: "So are Wales actually a country?", "Yes they are", "But they are part of the United Kingdom?", "Yes, they are", "And they are governed by the British government?", "Well they have their own parliament, but in general they are", "So they're not really a country?", "Yes, they are". Needless to say, none of them stayed to watch the game.
From DC I got the bus up to Philadelphia, where the weather had got even colder, barely above freezing. I paid homage to my favourite series, Rocky (but not 5 and 6, they were rubbish), by walking miles out of my way to visit the Art Museum, which was closed, but I was there just to see the steps leading up to it, and the slightly deceiving statue of the man himself. After that I decided to visit the more traditional Philly attractions, such as the Liberty Bell and surrounding buildings. This included subjecting myself to an hour of factually dubious American propaganda in the Constitution Museum.
From Philly I took a 7 hour train ride to Pittsburgh, where another friend lives. There are no youth hostels in the city, so I had to book in to a reasonably priced posh hotel near the city centre. What Pittsburgh lacks in youth hostels it more than makes up for in bridges. The city's claim to fame is that only Venice has more bridges. In my time there I only sampled a few of the bridges, but they were more than satisfactory. The craziest thing about Pittsburgh, however, was its weather. In a 20 minute period the weather went from raining, to blue skies, to mist, to heavy rain, to snow, back to blue skies and then finally back to rain. These fluctuations were not appreciated when I was attempting to do a bit of sightseeing. Nicole's parents invited me round for an excellent home-cooked meal, my first since Christmas, and then went above and beyond the call of duty by waking up at 4am to take me to the airport.
My early morning flight was for my 24 hour pilgrimage to Green Bay, Wisconsin, just to see their American Football stadium. My support for the Packers is such that I flew quite a long way to a place covered in snow and where everyone loves cheese. The stadium tour was excellent, taking us right down to pitch side, and seeing as their games are sold out on a season-ticket only basis for the next 67 years, it's probably the only time I'll get to go! I nearly found myself stuck in Green Bay when a heavy sleet storm delayed the plane the following morning, meaning that I had 15 minutes to walk the entire length of Chicago airport to catch my connection to Boston.
The weather in Boston also left a lot to be desired. Rather than snow, this time it was torrential rain which blighted my trip, meaning that I could not really do much sightseeing. I jumped on the underground and went to Harvard University, with its old and history-filled buildings, got drenched and went back to the warmth of the hostel.
I left Boston in the rain again the next morning en route to Shelton, Connecticut, where another friend (this time English) was working, where we confused the locals in the bar by playing some very English songs on the jukebox. The next day it was on to my final stop of my journey, New York City, where my brother came out to meet me.
Mike and I spent the first day at Yankees Stadium watching a baseball match between New York and Minnesota, which was an exceptionally cold affair, with relatively little action, but we left knowing slightly more about the game than when we started. From there we went down to Times Square, where we managed to find a Scottish pub for dinner, which was slightly posher than we'd expected. They did, however, sell Blackthorn cider, so I was happy.
The following day we walked round the Metropolitan Museum of Art, not really knowing what we were looking at, but being cultural none-the-less. We were going to follow this up with a trip to the Museum of Modern Art, but the queue was so long that we didn't bother.
The next day we visited Ground Zero and saw the latest developments on their plans for a memorial shrine, which they hope to be open to mark the 10th anniversary of the attacks this year. We took the Staten Island ferry to Staten Island to get a free glimpse of the Statue of Liberty, rather than joining the droves of tourists going to Liberty Island itself. Once we got to Staten Island we jumped straight back on the ferry to Manhatten and went to walk round Central Park.
My final night in the States was spent sleeping in JFK Airport ahead of my 8am flight back home. Everything went to plan and I arrived back in England at 8pm, exhausted.
The End
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