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We're now well into our travels in the good old US of A.......and we seem to have done so much in such a short space of time! Since our last blog we have moved on a bit and passed through a few more cities on the East Coast, everyone of them with their own vibe. From the main city of Boston we moved to the outskirts of the city, about 30 minutes away by train to a more rural hostel. It didn't actually turn out to be that great, we ended up at an old house, about 100 years old, but it had been a hostel since about 1947 (and that was probably the last time they brought new bedsheets into the place) it has been in the same family since it became a hostel and i think they've just got stuck in a time warp!
We had left our amazing hostel in Boston late in the afternoon, because when we had booked this place it had said the hostel was 20 minutes from the station....nearly 2 hours later we finaly arrived from the station to our new home in the middle of no where, and straight away told our
Eastern State Penitentiary
Jade in one of the Long deserted corridors"rules of the house" which included that during the days which e were staying there the hostel would actualy be closed so we had to be out by 10 am every morning and not allowed back until the early evening, which suited us fine, the only problem being we were in the middle of no where and with out a car, so we both had a long walk ahead of us each day if we wanted to do anything. I should mention the guy who worked there aswel, the strangest man we've met here yet i think....i don't think he sees many people and seemed very interested in trying to talk to us about science and accents from around the world continuously over the next 3 evenings.......each time with us moving up to our room as quickly as we could as soon as we had a chance when he was thinking of something else to say, i don't think we will go back there any time soon!
It wasn't all bad though, we managed to get away on one of the days to Salem, which became famouse for the wiches trials a couple of hundred years ago, it was
quite interesting, it's only a small town but has plenty of little witches shops selling everything from spell books to broomsticks and also has a few museums, we only visited one of these, which had actors playing out one of the trials of a lady accused of witchcraft at the time, which also had a replica of the old prison dungeons underground.....definately worth a visit, the only downside was they normally give tours around the town which happened to not be happening the one day we were visiting!! But we did manage to find a few harry potter shops.....they were exactly like the ones in the films and jade got quite excited after talking to the girl in the shop and finding out she was covered in tattoos of things from the films!
Well we finally left for Philadelphia, our next stop in America, a few days later. In many ways its not much different from Boston, it's full of history from the American Revolution and the Civil War, all interesting stuff but we wanted to do something a little different, and had heard about an old prison, which happened to be the first penetentiary in the United States
and had first opened its doors over 100 years ago but then abandoned and up until recently had been forgoten about, they have been slowly refurbishing the place and have opened up to let people like us have a look around. The whole place was a bit eerie as it was pretty much in ruins apart from the parts they've cleaned up......many of the long corridors with cells still had beds with mattresses in, with everything covered in plaster and brick from where the ceilings had given way. We were quite lucky as the guy working at our new hostel had given us free tickets to get in so we didn't have to pay for anything, and you get a free audio guide also which was handy as you could then take a tour by yourself and find out the stories behind the people who were kept there such as Ale Capone, so something a bit different and weird to see that people lived in pretty bad conditions even right up until about 1971 when it was finally closed down. It's definately worth a visit for anyone who ventures over this way, as it seems to be off the tourist
trail and not many people seem to visit it.
We did get to see some more of the more touristy stuff aswel though such as the Liberty Bell and Independance Hall amongst others. After another three days of exploring Philadelphia we boarded another Greyhound and headed to Baltimore.......a place we didnt really know much about but thought it might be worth a visit. We had met an old guy at our last hostel who had told us Baltimore was a really bad area and to make sure we stayed with each other during our stay, but were pleasantly suprised when we arrived to find that it was the complete oposite to what we had been told! Or so it seems anyway! It's a very clean city and the people are once again very friendly as we have experienced at every place we have stoped at so far, of course there are a few homeless and crazey people around on some streets but it's no different from any other place we've ever been to. Our hostel was situated about a 10 minute walk from the Inner Harbour area, which is pretty much the city centre. Theres not a great deal
to do there but it's a nice chilled out area, hich made a nice change as we seemed to be doing so much in the last few places we stayed at so it was nice to slow down and take everything in. The harbour had about 4 ships from Americas past which they have restored and let visitors walk around, it's probably the only attraction they have in the city itself but e wasn't complaining!
Our last day there we ventured a little further and visited another little area called falls point, it has a number of small cobbled roads with little shops and more importantly plenty of pubs! So it was nice to wander around and take our time aswel as the weather just seems to be geting hotter by the day! (We are still thinking of you all back home! haha) I think by the end of our stay here we were glad that we had decided to stay, i myself probably wouldn't come back again but it's another place we can say we've been to!
The 5th June then saw us back on the train and heading towards washington.......this was probably the easyest journey we
American WW2 Submarinehave done yet! we found out there was a free shuttle bus which stoped more or less outside our hostel and took us straight to the staion, so we took full advantage of this, where we then bought tickets for only $6 for the hour journey to Washington DC. While we had been geting our tickets there had been an elderly gent being served at the counter next to us, he had obviously been listening to us while we were next to him and as soon as he found us in the main station afterwards, he seemed to just jump in front of us and began laughing hystericaly in our faces and telling us he had got his ticket for only $3 and then walked off laughing and shouting (He had got a discount we found out because he was an OAP)....it was so random i don't think either of us knew what to do and couldn't stop laughing ourselves, we have certainly met some characters while moving around North America! However once we got out of Union Station and headed to our hostel we could tell straight away that there was so much to do and seemed a really
busy city and knew we would be busy for the next 4 days that we were here.......well the first day i think we were a bit overwhelmed trying to see everything at once and so ended up doing a lot of walking around in the heat of the day, we managed to get in to a couple of museums (all of them in Washington seem to be free entry, where as the rest of the US you have to pay so this was pretty much the first time we actually wanted to go and visit some of the more interesting ones, we found one of american history, which again seemed to be a massive part again of them kicking us Brits out of America and the second was one about all the Native Americans and how they lived and had there lands taken away from them eventually but it was really good to find out more about the States and would recomend to anyone coming over here to take some time out to visit them!
Of course we did all the main tourist attractions aswel such as the White House and Capital Hill, by the end of the day
both of us were knackered and so ended up back in the hostel for the evening, not knowing that tropical storm Andrea was heading our way, so the next day was spent walking around geting very wet. We only have a few days here and wanted to see as much as we could so being the troopers we are we persevered and got to see a few more places. George town is a little way from the main part of washington so we spent a while there, Jade got very excited when we found a proper American diner so we ended up there for lunch which was very good! And then got to see Lincolns Memorial which is pretty impressive itself. The storm wasn't tha bad however and the next day saw us back with bright blue skies again so we managed to see a bit more of the city.......it seems bad saying it but Arlington Cemetary seems to be a massive tourist attraction here also, the bigest military cemetary i've ever seen which also has Kenedys grave, the unknown soldiers from the world wars, Korean war and the Vietnam war plus loads of memorials from the second world war
so we saw a bit of that and then ended up exploring the sights in Downtown Washington, which looks much better when it's not raining so hard! so now Washington is almost over and it's nearly time for us to move on once again, so who knows where we'll end up.......
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wow again
brilliant once again enjoying the blog so much keep it coming but still missing you love n hugs xxx