The final post...

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Welcome to the very last blog. I can’t believe that we fly home tomorrow. While we’re both looking forward to seeing our friends and family and having the luxuries of not living out of a suitcase or wearing the same clothes every day, we’re quite sad that our trip has come to an end. It certainly hasn’t felt like we’ve been away for five months, but when we think back to places we went to towards the start of the trip like San Diego and the Grand Canyon, it feels like it was a very long time ago.

It was only fitting that we ended our trip with a second visit to Chicago, Craig’s favourite city in America. But before that…

We had a lovely drive down from San Francisco to LA. We spent the first night post-San Fran in San Jose, where we saw the Blackhawks play the San Jose Sharks. Unfortunately they lost. (It was a really good close game, which we lost 2-1 in overtime. We still very much enjoyed the night! - Craig)

The next day, we went to the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. It was built by an eccentric old lady in the late 1800s-early 1900s, and features many weird things like doors that lead to nowhere, windows with walls behind them and staircases that lead to the ceiling. It was interesting looking around, but the tour went for an hour and it got a bit boring after a while. (There was over 140 rooms in the house, it was huge & so very strange! - Craig)

We then drove from San Jose to LA, stopping overnight in San Luis Obispo on the way. The drive was lovely, but unfortunately we had a late start and so missed out on some of the view because it got dark quickly. As we were coming into LA we did have sunlight, but all the fog and smog made it quite difficult to see anything. Ah well. It was still a really nice drive in the Mustang convertible!

Then we flew to Chicago for five days. We met up with Craig’s cousin Ash again which was great. We stayed in a lovely four and a half star hotel that we got for an extremely good deal, it was a lovely way to end the holiday! (Boy did we feel out of a little out of place there, every time we walked out the front door we walked past very well & expensively dressed people hanging out in the upper-class bar. Not to matter though, we had a great time here & really enjoyed spending some more time with Ash! - Craig)

The main reason that we went back to Chicago was so Craig could see his Blackhawks play a few ice hockey games. The season hadn’t started when we were last in Chicago, but he had managed to catch a preseason game then. But he just had to go back to see some more games, and I didn’t mind - I really like Chicago. Ash went to one of the games with Craig, and I went to the other. Unfortunately they lost the first game that Craig and Ash went to, but they won the next two. (The hockey was really good, the last two games were great games which I had a fantastic time at. Unfortunately the game I went to with Ash, was a pretty nothing game as both teams just seemed to go through the motions, with no real energy or excitement in the game. Anyway it was a shame but I still enjoyed it & I think that Ash did too. - Craig)

Apart from the ice hockey, we didn’t do a lot in Chicago. We were well and truly winding down from our big holiday. We did quite a bit of shopping, trying to ensure we take full advantage of out weight limit going back (while praying that we don’t go over it!). We ate out at a lot of nice restaurants, including a pizza place where we tried some of Chicago’s famous deep-dish pizza - very yummy!

God Chicago was cold! It averaged about -5 degrees every day, but with wind chill it felt like it was below -10 degrees. As we were wandering around shopping, we weren’t as rugged up as we were in Alaska and hence it felt a lot colder than Alaska. I was over it by the time we left, I didn’t want to go outside because it was too cold and I was sick of peeling off my layers every time we went into a shop. All the shops had their heaters really cranked up too, which just made matters worse. (It sure was cold & I definitely felt the coldest here. In Alaska we were fully prepared for the cold with all our ski gear, in Chicago we thought we’d be ok without it, but we probably needed it there too! - Craig)

There was snow on the ground, but it only snowed a little bit on one day that we were there.

Ash discovered that Jerry Seinfeld was playing a few shows while we were in Chicago, and we managed to get tickets to see him. (I think everyone knows who Jerry Seinfeld is, but for my Nan & Pa - he’s a comedian and co-wrote and starred in the long-running series ‘Seinfeld’) Unfortunately Craig didn’t come as he already had tickets to the ice hockey. Ash and I couldn’t believe how great our seats were - we were six rows from the front! Pretty good for a sold out show when we’d only bought tickets that morning! Jerry was very funny and it feels so cool being able to say that we’ve seen him live!

We bade Chicago farewell (for now - I’m sure we’ll be back), and are now in LA for the night before flying home tomorrow.

Before I sign off, I’d like to list a few things that I’ll miss or won’t miss about America and Canada.

Some things that Craig and I will miss about America (in no particular order)

1. Soda refills. Why doesn’t everywhere have this back home? Although it did mean that we drank way too much diet Coke, so maybe it’s a good thing that we don’t have it back home. I think I’m going to have a serious caffeine addiction to kick when I get back home.

2. The sport. This one if for Craig, but I will miss the sport too. I would love to go to the occasional baseball game, and I could really see myself going to the hockey regularly if we lived over here. I’m sure Craig will also miss all the sport on TV, and reading about sport in the newspapers and magazines here. (Sure will! - Craig)

3. Key lime pie. Yum, yum, yum. Although I’m sure I’ll be able to find it somewhere back home, and I’ll even have a go at making it.

4. IHOP, Applebees and Dennys. Our favourite and more frequented restaurants over here. IHOP (the International House of Pancakes) would have to top the list. It’s like a Pancake Parlour but with a much, much bigger variety of pancakes and their menu includes normal food. And it’s cheap! The pancake parlour back home is a little pricey for what you get. Dennys was a cheap diner that we really liked, and Applebees was kind of like TGI Fridays (but better). My favourite meal at Applebees was…

5. Buffalo wings. YUM! Apparently they’re hard to find back home with the special buffalo sauce that you get over here. Boneless buffalo wings dipped in ranch dressing is quite simply the best thing ever.

6. Theme parks. They’re everywhere over here, and the worst theme parks over here are kind of like our best ones on the Gold Coast back home. We really had a great time at Universal Studios, Disneyland and Disneyworld, Six Flags and Kennywood (the one we went to for a special Halloween night).

7. Fall coloured trees. We just don’t get the brilliant reds, yellows and oranges to the extent that they do over here in fall (autumn). I loved it, it was so pretty.

8. Squirrels. Some people over here call them rats in a nicer outfit, but I thought they were so cute! They’re everywhere, but I still got a thrill out of seeing them every time I spotted one. I even saw a poor little guy running across one of the ski slopes on Whistler, trying to dodge the snowboarders and skiers. So cute!

9. Sea otters. We’ve seen them at every zoo and aquarium that we’ve been to here, and they’re just so cute! The way they swim on their backs with their paws out of the water, and the way they rest their food on their bellies is darling.

10. Walmart. A huge Kmart, plus a huge supermarket, plus a JB HiFi. If I lived in America, I don’t think I would ever need to shop anywhere else.


Some things that Craig and I won’t miss about America

1. The terrible customer service. Incompetent, rude and inefficient. The worst had to be in Washington when I walked up to an open counter at McDonalds and the guy just ducked down behind the counter right in front of me so he wouldn’t have to serve me. Unbelievable! We may occasionally whinge about customer service back home, but trust me, we’ve got nothing on those Yanks!

2. Serving potato chips with main meals (Craig probably likes this, but ugh for me). It’s just weird. Potato chips are a snack, not a side dish.

3. The unhealthy food. I am desperately craving some home cooked meals!

4. Greyhound buses. Very painful. And I’m not going to miss the seedy characters at the Greyhound bus stations.

5. Taxes added to everything at the register. So you decide that something is good value, or that you can just afford it, and then they add the taxes and it blows the budget! And it’s not just a little tax either, in most states it was above 10%. We never got used to it either, we’d always forget because the advertised price being the final price is just so natural for us. You just have to shrug and go with it.

Some things that we won’t miss about travelling in general

1. Crappy hotel rooms. We’d booked a lot of our accommodation prior to leaving, and we’d tried to stay in places that were cheap but not too cheap (if you know what I mean). We very quickly discovered that the photos on hotel websites can be very deceiving! The worst was Miami, that was a shithole. After a while we started paying a little bit extra to stay in some of the nicer chain hotels like Best Western and Holiday Inns, because we just couldn’t handle it anymore. Gosh, it would have been nice to stay in four and a half star places like we did in Chicago for the whole trip!

2. Packing up our suitcases. Ugh, I’m sick of constantly cramming everything into my suitcase, only to pull it all out again at the next destination.

3. Carting our suitcases and all our bags around. They’re heavy and awkward, and I’m sick of it.

4. No home cooked meals. I had one home cooked meal the whole time!! I made spaghetti bolognaise for Ash and I at Whistler. It was the best spaghetti bolognaise ever!

5. Hard beds. Some of the beds were so bad, especially the one in LA. Considering that bed gave me bed bugs too, it had to be the worst bed that I have ever slept in in my life.

6. The time spent travelling on planes, trains, buses and driving, and the time spent waiting in airports or at stations. It’s such a big country that it takes forever to get anywhere, and it can get really boring after a while.

7. Flying. Craig and I are both really sick of flying, and the whole process of going through security where we need to ensure we only have bottles of liquids that are 100mls of less and put them all in a glad bag, taking off our shoes and jackets and jumpers (and belt for Craig), taking the laptop out of it’s case…Then once we’ve gone through security we have to grab all our stuff which is now spread over about eight plastic tubs, we hobble over to the nearest seat in our socks with Craig holding up his pants so they don’t fall down without a belt….While we have got the process down to a fine art, hardly any of the passengers around us have the same skills so it’s just altogether painful.

8. Wearing the same clothes over and over, and trying to do washing on the run. I AM SICK OF ALL MY CLOTHES! I can’t wait to put on some nice summer dresses that I have at home! And I won’t miss clothes hanging up to dry all over the hotel room.

Well, that’s about it. I want to take the time to send out a huge thank you to all for reading and for commenting on the blogs or the photos. Sometimes I’ve struggled to find the motivation to sit down and write the next blog, but mostly I’ve really enjoyed the process. I’m looking forward to printing out all the blogs when I get home and going through them again. It’s been a great way of keeping a record of everything that we’ve gotten up to over here, as well as being a good way to keep in touch with our loved ones back home. (Thank you to all that have read the blog, it has been great to see so many of you checking up on us at different points on our trip! - Craig)

I particularly want to thank my nan, because I know she’s absolutely loved reading all the blogs. As she doesn’t get on the internet, my mum has been printing them out for nan and sending them to her. Mum has told me that she then reads them at least twenty times, and pores over the black and white printed out photos with a magnifying glass. And then proceeds to tell whoever may come to visit them what Craig and I have been up to that week. It makes me happy that she’s gotten such a thrill out of the blogs, so a special thanks to nan

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