New Orleans is a party city, at the same time there is an incredible amount of poverty. The cab driver that dropped me at the hostel told me “It’s a great place to visit but a bad place to live”. He also told me that the only safe place I town was the famous French Quarter. Everywhere else he recommended not risking it. Unfortunately for me, the India House Hostel I was staying in is about 2 miles from the French Quarter. The only real safe and cheap way to get between the two is by streetcar (really old trams like [View Full Entry]

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...Columbus sailed the Ocean blue. I arrived in Chicago early this morning and wasn't able to check in to the hostel until 3pm. Luckily a couple of blocks away the city's annual Columbus Day Parade was happening to keep me busy for a few hours. It's organised by the Italian American communities and basically consisted of all the local school marching bands and a few local business putting on floats. Chicago is without doubt my favourite city so far, it's got the young busy cultural feel of New York, but without the dirt and negative attitude. I'll write some more about [View Full Entry]

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Its 14:00 on Friday afternoon and I'm in the middle of Alabama on the train from Atlanta down to New Orleans. I Arrived in Atlanta on Wednesday morning at 8am. Trying to get some sleep on the train was harder than I thought. The Amtrak seats where comfortable enough, but I still found it difficult to stay asleep for more than about half an hour. I took a bus and then the underground to the hostel which was quite a strange place. The building was a big old house that had been converted. Antique bits and pieces where hung up on [View Full Entry]

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I’m writing this at 10pm Tuesday night on the train from Washington DC to Atlanta, I’m currently 3 hours into a 14 hour journey. The trains here are great; you get around three times as much legroom as you would on a British train. The seats recline really far back and the foot rest comes out like a lazy boy. On Monday we caught the train to Washington DC. There's only one night in Washington so had a little wonder around all the government buildings and monuments. The White House is lot smaller than you’d imagine, whilst hanging around outside a [View Full Entry]

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After all the hassles of Saturday (see previous post), Sunday has turned out to be a hell of a lot better. We visited the Natural History Museum which has got an exhibition on called "Cosmic Collisions". You get shuffled into a theatre where the whole roof is the screen. Robert Redford narrated a storey about how the moon was formed after a meteor hit the earth and the fragments that where displaced merged together to form the moon. Apparently it only look 1 month. They also had a cool exhibition on about marine animals which I had some fun photographing. We [View Full Entry]

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Today has been a bad day, but yesterday was a good one, so I'll start with that. We started off with a really nice breakfast at the Brooklyn diner on west 57th street. Followed by a trip up to the roof of the Rockefeller building. I'm not usually one for doing the whole touristy thing but I have to admit that the view from the roof was pretty breathtaking (See the photos). After that we wondered around the Central Library and Grand Central Station. Both buildings where great for just sitting around people watching. Whilst sitting on the steps outside the [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday I thought it might be a good Idea to have a wonder down to Wall Street to see what all the hoo-haa is about. Wall St is located in the far south of Manhattan Island. The hostel we are staying is on 103rd St which is around the north west of Central Park, between the two is about 6 miles of Broadway. It was so interesting walking from one end to the other watching how the character of the street (and colour of skin) changed as we got further south. I really enjoyed all the little parks the city has, [View Full Entry]

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Well, I made it past the US immigration people, which was a lot less painful than I thought. it must have only been about 20 minutes from leaving the getting off the flight to walking through the arrivals gate to meet Lisa. we decided to be cheapskates and use the airtrain and subway to get to the hostel. the ssubway was full of weird and wonderful people, but at no point did I feel like I was in any danger. We asked a guard how to get to 103rd street, but forgot to say that we wanted west not east, so [View Full Entry]

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Not much longer to go now, just need to sort out an extended Thai Visa, drop my car off up North and get some US Dollars. Planning for the USA and Japan is going smoothly, I just bought my Japan Rail pass today and booked another hostel. I'm slightly worried about the tensions in Bangkok. Hopefully it will be sorted before I arrive in Thailand in mid December. [View Full Entry]

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This is just a test message so that I can work out how to do everything. It's just over 5 week until leave for my 4 month trip accross the USA, Japan and South East Asia. Just about everything is sorted now, just got to get visa's for Thailand and Vietnam and try and get a nationwide accout open so that I can get money from ATM's without being charged a fee. I was originally hoping to leave the USA totally unplanned and just wonder around as I felt like it, but it's just became too hard to sit at work [View Full Entry]

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