Photo gallery

OK, it turns out I did have the time and inclination to make a fancy gallery interface: visit our first album at tomkat.evil.cc/photos/1/.

More from Chicago

Chicago totally rocks! We've had a really great time here :-).

After we'd uploaded the photos (which took ages!) we went to visit Dan and Michelle (and Connor and Lily) out near Logan Square, and had a great evening there - they're just as cool as I remember them being :-).

This morning we stopped by Argo Tea on Armitage, and had stunningly delicious tea-based products (me a Bubble Tea, Katherine a Teapuccino) for breakfast. Then we took the L downtown, first to the Museum of Broadcast Communications. I recognised a couple of the names and face (Bob Hope, Harry Caray, the Lone Ranger...), but most of it was somewhat before our time ;-). After that, unable to resist the lure of the Apple Store (again!) we returned to the Magnificent Mile on Michigan Avenue. We still have this afternoon ahead of us; then tomorow morning - the Cubs game starts just after 2pm, and we catch the bus westwards at 9pm.

Photos!

Wow, now this is cool. Thanks to the wonders of Modern Technology (in other words: Fujifilm for the digital camera; Radioshack for the USB cable; the Chicago Apple Store for the Internet access) you can now look at all the photos we've taken so far online at tomkat.evil.cc/photos. Enjoy!

I don't have the time (or the inclination :-) to create a fancy gallery interface, or even give the photos titles, so for now you'll just have to click on "1/", then each file ("DSCF0010.JPG" for example) individually. Sorry...

Update: see further post, above.

The Windy City

So here we are in Chicago - it's good to be back! We came here from Toronto, via Niagara Falls, so I'll bring you up to date on that first.

We arrived in Niagara Falls just before lunch, and walked straight to the Falls from the bus station. The town itself is small, dusty and empty - a huge contrast to the Falls themselves, which are surrounded by casinos, bars and restaurants, not to mention hordes of tourists. Nevertheless, the Falls are spectacular. There are actually two separate waterfalls: the American Falls and the (more famous) Horseshoe Falls. The US/Canada border runs down the middle of the river - crossing the Rainbow Bridge gets you from one country to the other.

Once you've seen the Falls there's not much else to do (unless you've got a mean poker face...), so we walked back in the afternoon and caught the next bus south across the border to Cleveland via Buffalo. After a long wait in Cleveland, we finally got a bus to Chicago, and arrived there early on Monday 25th.

We got ourselves a cheap room in a cheap hotel ($30!), slept until the afternoon, and then headed out into Chicago - we didn't get much done that day, although one highlight was going to the famous Wrigley Field and buying tickets for the next home Chicago Cubs game. Yay! We've got seats for the 2.30pm game this Friday to see the Cubs take on the (frankly useless) Milwaukee Brewers. With any luck there'll be plenty of hits :-).

Tuesday, yesterday, was far more productive. We visited the Art Institute of Chicago, which is free all day Tuesday, then the fascinating Chicago Mercantile Exchange. We arrived just in time to go up to the visitor's gallery and watch close of trade at 3.15pm. All the shouting and hand gestures and gaudy jackets are just like you see on TV! Our next stop was the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, which was full of wacky installations and videos, none of which we understood :-(.

And as if that wasn't enough culture for one lifetime, we headed down to Grant Park to watch an outdoor showing of Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 classic Rear Window. Spooky (if slowly paced ;-).

So, all in all a busy day. We came home and watched Late Night with Conan O'Brien (but of course!), and then slept until 11am the next day.

And here we are, in Chicago Public Library, telling you all about it - there's still lots planned in Chicago for us today, tomorrow and Friday, so watch this space...

Toronto

It's about five hours on the bus from Ottawa to Toronto, which is a short hop by our standards. We even got two "in-flight" films: something of a first!

Anyway, we arrived in Toronto at 2pm and headed straight to our hostel. From what we've seen so far the city is very attractive - similar in many respects to Boston, or a kind of quieter New York. We won't be staying long, since it's pretty expensive and we're a bit behind schedule.

Our next stop is Niagara Falls, a couple of hours south of here, and then back into USA to Chicago. After a few days there we start our marathon journey westwards towards Seattle (home! :-).

Here's a bit more... (from Katherine)

We didn't have long in Toronto but it seems like a fun city. We decided not to stay partly because we were a bit behind schedule and also because the next day was a Sunday and the things we wanted to visit weren't open.

However, we did see some of the major sights. We saw City Hall (Arabic looking) and some people shooting a film. (We couldn't actually see any actors, just some cameras and a guy with a clapper board.) We went by the CN Tower. It is impressive and can be seen all around the city. We didn't go up (too expensive) but we went into the gift shop and pottered about. We also saw the Sky Dome where loads of people were filling out after a Blue Jays game.

Over Troubled Water

OK, OK, we got carried away, the Confederation Bridge to PEI isn't the longest bridge in the world at all. Rather, it is the "longest bridge over ice-covered water in the world", which isn't quite as good, really. In fairness, others have made the same mistake.

Still, we thought of another reason to love Prince Edward Island - thanks to several McCain production facilities, large swathes of the countryside smells of chips (or "fries", if that's what you call 'em). Yum!

Tom & Katherine of Green Gables

Where to start? It's been a while!

We arrived on Prince Edward Island sometime in the afternoon on Wednesday. The HI youth hostel wasn't open (it must have burned down or something...), so we got a room instead in UPEI, the Island's University. We were pretty exhausted, so we didn't get much else done that day.

Breakfast was included with our rooms, and it's clear that UPEI students live in the lap of luxury. It was all-you-can-eat, and as well as the usual stuff (cereal, toast, coffee), there were eggs, pancakes, maple syrup, sausages, potatoes, ice cream, muffins, fruit, slush puppies, fresh orange juice, cakes... We ate about three meals' worth of food! The morning was spent in Charlottetown, the capital: we visited the islands diminutive parliament building, where the Canadian Confederation was born.

There's no public transport on PEI, so we decided the time had come to rent a car. Many places were fully booked, but eventually we found a good deal at the Rent-a-Wreck in Summerside. Far from being a 'wreck', we ended up with a 2002 Chrysler PT Cruiser, in burgundy. Fully automatic, of course, plus featuring every mod-con ever invented: heated seats, sun-roof, CD player (we didn't have any CDs!), cruise control, power steering, electronic compass, thermometer... I instantly fell in love with it, and so it took much persuading for me to allow Katherine to drive!

It turns out driving on the 'wrong' side of the road is easy, because like in Britain the driver is always sitting in the centre of the road. Slightly more difficult to get used to was the lack of clutch and gear stick - with no gears to worry about and cruise control, driving is completely trivial, you just turn the steering wheel, and press the brake occassionally!

In a literary nod to Anne, more of which later, Katherine decided to name 'our' car Bertha. Just goes to show that, like Anne's kindred spirit Diana, she has no imagination at all :-).

We had a road map with scenic routes to follow, so we drove west to the coast then headed due north. It goes without saying that the coastline of PEI is gorgeous - hardly any houses around, lots of sandy beaches and forests... After about 200km we got to the most northerly point of the island, the North Cape, which doubles as a wind-energy test centre and a seaweed farm.

North Cape is where two tides meet, creating an odd-looking line where waves crash into each other. Along that line we were surprised to see people riding horses out to sea then back again. On closer inspection, the horses were dragging baskets, which collected seaweed, and then desposited it on the shore, to be loaded into trucks. Apparently some of it is baked into pies - 50% of all Irish Moss seaweed comes from PEI.

We had a bite to eat (no, not seaweed :-), with the barks of seals in the background, and watched the sun go down - very romantic!

After that we drove back down the east side of the Cape, parked on a plateau overlooking the sea, and got a good night's sleep, with a huge full moon shining down on us (the Cruiser has fully reclining seats, of course!).

We woke up the next day early, to watch the sun rise over the horizon, then headed south-east (with Katherine in control) towards Anne-land. We stopped off at Lennox Island en route, home of a group of Amerindians that weren't wiped out by the Brits, the French or the Americans.

The rest of the morning was spent learning about Anne of Green Gables and its author Lucy Maud Montgomery. For those that don't know, it's the tale of a feisty young girl and her adventures on - of course - Prince Edward Island. It's a fun little book (gah! what am I saying?!), although not entirely to my tastes.

We visited the author's birth place and the Lake of Shining Waters, and then Green Gables itself, actually the farmhouse of the neighbours of LMM's family. It's officially a National Park of Canada, and the area surrounding the house has the real-life versions of Lover's Lane and the Haunted Wood. The house itself was done up according to the book - Anne's 'room', for example, had her brown dress with the puffed sleeves, and a broken slate (presumably fresh from clonking that reprobate Gilbert about the head...).

Then we drove north to the beach, stopping at Cavendish supermarket on the way to buy some 'official' A of GG raspberry cordial (there's a long and terribly exciting subplot involving it and Diana in the book). The beach, too, is a National Park, and so is well-maintained. The water was a little colder than we'd been used to of course, but PEI catches the Gulf Stream, so was still surprisingly warm for somewhere so northerly. We were able to shower and wash when we left the beach, and spent another night under the stars (at least, through a sun roof :-).

The next day we went to the cute little fishing village of Victoria on the southern coast, and then drove back towards Summerside. En route we stopped and looked out over the Confederation Bridge - the only land route on and off the island. At 12.9km, it's the longest bridge in the world. Of course, we'd driven in over it, but I'd been too sleepy to really notice! As you can see from the photo, it's entirely spectacular. We finally returned to Summerside, dropped the car off, and hopped on the bus to Québec City.

Last hours in Boston

We're en route to South Station now, but our bus doesn't leave until 2pm so we've stopped off at the library for some more free internet. (Interestingly, the total amount of money we've paid so far to use the Internet is just $2 - everything else has been in public libraries or free terminals elsewhere).

Our next stop is Prince Edward Island: if you want to follow our progress, there's a route map from Greyhound. Unfortunately the red dotted line up the east coast only runs on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and we don't want to wait here that long, so we'll be travelling via Montreal, which adds a couple of hours to the journey, but should give a nice view out the window...

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I was beginning to look like Dougal from The Magic Roundabout, so I got my hair cut in Cambridge, MA, yesterday.

That's all folks.

Boston, MA

We arrived in Boston at about 10am yesterday morning, after a gruelling journey north from Wilmington (via New York). Our first task was to find somewhere to stay - the cheapest available is $25 for a hostel bed. That's fairly expensive ("by our standards") but we don't really have a choice.

Anyway, we booked two nights there, dropped our bags off and went straight back into downtown Boston for the afternoon (how's that for stamina :-). The city is clearly 'up and coming', and there's regeneration going on all over the place - hence the expensive accommodation I guess. We walked down to the Faneuil (pronounced as in "Daniel") Market, which is a touristy-but-tasteful indoor market / deli. We spent the rest of the afternoon following the city's "Freedom Trail", learning about how beastly we'd (viz. the British) had been during the War of Independence! I can't remember all the places on the tour right now, but we saw Paul Revere's house, as well as his grave and the church he hung his lights from. The Trial took us through Boston's North End, the Italian quarter. There was some kind of religious festival on, so there was a street fair and a parade, which we watched from the safety of a pizza restaurant for dinner.

After sunset we returned to Faneuil Market and watched the world go by as we listened to the various buskers and street performers.

We slept for about 12 hours last night, making up for lost time on the Greyhound. We were out of the hostel by about 11, and took the subway to Harvard, the university out in Cambridge. We poked around Harvard Yard and the surrounding buildings for a while, and listened to some of the tour guides: I'm sure it's a fantastic university, but the buildings and grounds are nowhere near attractive as the real Cambridge :-).

Interesting anecdote: in the Yard stands a statue of a man labelled "John Harvard, Founder, 1638". It's known as the Statue of the Three Lies, because it is not of John Harvard (no pictures of him exist - the statue is of a student); he was not the founder (but rather an early contributor); and Harvard itself was founded in 1636. There's a goofy website which gives you a bit more info.

Lunch was cookies and chocolate from CVS, and now we're in Boston Public Library, checking e-mail and writing Blogger posts. The plan is to get the Greyhound north to Prince Edward Island tomorrow, via Bangor, Maine. I have from now until then to read Anne of Green Gables!

Dawson's Geeks

I don't want to to wait for our lives to be over,
I want to know right now what will it be
I don't want to wait for our lives to be over,
Will it be yes or will it be... sorry?

... And so on.

For those that don't know, Wilmington, North Carolina doubles up as Capeside in 'teen-drama' Dawson's Creek. But more than that, it's also a really nice place.

It's a bit off the beaten track: the bus station is small and falling apart, public transport is sporadic and there's nowhere cheap to stay. We walked from the Greyhound station downtown, to the (very friendly) tourist information office, picking up maps, guides and timetables, and eventually settled on the Motel 6 along the highway, a bus ride out of town. As if to prove just how friendly Wilmingtonians are, a woman called Susan stopped and gave us a lift while we were waiting for the bus and dropped us off at the motel. We turned on the TV when we got into our room, flicked some channels - and can you guess what was on TBS? Yup, Dawson's Creek. Spooky, huh?

We took the bus back into Wilmington downtown, armed with a self-guided tour of sites that have appeared in the show. Intially we didn't recognise much, but apparently we saw the restaurant that was "Leery's Fresh Fish"; the restaurant where Joey worked in seasons one and two; the park where Pacey and Andie first kissed; the Capeside video store; and so on. We ate lunch opposite the theatre where Joey made her singing debut :-).

After lunch we took the bus out to UNCW, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, which doubled as, first of all, Capeside High, and later as Joey's university in Boston. After exploring the campus for an hour or two we returned to the Motel 6, ate dinner, washed our clothes and swam in the pool.

The next morning we watched a bit more TV: TBS repeated the Dawson's episode we'd watched the previous day, and this time we were excited to recognise lots of different locations. Dawson was being moody about something or other, and strolled along the boardwalk by Wilmington's river, with a road bridge we'd seen in the background.

There's a large TV and film studio in Wilmington - indeed the largest outside Hollywood - where such terrific movies as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Muppets From Space and Black Knight were filmed. More importantly, however, it was the home of many of the sets for Dawson's Creek. They offer a guided tour, which we took. Most of the sets have been dismantled or sold off (on eBay :-), but we got to see Joey and Audrey's university room in Boston and, excitingly, Dawson's room in his house, complete with Spielberg posters, fluffy ET toy and window through which Joey climbs (although the frame has been sold, for over $1,000). They also have Pacey's boat, the True Love parked outside!

The tour finished just in time for us to get a taxi back to the bus station. In the window of our (blue and white) taxi was a sticker claiming that it had been used as a Capeside police car. I suppose this might be true :-).

Cayo Hueso

This post comes to you from Key West, the most southerly part of continental USA. It's a spectacular five hour journey from Miami - the Florida Keys are all linked by a causeway, which bridges the channels between the islands. One of the bridges is seven miles long. We drove through a thunderstorm to get here yesterday, which lent some drama to the journey - lightning striking down (or is it up? I can never remember) either side of the road.

We got here in the end, and the storm had abated. We headed straight for the hostel, unpacked quickly, then walked downtown in time for the sunset. (The sky was a bit cloudy, unfortunately, but it was still pretty impressive).

Mercifully the hostel has a/c, so we got a good night's sleep. This morning we walked into town again, exploring the shops and museums. We stopped for lunch in a vegetarian café (gasp!). After this post, we're going to head to the south side of the island, where the beaches are, plus a daft-looking buoy marking the southernmost point in the USA.

Trivia: the Key West is so called because the first Spanish settlers called this island Cayo Hueso (a 'cayo' being a small island, 'hueso' a bone). Key West is a corruption of the original name.

Tomorrow we set off on a marathon (22 hours) voyage to Wilmington, North Carolina.

Welcome to Miami

Everything's going right, at last! My bag finally turned up in New Orleans, having languished in Atlanta for several days. We got the 3.15pm Greyhound to Miami, via Mobile and Jacksonville, and got here at about 1pm today. We'd spoken to some 'fellow travellers' on the bus, who recommended The Clay Hotel, and our Rough Guide concurred. So here we are: gorgeous building just two blocks from South Beach; clean room with a lock, TV, fridge and air con. What more could you want? Internet access is not free here ($1 for 10 minutes), so don't expect many posts in the near future. We'll be in touch when we can!