Idiots@Work

Venice, Santa Monica, USC and Dirty Mexican Food.

2010-10-16T19:52:00.000Z

To recap, this is the morning after drinking and partying in the Koreatown in LA, Chris Bae crashed in our room and I lost my socks. Chris got up around 8 and said his goodbyes and told us that we could stay at his that night and we should eventually make our way over to the University of Southern California (USC) campus. He departed and we got up and made our way out for some breakfast!

The Farmers Market on Third and Fairfax was the location we chose and we were well in the mood for some fish taco’s! The market is alright, a bit small and slightly limited, although I guess coming from Europe our version of farmers markets are much more impressive. Everything is fried! They will take something that is great fresh and stick it in the deep fat fryer, this disappointed me, I wanted some nice fresh fish taco’s besides LA is essentially a seaside city! Where is the fresh fish at?! Nevermind, a slight disappointment, but we found a brilliant hot sauce shop called Light My Fire (check them out http://www.hotsaucetogo.com/) .

Post farmers market we decided that what we needed was some beaches! So we made our way over to the iconic and famously obscure Venice Beach! Brilliantly white beaches, bright glaring sunshine, parking right by the water and all the maniacs and lunatics that you could ever want! I say lunatics and maniacs, but don’t get me wrong, there were also crack heads, stoners, tran-sexuals, homeless and police, a variable who’s who of social outcasts all gathered together as a family on a beach. That being said, it felt very safe and welcoming, everything there was unique, a realy hipsters paradise, locals mixed in with the strange all walking amongst the tourists. This is famously the location of the basketball scenes in American History X and White Men Cant Jump, also the place where Anthony Kiedis, front man of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, grew up. Now I have been here before but that was during the winter back in 2008 so there were not as many people out, this time was much better. A real atmosphere is what I sensed and community. Unfortunatly because we had donned our beach shorts we didn’t have a camera with us so there are no pictures for you amusement, but just know that we both enjoyed it. We got our Tan on and had lunch before heading off back into town to meet Chris Bae.

By now it was 3pm and we had made our way back across town and into the USC campus to meet Chris. Chris Bae if you have forgotten was my room mate last year when I studied abroad and oh how great it was to be back by his side. He is the President of a society on campus and he gave us the full tour with boundless amounts of information (which he tested us on at the end and apparently only Paolo was listening). Here are a few pictures to give you an idea.

After the tour from my friend ~~Frommer~~ Chris, we had to go back to his office while he finished up some work he was in the middle of. This gave Paolo and I the chance to chill out and get our Facebook on. We headed back to Chris’s and met his roommate and watched an hour long special of Family Guy. Then the topic of dinner came up, in the end it was decided that we should make our way over to a sushi happy hour that was going on at some random Japanese restaurant in Downtown with a very forgettable name. It was great though and it was $2 a dish, with the whole conveyor belt novelty thingy.

Now Chris is not of age yet but that’s okay because he was going to use my ID, after all we all look alike. Paolo, Chris and I headed over to Santa Monica where we met up with Mike Tran and Abe! This was going to turn into one of the best nights out we’ve had in the USA, so we started in Santa Monica and worked our way from where we had parked and bar crawled it all the way to the beach, stopping at every bar along the way buying rounds, then once arriving at the beach we worked our way back through another road. Fun and frolics and general stupidity was abound! Afterwards we decided as a collective that we should get some food, but not just any food, dirty Mexican street food somewhere back in Downtown, so we made our way over and I for some reason got out of the car before we got there so was slightly lost. Luckily I ran into my friend Baaby Susan who pointed me in the right direction saying she had just seen all the guys in a Mexican place around the corner so I made my way round. They were already sitting there munching away on some taco’s, they had already ordered for me and I sat down for some munch as well. They were crap! But apparently that is the point. It was a lot of fun this place, crappy food, crappy service, but buzzing with people who had just finished a night out. Abe bet Mike $20 drink a container of their super hot hot sauce, which he did! It was bad and you could see Mike’s pain, but that didn’t stop him from downing another one for an extra $5 that Abe offered up again. Mike walked away up $25 but it was definitely worth it to the rest of us to see him do it, I didn’t want to be Mike in the morning.

We headed back to Chris’s and crashed out on his airbed. What a brilliant night!

Los Angeles

2010-10-11T15:01:00.000Z

First thing in the morning, we checked out. We left our car in the motel car park as we had the closest possible location anyways. It was around 10 am and we wondered back towards Hollywood Blvd and the Man’s Chinese theatre in order to get ourselves onto a stars homes tour! This was essentially the most tacky Hollywood tourist thing we could think to do, so we did it!

Now I wont bore you with all the stars homes that we saw because essentially it was all of them, but an observation I must make is that the valuations on the homes seemed remarkably low for what they were. You stick the same $2million home in London and you’d easily get £10million! I understand that location is everything but that’s exactly why I was surprised, this was Beverly Hills! One of the most famous locations in the world! Never mind, just gives me more hope of living there someday, after all, they are only $2 million!

I do ofcourse have to mention, we saw the Fresh Prince of Bel Air house!

The tour took us down to Rodeo Drive, the Bond street of Los Angeles, although its crap compared to Bond street. I bought myself a Nike windbreaker that was on sale from $130 down to $40, and I love windbreakers so I was on that deal like ketchup on fries. The tour lasted, in total, about 4 hours, so it was almost lunch time when we decided that we would make our way towards our next hotel of choice. Tonight we were staying at the Rotex in Koreatown, it was opposite Manna, the restaurant I was going to be having my little reunion that night with my friends from LA.

After arriving at our destination we checked in and had a top floor room with a view of the Hollywood sign, very nice, we headed out and wondered around the Korea town for a bit. It was huge! We walked for a good 2 hours exploring before coming back, having a nap and watching an episode of Jersey Shore.

We crossed the road the an all you can eat Korean BBQ place called Manna, here we were going to wait for my friends to turn up and eat, drink and be merry! It was packed! This was obviously a very popular place, they had loads of huge parties of people all cheering and having fun, reminded me a lot of Korea, we sat down with Clara, Kieu, Kevin, Chris Bae, Abe and Mike. I felt bad for Paolo because we were all reminisicing about times we had when we were all studying abroad, these guys all live in LA but they barely ever meet up so they were catching up with each other as much as they were catching up with me, but all was good, such a great group of people that anybody can get on with. The BBQ was all you can eat, so we were there for a good 2 hours of eating. It was a lot of fun and I felt really at home with everybody and it made me realise how much I had missed it.

After dinner we proceeded into the heart of LA Korea town and went for some good old fashion Korean drinking, Soju time. I don’t recall the name of the place, in the LA Korea town there are hundreds of Korean bars, its unreal, in the one in New Malden there is perhaps 1 Korean bar. I gave Chris Bae my ID and but they didn’t even check so it was no issue (sucks being under 21 in the USA). We played a whole array of drinking games, that’s the best thing about drinking in Korean bars is that you order drinks by the bottle and so its easier to play drinking games with shots. Here Baaby Susan had joined us with three of her friends whom only added to the great night we were so far having!

But once again I was disappointed by the fact that the bar shut at 1am, I think I take 24 hour drinking for granted back home, but no worries! Everybody came back to our hotel room and the party continued! The toilet got flooded and someone had picked up about 6 cans of 4loco so you know we were going to have a good time! The night ended with some people crashing and some going home, all in all a bloody brilliant night in LA!

There are not many pictures of the night, which is either good or bad, but I do have a couple so I hope they will suffice.

Travel day to Los Angeles

2010-10-08T16:43:00.001Z

The night previously was what we would call a late night. And today we were planning on getting an early start towards LA, ye, so that didn’t happen. In fact we decided to take Farah and her room mate out for brunch!

We had tried to go to a place called Hash House a’go go while in Las Vegas but it was closed on the Sunday we went. Luckily there is another branch in San Diego so we went there! It was good, great breakfast food, they serve their food in a skillet and it is literally a pile of food, I got the garlic roast chicken and Paolo had the beef. Essentially the ‘hash’ is a bed of their own mix of roast potatoes with various herbs, it is served the American way with fruit on the same plate as the savoury meal, with a side of scrambled eggs 2 sticks of asparagus, a ‘biscuit’ (which is actually a scone) and a whole sprig of thyme! It was good and oh was it filling! It has been a while since we have had fresh high quality produce, I mean we have had great food, but it hasn’t always been the freshest or the highest of quality, the mastery in the American cuisine is how they process it. Anyways, my point is this was good quality food, it has been such a long time so it was easier to notice that is that the quality here was higher, perhaps it was because we were in California and they are more food conscious, who knows.

We headed back to Farah’s place, packed up and headed off. We had a brilliant time in San Diego, really fell in love with the place, it helped that we had brilliant company, we weren’t even intending to stay with Farah, but she invited us and we accepted, and it was brilliant fun, sometimes the best times are unplanned!

We hit traffic around 30 minutes into the drive towards LA, we however managed to by pass the entire jam (which lasted almost the entire way into LA) because we drove in the car pool lane, which had nobody in it. You have to have 2 people in the car in order to drive in the carpool lane and nobody did! I was checking out the cars stuck in the jam and every car had 1 person in it! Insane that they would sit through all of that when all they would need to do is carpool! The traffic was literally at a standstill, but we just zipped straight past with nobody in our lane.

Arriving in LA we hit the real rush hour traffic, its not so bad, its simply because there is a huge bloody highway plonked right in the middle. We drove down Wiltshire blvd all the way down to Sunset and drove north towards Hollywood blvd. It was around 6pm by now and we settled in a motel 1 block behind Hollywood Blvd and Man’s Chinese Theatre, brilliant location! Or so we thought. It being Hollywood, we expected that there would be bars and clubs somewhere around such a famous area, what with it being the location of the walk of fame and all the stars on the floor, but no! There were no bars. So we just had dinner, which was surprisingly good. We had a bacon covered burger, I had spinach mashed potatoes as a side, it went straight in the top 10 burgers I’ve had, although not near the top 5, that is a hard list to get into after the trip I’ve had.

We headed back after being disappointed by LA, but don’t worry, we watched two episodes of Jersey shore which made up for all the evil in the world!

Sea world, San Diego

2010-10-06T16:47:00.000Z

I write to you from my humble abode, sitting in my mess of a room in London. The weather sucks, and I am behind on my American road trip posts. Already it seems so far away… because it is, but still, I miss it and now I have to recollect the joys of just a week ago.

As with many days on this trip we had an early start. We were doing the whole out tourist experience today, like we did with Coca Cola world and the Jack Daniels factory, today we were taking in another institution of the American tourist industry. SeaWorld!

SeaWorld is easy to find in San Diego, its sign posted on all the highways and it even has its own road. We drove in, parking was $15, slightly extortionate considering there was only SeaWorld here and nobody was going to park there for any other reason, Disneyland doesn’t charge for parking, Thorpe Park doesn’t charge for parking, SeaWorld on the other hand thinks they are more important.

The price of entry was an astounding $70 each! Incredible! We doubted whether we should enter, but after a bit of deliberation we paid the fare and entered, determined to get full value for money for our tickets!

The first thing we noticed was that there really wasn’t anybody around, we wondered for a bit but really there were few people. We eventually heard screams and roar of applause and headed in the direction of the excited cheers. It was the dolphins show area, and the show was running, we couldn’t get in because it was half way through, however we were able to stand behind and see the dolphins that had just finished performing. They did a couple of back flips and tricks with the trainers for us. It was amazing to see them being so obedient!

The shows are on twice a day, the are numerous shows, there is the dolphin show, Shamu’s killer whale show, the otter and sea lion show and the pet show.

We made our way over to the area where the next show after the dolphin show, that we had missed, was going to be. The Shamu’s killer whale show! It’s what SeaWorld is famous for, and it is supposed to be the most impressive show at the park. We seated ourselves in the splash zone, about 10 seats in, the splash zone did go up to the first 20 rows of seats and we decided to sit in the middle of it.

For such large beasts killer whales move extremely fast, you can see them under water through the piece of glass at the top of the tank as they zip by. Its incredible to think that they can be trained as well as they are. Killer whales are definitely a animal which is impressive, however I would have preferred to have seen them in their natural habitat, I will say however that SeaWorld provided a better photo opp. And yes, we got wet…

The show ended and we slowly made our way out of the stadium with the rest of the masses and made our way over to the aquarium, where there were any number of strange quirky creatures from the deep, there were some really cool fish that changed colour depending on how dark it was (you could press a button to change the light intensity in the tank). Apart from that, a fish is a fish, so we headed over to the Rapids, in which we had to awkwardly sit with a family of Mexicans, their son was petrified and I got on the wrong end of a waterfall.

The turtle area was a sad sight, unless they were rescued turtles (which it didn’t specify) these giants of the oceans were all cramped into a small tank, they were piling on top of each other, even as we were there we could see some of them biting each other, turtles are my favourite creature from the sea’s along with penguins, they just seem fun loving. The penguin enclosure is a different story, they have their own little world going on, and they appeared to love it!

Next we did went to go watch the seals and sea lions being fed, before moving onto the sea lion show, it was a comedy whereby the sea lions enacted out popular American TV shows, like CSI and Pop Idol etc. it was good and definitely entertaining, they looked like they were having fun, my favourite ‘actor’ was the otter though, it kept messing up! Also it has to be mentioned, but sea lions have incredible balance on their nose.

I decided that it would perhaps be a good idea to feed the flamingo’s, what I wasn’t expecting was to be attacked by one of them, I was trying to feed one when another one came over and started trying to eat my hand! It didn’t hurt as they don’t have teeth, but they do pinch! This flamingo then proceeded to attack all the rest of the flamingo’s and a duck! No manners.

The Dolphin show was on the cards and so off we went to go see what we had heard the crowds enjoying earlier. The show was extremely cheesy, with back stories and character lines that spun off into a tangent that really was a non requisite for the show, all I wanted to see was tricks from the dolphins! This show involved doves and a crane (the bird), it was great! We sat in the splash zone again, but didn’t get too wet, the dolphins had decided to focus their attention on another seating section, they spent a good minute continuously splashing one section of the crowd, and they got destroyed.

We then went to go see the polar bears chilling and took in the only real action ride in the park, where we got another good wash down and I did my tribute to Ace Venture (we were in an animal park after all).

Overall we felt like we had got our money’s worth, a great day out!

We returned to meet up with Farah and her roommates, we were going to go to a San Diego food Mecca, Phil’s BBQ! It is the must go place to eat in San Diego, everybody we met who had been to SD recommended we eat there, and definitely for good reason! We had at a time that we had to queue for about 30 minutes, Farah told us this is the shortest time she ever had to wait at Phil’s BBQ. Paolo and I ordered two plates, the taster plate, which had a small selection of ribs with two sides, and their famous pulled pork sandwich. Both were succulent and juicy, even the sides were a class of their own, it brings great sadness that you simply cant get food like this in England! It was great, simply put, it was great, every mouthful was as great and if not better than the last, the ribs just fell off the bone! It was not too salty, not too sweet many times I have come close to saying it, and I will perhaps verge on saying it now, but this is up there with the perfect BBQ, although just trumped perhaps by Salt Lick BBQ in Austin, Texas, but only by a pinch. Here is a picture of the food; there were 7 of us in total, which should explain the sheer amount of food.

There was a place in San Diego that we had to go, Mt Soledad in La Jolla, it is the same place that Ron Burgundy brings Veronica Corningstone in the film Anchorman and explains the origins of the name of the city. A breath taking view, there were only 5 of us by now, and we just sat up on the peak and stared out on the city enjoying the view, the police eventually came along and moved along everybody who was parked up on the peak, we had parked somewhere else and walked up though so we were able to stay, this meant that we had the place to ourselves, we had brought along a bottle of Jameson’s and had a few drinks up there while we simply enjoyed the view. The memory will last a long time and I plan to return.

Karaoke time! We then moved the night on by going to karaoke! Paolo had never been to a Korean style karaoke place, normally you have to wait an hour to sing the song you chose, Korean style is you get a room, fill it with your friends, and for an hour you get to sing all the songs you want! Except we were there for way over an hour, and we sang to our hearts content! We had shots of Jack in between songs and beers to wash them down, we had ups and downs, from Take That to Radiohead, Justing Timberlake to Justin Bieber, and we covered all the bases.

Some people just cant handle all the fun though and find it extremely tiring!

We got everybody home, it was late, around 2am, we continued to chat and sit around drinking until about 3am when someone suggested we got to Wal-Mart! Paolo being the only sensible person decided it would be better to sleep than to head to Wal-Mart, the rest of us clearly thought otherwise and we went! There was nobody there, it was open but we were the only customers that were stupid enough to go, when we got there we it clicked, why were we there? We wondered around the isles for a bit, but really there was no reason for us being there, I was trying to teach everybody how to Dougie in flip flops and I made a right royal fool of myself by slipping up, luckily the ground was there to break my fall. We headed back home for a bit of sleep, but once again we ended up on a tangent and the next thing I knew I was telling the girls ghost stories, and right at the end of one of them, a water pipe burst outside sending gushing water into the air, it was terribly loud and was a big shock! It was so loud that we had to go round closing all the doors and windows. The night still wasn’t over because Farah stuck on ‘The Princess and The Frog’ Disney movie, and I fell asleep watching that.

Lets go Padres! Lets go!

2010-10-04T10:33:00.000Z

This day essentially was a travel day to San Diego from LA, we checked out of our hotel and hit the road, straight onto the 15 and headed south west. We did hit some quite severe traffic on the way and once again got into a predicament as there were a lack of petrol stations. We did finally come across one and low and behold who was there filling up his car? Lou Ferrigno! From 'I Love You Man' , we didnt manage to get a photo or say hi as he was just getting into his car to leave, i have to mention that we say him earlier in the Mandalay Bay casino two nights before.

The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful, we stopped at a Chipotle for a bite to eat then finished the 5 hour drive to San Diego.

We were staying at my friend's place in UCSD, we got there around 5pm and sat around and chatted with my friend (Farah) and her room mates, but we had to leave again as we had tickets to a San Diego Padres baseball game that night which started at 6.

Go Padres!

Now this was a must-do for us in America, go to a baseball game! It was alot of fun, even though it was just a weekday match it was still buzzing, the stadium was barely full, but it was big and i thought that everything about it was alot of fun. I decked myself out in all the gear, the Tshirt and the cap, and we sat there with our soda's and hot dogs while shouting out for the Padres to go win! I think I have finally got to grips with what is going on in the game. Its really quite slow, we sat there for around 2-3 hours watching and it went surprisingly quick to be honest, which I wasnt expecting, i was really worried that it would be a drag, but it definately wasnt, the Padres went 1 down around the 7th innings and never recovered, but the final innings had an incredible atmosphere and everybody was on their feet screaming and cheering. Im definately a big Padres fan now!

After our disppointing defeat at home to the Cubs, we headed back to Farah's place and we had a good fun night of drinks and chat! A great first few hours in San Diego.

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas

2010-09-30T03:30:00.000Z

a Man vs Food location, called Hot'n'Juicy crawfish

Colorado!

2010-09-28T06:00:00.000Z

Travel day to Las Vegas,

Today was a big day, we attack the Rockies! Our first stop involved taking in The Garden of the Gods which was about 20 minutes outside of Colorado Springs, it was a vastly impressive place, I was driving today and I got quite a bit of fun out of driving up dirt tracks in our huge Ford Explorer along the side of a mountain to get some great views and photo’s.

The views driving into the Rockies got perpetually greater, like a drum roll of natural beauty culminating with a 14,000ft climb up a slow winding road that clung to the cliff face, sometimes narrowing down to a single lane, this was the best drive of my life, we went through valleys carved by glaciers of old and lakes spanning large plains that appear out of nowhere. We went through numerous temperature ranges, mountain ranges and huge baron plains of nothingness. These pictures unfortunately do not do it any justice but hopefully they can give you a taste of a place so beautiful and so unexpected that perhaps one day you will find your way there.

Aspen! Aspen was a big stop for the sole reason that this was the place that Dumb and Dumber’s epic journey culminated. Unfortunately Dumb and Dumber was not actually filmed here! According to the tourist information lady there, people are always coming in asking questions about that film, so she couldn’t tell us any places that were in the film! Which is the only reason we came here! Apart from that Aspen really doesn’t have anything to offer, it’s a boring place with boring people, and it was expensive (still cheap compared to London though).

At Aspen Paolo and I swapped the role of driver, today in total we would have driven almost 10 hours, by the time it was dark we were having major problems dealing with the amount of bugs on our windscreen. By now we were in Utah where there is NOTHING apart from bugs, we would go 200 miles between gas stations, although seeing the moonlight of a crisp clear night sky light up the cliffs of the back end of the Rockies was incredible, I couldn’t get a photo of this as it wouldn’t show up, you will have to go and experience it for yourself.

We stopped 2 hours outside of Las Vegas and settled in for the night ready to hit Vegas in the daylight!

States so far:

Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona,

Colorado Springs

2010-09-27T06:29:00.000Z

20^th September

We awoke early wanting to finish the drive to Colorado Springs in the day light. The views were stunning and was a subtle introduction to the rockies. Half way through the trip to Colorado Springs we had a warning light on the car, the oil needed changing, we still had an hour of driving so it was going to be fine but the warning light took up all the dash board information and we couldn’t see anything else. We couldn’t believe that we had managed to work the car so hardcore that it already needed an oil change.

We stopped at an Applebee’s on the way, it was another one of the American food chains that we hadn’t eaten at yet, it was basically a poor mans version of TGI Fridays.

We both chose the trio selection, which was a selection of 3 smaller dishes from the main menu. We had cheeseburger sliders, steak enchilladas, buffalo wings, spinach and artichoke dip and spicy queso dip.

A few miles from Colorado Springs we saw a sign for Seven Falls, we had heard about it and it was on a website as one of the must see places in Colorado Springs so we side tracked over to it. The scenery was grand and it was definitely one of the things that we were really trying to do whilst in the Rockies, there were 225 steps to the top of this waterfall, which is an effort when you are 7000ft above sea level and haven’t acclimatized yet. There were bear warnings everywhere but it was okay because Paolo had a stick.

After about 2 hours of tracking through the area around the seven falls and trying to find bears we decided that we should make our way into town in order to get our oil changed before places started to close. We managed to get it done for $30 which the rental company said that they would cover. Our hotel for the night was a B&B and it was a quaint old fashioned house like the one Forrest Gump grew up in, the land lady was very nice and the room was a lot bigger than we expected. The lady had made cookies for us and was very welcoming.

For dinner we strolled into town to view what life was like in Colorado Springs, it’s a nice place, quite but very safe. We settled on going for some fondue at the Melting Pot, there we had a 4 course meal which involved a cheese fondue, a beef broth fondue and a chocolate fondue! Epic meal, it took us about 2 hours to eat because it was so interactive and so much fun! Here are some pictures of the meal.

We headed home and got our fix of Jersey Shore for a few hours before bed.

Steak glorious steak!

2010-09-23T21:28:00.000Z

19^th September

Okay so essentially today was simply a travel day to Colorado Springs, we were leaving Oklahoma and Purdie (/cry) and we were making our way west bound, today would be the day that we covered the most ground in a westward direction so far. There is not much to say about this day. The landscape of Oklahoma and that top part of Texas are very flat and baron. I had purchased the audiobook of Stephan Fry and that was keeping us company for our drive. Paolo was driving until the first stop which was Amarillo. Amarillo is the scene for the first ever Man vs. Food episode, it is practically the basis of the show, it is the home of the 72oz steak! The Big Texan is the name of the restaurant. It is one of the most famous steak houses in the world, and its for a good reason! Im sorry to have to say this again, and once again go on about food, but I was not blessed with the literary ability to describe how good this steak was. You may wonder how a steak can differentiate from another seeing as it is the same thing really, but I have eaten at the best steak house in New York on a previous visit and this steak at the Big Texan was far beyond that, we both ordered a 18oz fillet steak each. The 18oz fillet steak was $27… $27 for 18oz of FILLET STEAK! Incredible, I had mine rare, bloody and delicious! With Texan rice, Paolo had it medium with mash and gravy which he said was incredible. Paolo’s second part of the steak was not cooked medium so he got a whole new section with an extra serving of mash. Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant! Amarillo was quite out of the way for us but I am so glad we did it, there is not very much in Amarillo at all, but I beg of you, if you ever travel through America, make this stop! Its incredible! The pictures do not do justice to the rustic feel of the place, the welcoming warmth of the place, its an experience that I am honored to have had. I wish I could give visitors to England an experience that was as genuine and satisfying.

As I said previously this was just a travel day, so the rest of the night I drove through for about 4 hours into the night, from Amarillo to Trinidad in Colorado, about 3 hours away from Colorado Springs. We went from 100f in Texas to 65f in Colorado.

Teach me how to Dougie

2010-09-22T05:58:00.004Z

18^th September,

Five guys scattered around an apartment, with the after math of a big night of drinking and random bouts of wrestling. I was asleep on the floor along with Paul’s friend David, Paul and David Purdie were both in the bed, Paolo and Justin were in the living room on the sofa’s. Slowly one by one we woke up, everything went into the dishwasher and we begrudgingly got ready to go outside, we were all hungry for any nutrition. Today was a big American football day between Oklahoma State University (home) and Tulsa (away). So the campus was awash with people and drowned in orange. We had our minds set on pizza; on campus there was a pizza place that was voted Oklahoma’s best pizza! As prestigious as that title may appear as it strikes the mind, it had a lot to live up to, after all we had driven through Oklahoma and it wouldn’t be far off to say on the box that it was ‘one of Oklahoma’s few pizza’s’ let alone one of the best, I doubted the requisite to be considered Oklahoma’s best, but I took Purdies better judgement and he recommended it. We all made our way over, Paolo, David, Justin and I walked our way through campus and Paul and David Purdie moved their cars to park. They got their first and we had to queue for around 30minutes which was just accentuating the crave for some food of any form. At this point really we would be happy have anything. The queue was a good sign for the quality but it was also game day and their seemed to be queues for everything.

We ordered two pizza’s between the 6 of us and I must say that it topped the pizza’s we had in New York by far, save Spummoni’s in Brooklyn which was incredible and it didn’t have anything on the Atlanta Pie in the Sky pizza either, but still the ‘country pizza’ was up their. So Kudos to Oklahoma’s pizza’s!

Everybody seemed to be full after 2 slices, which was kind of embarrassing for Paolo and me as we had been working on our appetites for quite a few weeks now and considering we downed a 30” pizza between us, we had to hold ourselves from finishing it off.

Once again I will bore you with my complaints of the heat! It was hot! The temperature today was 105F, I don’t know what that is in real temperature, but it’s hot! And mostly just direct blazing sun and with little to no breeze. We walked around campus to meet a random selection of David Pudies friends; we saw an epic amount of Tailgating! People had managed to lay claim to every open patch of ground and set up some form of BBQ or drinking station in it, all donned in bright orange! And hardly any of these groups were the actual students, mostly it was families and older people, those living in the local vicinity follow the college games here, in majority. To gauge it for you, the stadium seats 75,000 people, the student population is around 25,000 and the population of Stillwater is around 20,000 which means if every single person went it would fill just over half of the stadium, yet every game the tickets sell out! What a following for a college team!

We were not going to the game as the tickets were around $100 a head so that would have meant $600 for the group of us, Paul and his friend David decided instead to go home early instead of staying for the Saturday as something had come up at work and they had to return back.

So instead of dealing with the heat we decided that we needed some rest and recovery ready another night of revel.

Paul had brought up his brothers TV with him and it needed a few cables to have it picture ready so we dropped by Best buy and headed back to his to set it up.

Later on that evening after watching ‘My Best Friends Girl’ on the new TV set up, David’s friend Tony turned up, what a lad! He was just one of those people you feel would add to any social situation. We all got ready and started to drink while we waited for David to finish getting ready, another one of his friends Wendy turned up and added a female element to the so far mostly male interaction we have had thus far in Oklahoma, so it didn’t go amiss.

We got to mine and David’s mutual friends house Tiffany, we had met in Korea at New Years and hit it right off and the previous time we had met, we partied into 2010, so how apt that I was now partying at hers also in 2010!

House party, in America, in Oklahoma, in Stillwater, who would have thought! We got straight into it, jello shots and flip cup was the first call on the house and we evolved through all the standard protocols of these American house parties, Tony and David introduced us to everybody at the party as their English friends, which we were I guess. While there I also ran into my brothers best friend Sam Tindal whom I had met last year, also in Korea.

At the end of the night we made our way to the local drunk food haunt, it’s a place called shortcakes, its open 24 hours a day, and its infamous in Stillwater for serving up generous plates of home cooked foods. Oh also because its been closed down 3 times for food hygiene reasons, and I ponder who let it reopen. There were more bugs (including cockroaches just blatantly on the floor) inside than outside! I don’t know if any sober people ever eat here.

Another brilliant night in the USA!

Oklahoma is a Purdie place!

2010-09-20T21:39:00.002Z

17^th September,

This was a travel day to Oklahoma, it was going to be a 6 hour drive, we weren’t just going to Oklahoma, we were making our way north of Oklahoma city, a place called Stillwater. We drove for about 2 hours before we decided that we were hungry, after all we hadn’t eaten since Walmart the day before. We decided to find an Applebee’s, we had already had plenty of Mexican and burgers, so we wanted to try something else, and seeing as we didn’t know what Applebee’s was we thought that it would be fine. We drove until we could find one, but we simply couldn’t find one, we decided to pull over at a German Deli that was randomly along the side of the motorway. It was good, it had a proper deli and was serving some real German sausages in rolls, some with a slightly American twist for example BBQ flavoured ones and some with jalapeno’s.

There wasn’t much else to say about the trip up, there didn’t seem to be much in the way of sights to see in Oklahoma. We made our way into Stillwater and met up with David Purdie. It was so good to see him! Missed him a lot, we studies abroad together in South Korea last year, then I met him at Christmas when I went back there. It’s weird but it didn’t feel like we had even been apart, although Paolo was a little left out of some of the stories that we were reminiscing about. With David was his friend Chase, we all went for dinner at a soup place, me and Paolo both had tortilla soup. We proceeded back to Purdies place and we chilled out and met up with another friend of David’s friends called Justin. We started pre-drinking under the pretence that we were going to make our way to another house party, but as the night evolved it soon materialised that we were not going to be able to make it to another party. Davids brother Paul turned up with his friend, also called David, and then drinking games ensued! I’m not going to lie, it got messy and eventually we all passed out in random places around the apartment. It was a top night! I haven’t hung out with Purdie since Christmas and I felt at home hanging out with him again, although this time in Oklahoma. Although some time past midnight David did break out the Korean BBQ and we had bulgogi and chicken! Classic!

Go Cowboys!

2010-09-20T05:34:00.004Z

Go Cowboys!

Today was the day that we were going to check out America’s football team, the Dallas Cowboys! We had to make our way west of Dallas to Arlington.

The stadium is impressive, it is located right next to the rangers stadium. We made our way round to get tickets to the tour, we were lucky that today the tickets were $10 discounted because we wouldn’t be allowed to walk onto the field, which was fine because we didn’t even think we would be able to do that anyways, so it was only $17. We waited around with the collective of people going on the tour and there was this immensely irritating (and we suspect he was drunk) guy who thought he was a clown and would constantly inturupt the tour guide with some kind of crappy joke.

The stadium is brand new, the tour guide told us that it has the largest arch in the world and the largest retractable roof in the world, we had to correct her that actually Wembley has the record for both of those records. But it did have the worlds largest TV screen, 115 feet! It was ridiculous! This 115f screen is also HD and has 3D capabilities! The Jonas Brothers did a show at the stadium and they managed to hook up a Xbox and played Halo on it! I hate the Jonas Brothers, although to be honest I would have played Pro evo.

The stadium tour was brilliant value for money, it was a 3 hour tour, we took in the whole place, unfortunately most of the hall of fame sections and parts that showed famous trophies and footballs and jerseys went right over our heads.

One part that we could appreciate was the cheerleaders section! Incredible! Check out some of the pictures, but an interesting fact, the cheerleaders only get paid $50 to perform on game day! At that rate I could afford my own team of cheerleaders!

We were loved the tour, still debating wether or not to become a fan. But we made our way over towards the wallmart across the road from the stadium, we still hadn’t eaten today so we went to the hot deli section of Walmart and got ourselves some pizza and friend chicken with potato salad and coleslaw, it was all really nice except the chicken which is some of the worst fried chicken I’ve ever had.

It was around 5pm by now and we had done everything we could think to do in Arlington so we found a mall and wondered around until our showing of The Expendables, it had an ice rink and there were people practicing figure skating so we got some frozen yogurt and burnt up some time, our film started at 8pm. We also watched some ice hockey training which was very entertaining, we picked sides for there practice matches, it was as good as the real thing! They were very good, I support the Guildford Flames and have been to many matches, these were kids playing and they were better than the Guildford Flames.

The Expendables film was top quality! Exactly our type of film, it doesn’t pretend to be anything more than it is, purely action, Stallone is brilliant, great cast! But this isn’t a film review so I’ll stop. We made our way back again for the night to get ready for Oklahoma the day after.

Cowboys and Steak, welcome to America

2010-09-19T00:41:00.006Z

September 15^th,

We headed to Fort Worth which was about 30 miles west of Dallas, it took around 40 minutes, we were making our way to The Stockyards, a famous historic district that all the cattle trade used to come through back in the day. It is the real deal, cowboys and rodeo’s (which unforuntately were not on when we were there). We got there around 12:30 and we still hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast and also we hadn’t had a proper steak yet in America, let along a Texas steak, so this was our time! We went to search for our lunch, it was a classic place! Check out the pictures, cows heads on the wall and a proper BBQ bit in the back on full display, love it!

We got right down to it, I ordered a Texas T-bone steak with a side of 2 ribs and a chicken thigh and Paolo got a rib steak! Both meals came with bread, a salad and a baked potato. It was brilliant! Oh how we had waited for this steak and oh how it had lived up to our expectations, we had built up the idea of a Texas steak so much in our heads, it was totally worth the wait! Check it out!

It was an brilliant little town, it has kept its old time style, cowboys wondering around the town and we went to all the gift stores. It was so hot, the sun was glaring down and the constant beating heat was draining, luckily we found a booth selling frozen margarita’s so we got a couple and it saw us through for a few more hours, we were waiting around till 4pm because they had the walking of the longhorn bulls.

The roads were closed and cowboys lined the streets as they rounded up the longhorns and recreated what it was like when the stockyards were in full swing, there was only about 30 cows here but back when it was full operational there would be over 3000 cows going through these streets everyday and they would be controlled by no more than 20 cowboys riding up and down the streets.

We were still full from our massive lunches, yet there was also a famous place in the area that we needed to eat at so we were going to save that for dinner, so in order to help us build up an appaetite we went to go see movie called ‘The Other Guys’ classic Will Ferrell! A bit of humor never goes down badly. We made our way back into the stockyards and hit up JC Garcia that was a famous Mexican place, at dinner they only serve two dishes which are their specialities, that is all you can order, either fajitas or enchiladas . It was a bit overrated and Mexican food starts to blend into one, its not all that great, its simply mince meat, lettuce, beans and rice so it is difficult to stand out and this didn’t really.

We made our way home again, it gets dark early here so we made our way back to Dallas and the traffic was terrible so it took us forever to make our way back.

2010-09-17T15:57:00.004Z

14^th of September.

We woke up and hit up Snuffers, a popular local burger joint. It was good, it had its own brands of T-shirts and plasma screens on every wall, which was a surprise because from the outside it was slightly derelict. This place wasn’t on Man vs. Food but the burgers were definitely good enough to get a mention, they haven’t made an episode about Dallas yet. I got an original burger and Paolo got a bleu cheese burger. The chilli cheese fries were huge and extremely heavy, its something that I wont be able to get used to.

Dallas aquarium is famous so we decided that we would take that in for the day. We were surprised how it was layed out. The aquarium was more like a zoo/safari, a lot of the animals weren’t actually in cages, the monkeys and birds were almost free roaming. They had a sloth just hanging above the walk way, we stood and just watched it moving in slow motion for about 15 minutes, apparently we were just lucky to see it awake because its only awake for 4 hours. There were piranha’s and sharks and manatee’s and everything thing you could possibly imagine.

After the Aquarium we wondered around the west end trying to find the place that JFK was murdered. We went into the 6^th floor museum that gave the history of JFK and all the information about his death, including all the conspiracy theories, which I really didn’t have much of an idea about, it was a great education, it was a surprise to see how influential he was around the world and how much of an effect his death had.

It was around 4pm and we were not hungry because our breakfast was so large. We decided to go find a cinema to burn some time till we got hungry for dinner. We went to go see The American, it was ranked number one over labour day weekend here, it is the worst film that I have ever seen, absolutely nothing happens, the reviews raved about how it was Clooney’s best performance but it was an arty film were nothing happens the whole way through, we expected it to build to something but it really didn’t, it was the longest movie I have ever sat through, even when the film finished everybody was talking about how crap it was.

Paolo got his hair cut and I walked around the mall until he was done, then we went for dinner. Once again we went for Mexican food, we both had an epic sized salad with soup and it was one of the best Mexican meals I’ve had here, once again we called in the action of numerous margarita’s!

$3 margaritas!

2010-09-16T16:20:00.004Z

13^th of September

September 13^th was a slow day, we woke up at around 10am and had to leave because Jennifer had left for class at 8 and Tracey had to leave at 10:30, and the choice was either leave early or get locked in. So we decided to just leave early. We took Tracey to university, it was the least we could have done, there were was a swarm or students there and it took us 20 minutes to just get through 2 blocks because so many students were crossing the road.

We started on our way towards Dallas, we took the i35 north bound. We stopped en-route to get some Mexican food, tacos that were kinda sucked, it was just mushy beans with rice and cheese, a bit sickly. We drove on for about another hour and a half and then we spotted somewhere that Jennifer said that we had to try, Bush’s chicken, it was really quite good for friend chicken, I wasn’t a fan of what they call biscuits and gravy here, but the chicken was really well cooked and was great with the old hot sauce.

We arrived at Austin around 2pm and got ourselves a room at La Quinta east of the Dallas, exit 54b on i30. We chilled out for a few hours and watched the beginning of the Jets vs Ravens American football match. We headed for a local haunt that my friend Lauren recommended on Greenville called Gloria’s, it was classy Mexican restaurant, I had a pork tenderloin and Paolo had a beef tenderloin. I like how in Mexican restaurants you get unlimted bowls of tortilla chips and dip, it sorts me and Paolo out for our appetizers. Gloria’s has $3 Margarita’s from Sunday to Thursday! I’ve never had a margarita before but they were good! Im not a fan of fruity cocktails but this was a good drink, and for only $3 you cant complain! We devoured down our food and sat at the bar to finish watching the game, hey if you are gunna have $3 margarita’s then we are going to stay!

I backed the Jets and Paolo backed the Ravens, naturally my team lost.

We headed back and crashed out at the hotel. A slow day, but it was mostly travel and we have to have a few down days.

Salt Lick!

2010-09-15T15:11:00.003Z

12^th September

We slept through the check out time and the cleaning lady banged on our door and screamed at us in Spanish, I was so confused, such an odd way to be awoken for a day. We had to check out so we packed all our stuff together and set off in our car towards town. There wasn’t much of a plan for the day, except that we were going to meet up with Jenn and Tracey later that evening and go to a Man vs. Food place for dinner. So we settled in a Starbucks for a few hours to do some odd bits and bobs online.

We then found our way to a mall, Barton Creek Mall, just south west of Austin, it was around 3pm by the time we arrived at the mall and we realised that we hadn’t eaten all day, so we went to the food court and grabbed ourselves some food. When walking around the food hall they were into giving these free samples at every place, and they weren’t small tasters, we could have filled ourselves with just tasters! But when we tasted the Thai food we knew we had to buy a whole plate. It was some of the best Thai food I have had, I had rice and pineapple chicken.

We got the call from Jenn that she had finished so we headed back to her place, we got slightly lost though and ended up driving through the hills of Austin which were a stunning view, a brilliant drive so totally worth getting lost!

Once we arrived at Jenn and Tracey’s they were watching Jersey Shore, I had never seen it before, but it was absolutely cringe worthy yet I couldn’t draw my eyes away, we sat and watched two episodes. It was around 7:30 when we headed off for dinner, we were heading towards Salt Lick BBQ, it was about a 45 minute drive south of the city.

Scratch what I’ve said about other BBQ’s so far, this was the best! I hate a platter with all their meats, their ribs were incredible, the glaze on the ribs were what made it, it was slightly crunch then the succulent meat on the inside gave it all the contrast you could ask for! I also had the brisket ,which would fall apart and it was so moist and basically just perfect. For dessert we had their famous pecan pie. Check out the famous pit on which they cook all their delectable meat!

I got myself a Salt Lick T-shirt and then we all headed home. In the parking lot Jennifer ran away from a dune bug and ran through two cones but didn’t see the chain between them and she almost got taken out! Hilarious!

That night Jennifer and Tracey were being saints and letting us stay the night at theirs, once we got back to theirs we started watching Jersey Shore season 1, from the first episode, because we had never seen it, we watched that until about 3am and then we headed to sleep.

QOTD: (while waiting about 20minutes for the toilet at starbucks)

Me (to the guy coming out of the toilet) : “Good shit?”

Cue awkwardness.

Fish Tacos and the Longhorns!

2010-09-15T02:52:00.005Z

September 11th

We had to check out at 11am and we were tired and hungover but we managed it. I drove around Austin for a bit checking out other hotels in the area to stay for our second night. We settled just south of the river from Austin and went back to sleep for a few hours, we then relaxed a bit and watched the TV and all the 9/11 memorial footage.

For lunch we were taking in another Man vs. Food place, it was called Juan in a Million, they served Mexican food and were famous for their breakfast tacos, when we arrived it was packed to the rafters, it was college football day in Austin as well, the Longhorns were playing so there were a lot of people here who were in town for the game. Juan in a million was a sea of orange.

We got seated and had a free bowl of tortilla chips and salsa, it was great salsa, we ordered our breakfast taco’s and I have to say that compared to the other Man vs. Food places it was a little disappointing, it was basically just scrambled egg with potato’s and refried beans and sausage. We did however get to meet the owner and we had the award winning handshake that he is famous for which totally made the whole experience memorable!

We had a few free hours so we decided to get a chore out of the way and do some laundry. While waiting for it to be done we went outside and played some football, after about only 5 minutes of having a kick about we were drenched in sweat, it was about 38degree’s out and it was blistering sun, we did however continue to play for about half an hour and we were just dripping with sweat. So after laundry we had to go home and shower. We sat around in our room again for a few hours before heading over to meet a friend Jennifer who studies in Austin.

We took a cab over to West Campus, the area just west of the campus that is primarily student housing. We met up with Jennifer whom I had never actually met but knew through my friend David Purdie. Jennifer was very nice, she took us to a local Longhorn bar (the nickname of the college football team) there we got into the atmosphere of the game! Go Longhorns! We also ordered fish tacos which were incredible! Better then Juan in a million, honestly the best tacos I’ve ever had although I’ve barely had any before.

After watching the game we went to go pick up her sister, except when we got there 4 people jumped in the back of the car with Paolo, so that was nice and intimate for him.

We went to a house party on top of a apartment complex, it was amazing, on the top floor they had a bar that you fill with your own alcohol, with chairs and tables overlooking the city of Austin, it was incredible. We were there for the birthday of a guy called Dane, there we met a whole bunch of other people who were students at Texas University or graduates.

From there we moved onto another house party, there it was more like your typical American house party. We played Kings, Beer Pong and shot-gunned beers! Another brilliant night in America! Another night that we will surely forever remember! Just like the movies.

After the party we were told by Jennifer’s sister Tracey that the best food after some drinks was a place called Jack in the Box and to have their tacos, we went back their place to eat them, and I must say that they were not the greatest things ever, infact I would go as far as to say the opposite. They were deep fried with some kind of ‘mystery meat’ as Tracey said. We got back to our place and crashed out!

(apologies for not having many photo's)

TEXAS!

2010-09-13T21:24:00.006Z

10th of September

I awoke in a truck stop somewhere along the i30, Paolo had driven till about 3am and parked up and slept. The car was really hot and we were both dripping with sweat. I got up and took my turn driving, it was about 7am so I had a good 5 hours sleep, which is more than some nights we’ve had. Paolo fell back asleep once we started driving and the airconditioning was blasting. I drove for about 3 hours until we hit Dallas and drove around it, we didn’t go in, we were heading to Austin. We drove through Dallas for about an hour and then headed south on the i35, Austin would be 3 hours drive from here. Paolo woke up around midday and we stopped at an iHop for breakfast, we had seen these iHops all along the highways and decided that we should probably try it. It was essentially a full English on top of pancakes.

At this point we had driven almost constantly from Memphis, we had driven through 3 states in 24 hours, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas. Our total mileage on the trip was just over 2200miles, not too bad.

It was a long drive down to Austin, in total I had driven around 7 hours. We arrived in Austin and went to the tourist information on 6th street, the lady in there was either being very rude or was extremely stupid, we think that she was probably just extremely thick.

We stayed at a hotel quite central, about 6 blocks away from 6th street. We were tired so we washed and then slept till about 8pm. 6th street was apparently the place to be so we headed out to find some food in that area, we walked around for about an hour trying to find a place for steak, after all this was Texas, there was nowhere! We settled for fish, and the meal was brilliant, a bit classier than any place we had been so far, I had a cuscous dish which was the best cuscous I had ever had, Paolo had a local fish wrapped around a crabcake he loved that too.

6th Street was manic, they close off the street for the revellers of the night so it was almost a carnival spirit, this was really refreshing! It was like being back in Europe on an island somewhere in the medditeranean. We worked our way through numerous bars, they had open rooftops so you could look down into the street and across to other bars that had rooftop parties going on. Check out these pictures.

We were however disappointed because we eventually worked our way into a club around 1:30 thinking that we would be going till the early hours. So we were dancing away then suddenly they turned the lights on and everybody left, it was only 2am! The whole of 6th street closes at 2am and there is nothing else going on after that, you just have to go home! Couldn’t believe it so we had to head back to our hotel room, it totally caught us off guard.

A little less conversation, a little more action please!

2010-09-12T18:38:00.013Z

We start the story in Memphis, Tennessee. We woke up in our motel near Graceland, I had borrowed a phone charger from the guy at the desk and he said I could keep it because he had a whole box of them from when people leave them behind, which was handy because I had left mine in a motel a few days before.

We made our way a few blocks west to the Graceland complex, this is an American institution, Elvis was the voice of a generation! When you drive up you have to park across the road from his actual house, across the road is also where all the gift shops and extra exhibits are, like his car collection and his clothes collection. You queue up to get on a bus that takes you across the road (typical). We had an audio set and we had the full tour around the house, the house is very 70’s, it was flash and everything was over the top, carpet on the floors, walls and ceilings. It was an education on the life of Elvis, it was very interesting and it was incredible some of the things he achieved, he never did a show outside of North America, here are some photos.

The rest of the exhibits that weren’t attached to his actual house were just tacky and kind of an insult to his legacy, but I guess its all this area really has to offer so they have gone all out.

We headed back on the road; we were going to Little Rock, Arkansas. We stopped along the way for fuel, jerky and peaches at the most ghetto BP I’ve ever been to, they were selling knives and home made perfumes.

The plan was to take in a Man vs. Food place en-route to Little Rock, there was a place called Cotham Mercantile, it made the Hubcap burger, a massive burger the size of a Hubcap. Cotham Mercantile was located east of Little Rock so we would be passing the general area into the city, except that it was still about 30minutes off the highway. We pulled up and it is literally the only place along a small country lane in the middle of nowhere, and I can’t stress out it really is in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately for you, the reader, and us the place was closed! It is only open at weekends! Here is a picture to show you how derelict it looks.

We headed into Little Rock drowning in disappointment; we hadn’t eaten all day in anticipation of this burger so we were now on the verge of starvation. Little Rock is a very slow town; there were a lot of run down buildings along the road in. We went into the main area of town, the River Market district, it was pretty dead, it was around 3 and all the restaurants and food stalls had closed or were closing, apparently we had missed the lunch rush, there was only one place open, it was selling general BBQ foods and it just so happened that it was one of the top 10 meals we have had so far, so swings and roundabouts! Perhaps it was because we were so hungry, or perhaps because there was nobody really around and he gave us huge portions, but it was really good, we had a platter of Italian spicy sausage, BBQ chicken, pulled pork and ribs with a side of potato salad, jambalaya and corn bread (the jambalaya wasn’t so great).

We wolfed down our meals and tried to find anything to do! But there is literally nothing to do there; we thought at least we could find something about President Clinton, but there wasn’t much. We walked outside the River Market building and up in the sky there was an ominous black cloud approaching, I could see it rolling towards us, it was crazy and it was massive! Once it came overhead it dropped a lake onto Little Rock, in a spit second I was drenched through, a guy in a booth shouted for us to come in out of the rain, he was selling T-shirts and all his signs had blown over, we watched out at people who looked like they had fallen into a river, the streets flooded in 5 minutes, it was insane, thunder and lightening and it went dark. Very cool, I love extreme weather, but then just like that it stopped, as quickly as it came, it finished, we thanked the guy who took us in and bode him farewell.

We were on the look out for a Wal-Mart, there was one just off the highway and we pulled in, we were planning on building a fire somewhere in Hot Springs national park and we wanted to make Smores, so we had to get supplies, we also got a football. Its interesting to note that this was a huge Wal-Mart, yet it had not one piece of fresh food in it, that’s probably a reason why America has a weight issue.

We headed an hour out of Little Rock, southwest, to Hot Springs national park. It was a beautiful place, we went up about a 1000m elevation into the park, and we found a campsite and pulled our car into a section and started to build a fire in one of the grills. We collected a whole bunch of firewood and burnt a lot of the random papers that we didn’t need in the car. It was brilliant fun, it was hot and humid but it had a nice breeze, there was a stream running right beside the car. We then started making smores, smores are where you get a marshmallow and melt it on the fire then stick it between two Graham crackers with a piece of chocolate in there which gets melted by the heat of the marshmallow. They were really good, I see why my American friends raved about them, and they are a lot of fun to make.

We washed from a tap they had at the site, I showed Paolo the Korean way of washing from a tap. We played cards for a bit and then tried to sleep in the car, we watched a movie called Grown Ups with Adam Sandler, it was about a group of friends who loose touch but discover their friendship while out on a camping trip which I thought was quite apt for the situation, it just happened to be the only film I had on my laptop.

Mosquitos raped me and trying to sleep was way to hot, we were drenched in sweat in about an hour. Neither of us could sleep, so we decided to get on the road, we had a 8 hour drive ahead, so we figured there was no harm in getting some of it out of the way. Paolo drove, I fell asleep…

White Castle!

2010-09-11T21:33:00.003Z

8^th of September

We woke up in Nashville, it was a slow morning and we took out time getting ready to leave. We casually left around midday. The night before, as we made our way home we spotted a White Castle and this was on our list of things to do in the US! So we stopped at White Castle on our way towards the highway. Ofcourse our fascination for White Castle stems from the film Harold and Kumar get the munchies. This is a burger joint with a difference, you get more than one burger per order, so in this case we got 4 burgers with our meal and some crinkle cut fries, these babies hit the spot! So much so that we both ordered more, you can just order a box of 10 or 20 or 30 even! They go down in one bite, I can see why Harold and Kumar went so out of their way for them.

The drive was about 3 hours to Memphis, we stopped at a visitor centre and got ourselves tickets to the Rock & Soul museum and tickets to Graceland.

We arrived in Memphis and it was almost a ghost town, there were barely any people there and barely any shops, we went to the Rock and Soul museum but parked quite a few blocks away and their was not much at all. The Rock & Soul museum was right opposite the Gibson factory.

The Rock & Soul museum was very interesting, it talked about the relationship between rural America and highlighted how big the race divide was in the USA back then. We did the audio tour and listened to some brilliant tunes!

To get back to my point of how there wasn’t much in Memphis, there was just one starbucks that we saw in the entire town, it was opposite the Rock & Soul museum. After we did the museum we were waiting to build up an appetite so we walked around the entire downtown area, and still we saw very little, there was a Walgreens and that was about it. We were building up our appetite for a Man vs Food restaurant that was here, it is called Rendezvous BBQ it is also ranked top 5 BBQ in the country, it is famous for its dry rub ribs, and it seriously was brilliant. The atmosphere was brilliant, very rustic and all the staff wearing old fashioned uniforms. The ribs were different from other ribs, the smokey flavour had penetrated right through the meat, then the dry rub spices contributed brilliant flavour that didn’t overwhelm the taste buds, it was brilliant. The coleslaw that came with the ribs was made with mustard instead of mayonnaise which, in my opinion was a lot better. Im sorry but these pictures do not reflect how good the meal was, they never will.

We got on the motorway and headed towards graceland, where we would be staying in a hotel nearby.

Jack Daniels!

2010-09-10T20:15:00.007Z

We woke up at the comfort inn, the cleaning lady came in twice while we were sleeping, once at 8am and once again at 9am, and we were still asleep both times! So annoying, we had gained an hour because we had driven through a time zone so she actually came in at 7 and 8am, which makes it worse!

We went off the beaten track to get to Lynchburg; it took us about an hour to get there. This was real deep America, we saw about 2 cars on the roads on the way. There were farmers out and when we drove past people waved to us and we waved back, there was literally two old people sitting on their porch on rocking chairs, the guy with a piece of straw in his mouth!

We arrived at Lynchburg, it is a tiny town! There are only about 300 people living there, they have 1 set of traffic lights, the other set is about 16 miles down the road. Pulling into the Jack Daniels factory was exciting! Its practically the only thing in town, in fact the main store in town is also the Jack Daniels hardware store that he ran during prohibition. Lynchburg is the odd, because its so small they do not qualify as a city so therefore cant qualify to sell alcohol in the state of Tennessee, therefore Lynchburg is a dry town! They can’t drink what they make!

We had a tour guide name David; here is a photo of him.

He was essentially the stereotype of small town America and he had the strongest accent, we had to concentrate hard to understand him and he loved to be in all the photos! The JD factory was amazing, it is steeped in history, all the Jack Daniels in the world comes from this one factory and it all comes from one spring in the mountain that we were able to see.

Jack Daniels doesn’t have an age because they don’t keep track of how old they are, they simply release it when it taste’s ready; every barrel is tasted by the master distiller. I wont fill you in with too much information about it, its something that you have to do for yourself someday.

The closest you can get to taste is in the section where they filter it through the charcoal, they opened up one of the filters so we could have a smell, it was such a powerful smell, one of the most satisfying smells there is, aging whisky.

During prohibition Jack Daniels had to stop and so he set up a general store in the town, its still there and sells all the memorabilia, and it was really extensive! You could get everything from furniture to sweets.

While we were in the town a stray dog took a liking to us and followed us around, eventually we had to leave it, we named her Huckleberry and she followed us all around town and eventually to our car, as we drove off a group of people thought we were abandoning our dog!

On the drive towards Nashville I fell asleep so there isn’t much to tell. We arrived at our hostel, Music City Hostel, it had parking, which was handy for us, and it was a really nice place, made up of 3 bungalows we managed to have a 4-person room to ourselves. We chilled out for about 3 hours and then headed out to town, it was about 8pm by now. We had dinner, I had a pulled pork sandwich and Paolo had a deep fried catfish sandwich on the balcony of the second floor of a bar on Broadway. The neon lined high street was alive with music, we went from bar to bar having drinks of Jack Daniels in every bar and watching the live music, every bar had live musicians, playing classics to their own music, they were all taking requests and were interacting with the audience. Everybody raved about Nashville being an amazing place, which it is for music, but its quite small, the biggest place to go was Broadway and there were only a handful of bars

QOTD: from David the tour guide, take into account his accent and the fact that he is laughing while saying this.

"Yall think they learnt me ta speak like this!?"

Jack Daniels!

2010-09-10T20:15:00.006Z

QOTD: from David the tour guide, take into account his accent and the fact that he is laughing while saying this.

"Yall think they learnt me ta speak like this!?"

Coca-Cola, CNN, Man vs Food, ATL! USA!

2010-09-08T15:23:00.007Z

6th of September

Big day ahead! We left our hotel around 10pm and set off towards Atlanta. It took about 20 minutes to get into the centre and we turned off towards Coca-Cola world. We parked up, the parking was $10 for the whole day so we were just going to leave our car there for the whole day and explore.
Coca-Cola world beckoned! It was a massive complex! A total Mecca! After purchasing our tickets we asked two American girls to take a photo of us infront of the Coca-Cola world sign, to prove we were there, check out the photo those idiots took!

The whole point of the photo was to have the huge massive Coca-Cola sign in it!
Anyways we walked into the main entrance and immediately we were inundated with Coca-Cola branded memorabilia and art, it would pretty much be like this the whole way through. We got an introductory talk from one of the Coca-Cola’s employee’s named Falisha who gave us a brief history and showed us some of the most impressive Coca-Cola artefacts. Like the original soda fountain bowls and vending machines from around the world etc.

We were walked into a movie theatre and shown a movie called ‘the happiness factory’ it was supposed to be what happens inside a vending machine when you put your money in it, it was an extended version of their advert on TV. The full brainwashing experience.

They had a cool selection of exhibits from Coca-Cola art to the history and making of Coca-Cola, my favourite was the history of Coca-Cola and also the Cola tasting room where you could taste different Coca-Cola brands from around the world. My favourite worldwide brand was perhaps the watermelon soda from China. They had one which was supposed to be from England called Kinley’s Lemonade, but I have never heard of it. My overall favourite was actually just the Cherry Cola which was in the originals tasting section, all the Coca-Cola was free.

We got a free limited edition Coca-Cola world bottle as we exited and then we spent about 30minutes in the shop, it was one of the best gift shops, America does gift shops well! Everything you can imagine had a Coca-Cola brand on it! I wanted to buy everything! But instead I just got a Coca-Cola polo.

We then went for a walk around the Olympic park, Atlanta had the Olympic games back in 1996.

At the end of the park was the CNN building, we initially walked in to get some air-conditioning because it was so hot! But where we were in there we noticed that they had a massive food court which was handy because we were also looking for food. We went to Arby’s and got a beef sandwhich, I ordered the beef and blue cheese burger and she miss heard it as the bacon and cheese burger, so that’s what I got stuck with, Paolo had the all American burger, which was basically a whopper but with sliced beef instead of a burger.

The CNN building was a brilliant surprise, we got tickets for the tour of the building after lunch, this was the main CNN building in the world, 60% of all their broadcasting was done from within those walls. We got the tour and managed to watch some live broadcasting and see how the system works, the news rooms etc. they said no pictures but I still took some ☺

We walked around Atlanta for a few more hours, saw the Georgia dome, and also drove up through some really nice area’s in uptown. We then prepared ourselves to take on a Man vs Food challenge! At other Man vs Food places we have been to they have always been the segments before he does an actual challenge, well this time we were going for one of the challenges. If we had called ahead then we could have entered in for the opportunity to win $250 but we didn’t. The place was called Big Pie in the Sky Pizza, and it was incredible! We ordered the 30” pizza, 30 inches! Check out the picture, it was massive! You may think that a pizza this size perhaps skips on quality, but oh you would be wrong! I’m not one to say this lightly but it was much better than dominos pizza, the toppings were delicious the pizza was just mouth watering! To be honest the wait was murder! While we waited for our pizza and everybody else’s around us came, we were beginning to be a bit apprehensive because there were families of 5 or 6 huge Americans coming in and they were only ordering the 25” pizza and leaving some! It smelt so good! Which added to the anticipation.
When the pizza came, I cant over emphasize how big it was! People were staring at us and couldn’t believe that just two of us were going to attempt to eat it.

Check out the look on the people's faces in the backround!

I was completely expecting it to be a struggle to eat, but when it came the smell and the taste helped a handful to make it go down. By the way this was called the Carnivore challenge, it was topped with a pound of ground beef, a pound of pork, a pound of pepperoni, a pound of beef sausage and obviously cheese! This was truly an epic moment in my life! I wish I lived around the corner from this place. After we left I was feeling great! I ran around the car a couple of times, only because Paolo was having problems moving, perhaps there is something wrong with me, I cried a little as we pulled out with our car, I may never return…

We decided that instead of finding a place to stay immediately we might as well save the time tomorrow and do the majority of the driving to Lynchburg that night, if we were in a hotel we would only be spending this time watching TV anyways. I can conclude that over the 1100 miles or so that we have done so far that Americans in general are bad drivers and you can multiply that by 10 at night!

After about 2 hours of driving we ended up pulling into a comfort inn about an hour from Lynchburg, Paolo managed to bargain down the price of the room by 20%! We had a long day and a lot of food so we dropped off to sleep.

Travel day.

2010-09-07T22:29:00.005Z

The morning of 5th of September, we woke up in different places and I had to let Paolo in at 9am. This was the day that we were leaving North Carolina! We had an amazing experience and we owe it all to my friend Lauren! The 3 days thats we were there we did everything that we dreamed of at an American College! Tailgating, College Football game, Frat parties! It was brilliant!

Today was going to be our longest drive yet, 6 hours to Atlanta. We said our goodbyes to Lauren and headed onto the open road about 12 midday. For lunch we stopped at Wendy's and we had our fill of an another American burger chain.

We filled up with petrol, I've been making a point to stick to buying it from BP the whole way along! The time was burnt up by playing games like slogan games and quotes games, for example guess the brand and its slogan, guess the film by the catch phrase etc.

As we passed out of North Carolina and into South Carolina, we spotted a factory outlet area, we stopped and went shopping! Adidas, Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, Banana Republic etc. We got t-shirts from Banana Republic for $5 each and I got a San Jose Earthquakes top for $14! I also got some new kicks! Also I saw this car.

We stopped and parked up for the night just outside Atlanta at a Microtel motel and had dinner close by at a Hong Kong buffet. We then just chilled out for the rest of the night, itching with anticipation for Coca-Cola world the day after!

A short post, but it was just a travel day.

North Carolina, a round up! I love College!

2010-09-06T01:32:00.005Z

Go Deacs! (3 days of posts)

I am a bit behind on the posts so I am doing a post of the whole of our North Carolina adventure. We begin on the 2^nd of September, Thursday. We had been catching up on some sleep and had an epic 11 hours. We departed from our Quality Inn motel before setting off on our long journey to Winston Salem. We quickly headed into Richmond to try meet up with my friend Tyler for lunch but he was ill so we just headed on to North Carolina.

The time was around 1pm and we were beginning to feel the hunger bug so we decided that we should drive until we see a proper truck stop, not one with major brands like Subway or Burger King. It wasn’t until about 2pm before we managed to find one en-route that looked like a genuine homegrown place.

We went in and it was quiet except for a few locals, it was a wooded cabin style building and all the locals in there were all massive, easily 3 or 4 times the size of me, and they were all like that! We took to looking at the menu keeping our eye’s down, we didn’t want to get eaten. Paolo had a turkey and bacon Panini while I had a country fried steak swimming in gravy. Paolo’s was a typical Panini but mine was a deep fried steak drowning in a thick pasty sickly looking liquid they call gravy, it wasn’t great, I felt like I deserved a heart attack after eating it.

We made our way across the Virginia/North Carolina border and just after we got pulled over again! Paolo speeding again! Luckily we managed to talk our way out of this ticket as well but so far Paolo has a 2-0 lead over me in terms of getting pulled over, he can keep that lead. This cop wouldn’t let us take a picture of his car though; he said we might put it onto Youtube.

We got to Winston Salem at about 4:30 but struggled to find Wake Forest University for about an hour, the city doesn’t make much sense and the university isn’t on their maps and nobody seemed to know where it was. We got there at 5:30 and Lauren was waiting for us to take us to the Demon Deacons American football came, their college team was playing. Lauren is my good friend whom I met at GYLC 4 years ago, and then she has visited me twice in London since then, also spending a whole semester there last year, so we have had a bunch of good times back home, now it was her chance to show off America to me!

She said we had to wear a shirt to the game though, so we had to quickly get changed, apparently over here people wear shirts and ties to the football games. We went for the full American experience, we went ‘tailgating’ which is something that they do before the game, everybody pulls up in their pick up trucks and blasts music and drinks from kegs in the parking lot of the football stadium. It was brilliant! We had red cups and standing around with a massive group of students, all the different frats were out representing themselves and people were playing drinking games and socialising. British universities should be like this.

The game was going to start so we headed into the 30,000-seater stadium, it was an incredible atmosphere, and practically the entire college was out! Cheerleaders, mascots and chants! It was brilliant, everybody seemed to know each other and everybody knew the chants. The Daemon Deacons (Deacs) were playing the Presbyterians; they are in the top division of the North Carolina league. Deacs were expecting an easy win. The Deacs went ahead by 21 in the first quarter then by half time it was 28-7, suddenly half the people left, its apparently normal behaviour to leave at half time, especially if your team is winning because it’s boring, we stayed to watch the half time performance by the marching band then also left after the 3^rd quarter, we grabbed a dominoes pizza from inside the stadium for dinner.

As for the actual game of American football, it’s extremely boring! They stop every other minute and change the teams, so many technicalities and faults and stops, its not what I would call entertaining, It’s the first game of American football I’ve ever watched and I’m very surprised that there was ever even an argument as to which type of football is best, apart from the quarterback I cant see where there is any skill requirement, unless you count catching as a skill.

We headed back to Lauren’s sorority apartments; Lauren was very tired so we were taking this night off, which was good enough for Paolo and me because we got to watch Knocked Up!

September 3^rd, College Campus, Frat party, beer pong!

Lauren gave us the full campus tour, it’s a beautiful campus with huge buildings, the majority of the students live on campus, and it’s even bigger when you consider that it only has about 4500 students! The tour reminded Paolo of Tom Green’s tour in the film Road Trip. The idea for breakfast was to hit up their cafeteria called ‘The Pit’ full American college style, it was an incredible canteen compared to what I had on offer back at Kings, there were several different section you could go to for meal and it was all you can eat yet everything was made for you in front of you, so you could get a bagel, a sub, pizza, kebabs, traditional breakfast’s and huge selections of salads and desserts! We just went for standard breakfast stuff, eggs and bacon.

Lauren had to get some stuff from Wal-Mart and we jumped at the opportunity to go to Wal-Mart! It was huge and had everything you could possible want, but I prefer Tesco’s, Wal-Mart did sell guns though.

For Lunch we hit up a local hot spot for college students, it was called Putter’s, a golf themed restaurant, famous for their chicken tenders, which were brilliant!

We headed back to the apartment and spent the rest of the afternoon planning and organising the rest of our trip, and catching up on correspondents.

For dinner we went to a Japanese restaurant that Lauren used to work at called Sakura with Lauren’s roommate Diane and her boyfriend Chris.

After dinner Chris told us that we need to try this drink called Four Loco, it was this hugely hyped up drink, it came in a litre sized can and in multiple flavours, it’s a combination of some kind of spirit with energy drink although it only cost $2.44 and was 12%, everybody was hyping about this drink and how it gets people messed up, but it just tasted like the Mojito’s you get in Oceana, it tasted fine and once again I think its something which came down to the fact that we are more used to drinking coming from England. We had the drinks around Lauren’s friends place, there people were getting ready to go to one of two frat parties, one of them was called Tour De Franzia, Franzia being a cheap wine in a bag. The second one was a Eurotrash party, which is why people were dressing up with European themes.

We played a game of Kings and then made our way over to our first frat party. The Tour De Franzia! It was like being dropped into a movie set, there was an insane amount of people in a small house, people walking around with massive bags of wine getting people to drink it, there was a keg in one corner that people were drinking from. We settled around the beer pong table, once a game was over a lad called Alex asked me if I wanted to join him in a game so I accepted. We played the people who won the previous game. Now let me tell you, when I say that this was an epic game, you have no idea! If it were in a film you would never believe it, but it was tense! I managed to sink a double redemption, that’s where they sunk our last cup and I had to sink all of their last cups in a row, they only had two left and I sunk both of them with sick style! We both had to rerack because I had redeemed us, we reracked to 3 cups and it went down to the final cup 3 times and all 3 times I managed to redeem us, although eventually we did loose, but it was incredible!

We had managed to build quite a group of people watching. Paolo and Lauren had left the party before my beer pong game had finished so I was there by myself but I was working the crowd well after my epic game of beer pong and I was having a blast! Suddenly I heard someone shout my name, I turned around and it was my friend Emily whom I had met 4 years ago also at GYLC, I couldn’t believe it! I had no idea she was at this university! Well I was quite lost and didn’t know where I was at this party so she looked after me and we moved onto the next frat party, Eurotrash at Sigma Nu! The Frat’s here have designated driver to take you to all to and from the parties, which was a brilliant idea. Although in order to not draw attention from the police they don’t let you leave until you get your ride so it was a crazy mass of confusion trying to get out of the first frat party, people were getting angry at the guys on the door, luckily Emily seem to know them and they let us straight out.

Now this second frat party was messy, the floors were sticky; it was hot and humid in there, so many people! But once again, so much fun! I met a couple German and French guys whom I had met earlier and seeing as it was a Eurotrash party it was appropriate that we were all European so people were loving the fact. Everybody you meet at these frat parties, if they didn’t recognise you then they would introduce themselves, it was incredibly social and I met a ton of new people, pretty much all of whom I’d forgotten their names.

September 4^th Frisbee house party! Dan’s Birthday!

We got up relatively early, around 10pm (considering I didn’t get home till about 4am) and Lauren, Paolo, Diane, Chris and I made our way to the local hangover food restaurant. It was a good casual meal that definitely helped in recovery, I had one of the best chicken soups I’ve ever had.

The original plan was to then make our way to the river to go floating and drinking on tubes, but none of us were feeling up to it. So we headed back to the apartment, it was hot! These past few days had been above 100 Fahrenheit, which is above the 30c’s. So I spent the afternoon sleeping, I needed it, I was so tired, I’m a beer pong athlete and I need my rest!

We went for dinner at the restaurant they have on campus called Shorty’s, we had dinner with Lauren and 4 of her guy friends. They were a hilarious bunch, we fitted right in, quotes left and right and we all shared the same sense of humour and had the same taste in movies and comedy, it was brilliant. Although dinner took 3 hours! We had a terrible waiter and the food just took ages to come out, even our check took 30 minutes to arrive! So we asked if we still had to tip and they said that they wouldn’t because service was so bad, but it was the first time they had not tipped. It was so bad that we all got free meals for our next visit, although me and Paolo would not be using them so we gave them to Lauren.

The next stop was another party! It was at the Frisbee house, it was a house where people who used to play Frisbee lived! I couldn’t believe there was a house for something so specific, but there was. It was a guy called Dan’s birthday and once again, it’s hard to put into words how much fun it was! But it was brilliant! The lads from dinner were there and they had made an ice statue/ice drinks luge for Dan to drink from; it was in the shape of a woman’s body, so much effort! But that’s America for you; they love to go all out!

There once again we drank from a keg and played beer pong, this time however we played a huge game of 21-cup beer pong which was insane! So much going on and it was constant firing of beer pong balls.

The night was a long night filled with socialising and different events. At one point I was in a room with a guy called JP playing guitar then at another time I was dancing to Michael Jackson with some people on the porch! At around midnight something ridiculous happened, the waiter we had at dinner turned up at the party! He wasn’t even a student and nobody could believe he was here, apparently he had been talking to some people at the restaurant and they had invited him to the party after work! The lads we had dinner with flipped out; they couldn’t believe that the one time they didn’t tip, the guy turns up at their party! It was very awkward! We tried to avoid him at all costs just because it was so embarrassing, firstly that we didn’t want to get into a conversation about how bad he was at his job and also to avoid the whole tipping thing.

By about 4am there was about 12 of us sitting in a room listening to a couple of the people playing guitar and drums, it was a good chilled out end to the night, (Paolo somewhere else by now and I was once again on my own) however in the room next door as I was leaving there was some heavy dub step being played and people dancing like raving loony’s! So much fun! I walked home with a couple of the girls from Laurens frat because they lived in the same building. I then crashed out around 5am.

QOTD:

Chris, when talking about hooters,

“Ye the food sucks but the concept’s great!”

Richmond sucks!

2010-09-03T21:05:00.000Z

1^st of September.

We woke up tired! Jessica’s room faces the rising sun and her cuitains don’t work so its hard to sleep in. We were tired from the late night before. We packed our stuff up and moved on to the car and looked out for somewhere to have brunch at a place called Booeymongers, it’s a sandwhich and wrap place. We opted for something healthy, I got a grilled chicken salad wrap and Paolo got a bacon, turkey and salami grilled cheese baguette.

While driving on our way back we saw a Safeway’s and decided to stop for a bit of nostalgia (Safeway’s closed down ages ago back in England) and also for some travel supplies.

It was around 12 now and we took Jessica back to American U and had an emotional goodbye before getting back on the road. I was driving this section to Richmond. We stopped around Fredriksberg at a rest area that gave us maps and coupons for motels to stay at. We drove through Richmond, nothing much of interest there. We literally just drove through and I hadn’t heard from my friend Tyler who lives there so we drove past and into Chester where we stopped and checked into a Quality Inn for the night. It was only about 5pm but thought we would give it a rest because Thursday was going to be a big drive day and we didn’t need to get there early. The Motel had a gym and a swimming pool so we worked out for an hour and a half at one of the worst gyms I’ve ever been to.

The Quality Inn was located across the road from a Hooters, so we made the hard decision to go there for dinner. We had high expectations, and as always with high expectations, you build yourself up to be disappointed. It wasn’t as good as they make it out in the movies, its actually quite sad and tacky. A load of old lonely men perving on young girls is essentially the gist of it, they had good hot wings though. We had their essentials platter which was shrimp, boneless chicken wings and chicken wings, we then had another platter of just boneless chicken wings then another platter of their hottest 911 chicken wings. This Hooters really was in the middle of nowhere along the side of the highway so we will probably try it in a more popular place, it might be better. We crossed the road and went to bed, watched the travel channel for a few hours which was having a Man vs Food marathon (ofcourse) before falling asleep. An pretty uneventful day but still having fun in the big ole USofA!

Miles so far: 800 miles.

Quote of the Day:

Paolo: ‘Wow, Richmond sucks!’

A hell of a season man

2010-09-03T01:21:00.005Z

31st Aug:

Our last day of August, we have already taken in a number of world famous locations in just a matter of a week, and we are loving every moment of it!
Today was quite a chilled out day, we woke up early as Jessica had to go to class at 8:30am, so we left American U and headed out in our car today instead of using the Metro.
We were on the search for Jessie’s Crab shack (or as I call it ‘Jessie got crabs!’) it was featured on Anthony Bourdain’s ‘Food Porn’ TV show. It was just south of the Franklin D Roosevelt memorial, right on the river. The time was around 10am and it was a bit quite, it turns out that in the morning it is a fish market and only after lunch does the food really get going, Paolo decided that it was a bit early to get messy with crab and I agreed it was a good point so we decided to give it a miss. I called my friend Nancy (who I won the Lottery with in Hong Kong) and arranged to meet up.
Nancy and her boyfriend Alex (who Im also friends with from Hong Kong, he almost killed me by driving on the wrong side of the road last time we met) both attend Georgetown Univeristy, its slightly west of the Capitol Mall. We met up with them at their Uni and we got the full tour, its an old university steeped in history, if anything happens to congress then it is the location for emergency congress which I think is quite a cool fact. Georgetown is big on their basketball but have only won one American football game in the past 2 years.

We then asked them if they wanted to join us for dinner, we wanted to visit a place that was featured on Anthony Bordain’s TV show and also on Man vs Food, its called Ben’s Chilli Bowl. Everybody we talked to in Washington D.C. told us we should check it out. Its in an old part of town, and its one the flashiest coloured buildings, we walked in and it looked very much like an old time diner, on the wall was a sign saying the only people allowed to eat for free there was Bill Cosby and the Obama family, this a place that Obama came to eat just after taking office. We ordered ‘Ben’s Half Smoked’ their famous dish, we didn’t realise that it was a hotdog covered in chilli and also a bowl of chips covered in cheese and chilli, these were our first hotdogs in America! Check them out.

We dropped Nancy and Alex back at Georgetown, it was brilliant to see them again. We then headed over to the Pentagon City mall, over near the Pentagon, I semi remembered the route from when I went there 4 years ago. It was quite a disappointment, I’m not sure why people keep raving about malls in America, so far we haven’t seen any real reason to spend much time there, the shops are generic. So after only an hour wandering around we headed back to American U.
We met up with Jessica and caught up about our day but she had to go to an residence assistant meeting for an hour so left us in the common room where we met a group of the freshman who just started from high school. There was a bit of drama at the halls, police cars and an ambulance turned up and there was commotion downstairs and it turned out that somebody on the floor below had attempted suicide. Reminds me of Van Wilder: Party Liason where he talks someone out of jumping off the building.

Jessica came back and we headed off to ‘pre-game’ at her friends house, there we met Bodal and Tomas and we played NBA 2010 on Xbox for drinks (similar to how we play Pro or Fifa for drinks), these lads were hilarious, we did the whole ‘drinking from red solo cups‘ experience before making our way into central D.C.
While there we had more to drink and we taught everybody how to dance.
I met some English lads there and had a cool chat about living in America, they studied at Kings like me and had been living in D.C. for 7 years.
The clubbing still hasn’t been able to measure up to British standards, I think its because they aren’t as used to it as we are in Europe.

Quote of the day: (on our way to Ben;s)
Alex: “Ben’s Chilli Bowl will take a year off your life, buts its totally worth it”

Washington D.C.

2010-09-01T20:46:00.008Z

Day 8 :
We had a shower in the dorms of American University, it was a communal bathroom, just like in the movies! We adorned cubicles side by side and rocked a chorus of ‘Don’t look back in anger’ by Oasis as loud as we could. Jessica had to go and work (she is a baby sitter) so she left us with a set of keys and her ID card so we could move around freely without her. The plan for the day was to take in the sites of D.C.
After making our way downstairs we got on the shuttle bus to the Metro and headed into central. We got out of the Metro at Metro Central station and walked towards the Whitehouse. On the way there we passed a Five Guys burger joint and I had to go! I had heard about them from the news, Barack Obama made his way there after taking office, they were also voted best burger in America (from a chain) and it was just the best I’ve ever had, Paolo agreed. It ranks one of the best meals we have had on our road trip so far. I wish I could take one home with me for everyone reading this. This was the first burger we have had in the USA so far and in the wise words of Paolo “This is like sex in my mouth”.

We headed over towards the Whitehouse and everybody was pointing us in different locations. Something was going down in the Whitehouse because we weren’t allowed to get anywhere near it! Check out the photo, that’s as close as we were allowed. There most have been some shit hitting the fan.

Today it was HOT! 38 degree’s, and no cover or shade while walking around National Mall, we saw all the memorials. From WW2, Lincoln and Korean war memorials.

We walked to the American Air and Space museum, we didn’t really bother looking at anything, we mainly went in there just for the air conditioning. After spending about an hour in the cool museum not really looking at anything.
We made our way over to the Smithsonian American history Museum and got educated on how bad the English are and how we pillaged America, most of their history is wrong.

We made our way back on the Metro and met up with Jessica for dinner, we went to classical diner called Johnny Rockets, I had a strawberry milkshake and a Smoke-house burger. Check it out!

We did our laundry American college style and just crashed out!

Quote of the day:

Yo, Paolo we did it!

2010-08-31T21:49:00.008Z

Day 7,

We woke up slightly hung over from the night before, luckily I had managed to make my way into bed the night before, the bed was so comfortable I fell straight to sleep. Paolo tells me he fell asleep before he got to bed at the foot of it, fully clothed and had woke up at about 6 that morning and put himself to bed. It just shows how much we are doing here in America that we are exhausted at the end of everyday. The time was around 11am and we had to check out by 12. We washed and changed, packed and got ready to leave.
Once we had checked out we made our way into central Philadelphia. We drove along some of the best scenery so far in our trip, along the river leading through Fairmount Park. At the end of Fairmount Park was the Philadelphia Museum of Art, also known as the Rocky Steps! We dropped into full tourist mode! We didn’t care what people thought of us running up and down the steps! This was a major stop on our trip! Check out our video’s! I want to write more about it but I think the video show’s our level of excitement.

The weather was hot! No breeze and around 90degree’s farenheit, that’s about 33 degree’s in normal temperature. Yet we still decided to walk all around town. Shade was limited when we walked from the car park and we roasted! It being a Sunday there was few food places open in the financial district that we were walking around. We hadn’t eaten yet and were on the look out for food. I had read about a famous market in the area, but we simply couldn’t find it so we settled for the first deli place we found.

Every portion of food, no matter what or where you get it here is going to fill you up! We were stuffed after this meal! Sod’s law dictated that once we gave up looking for the market we would find it! It was an incredible market and it had a man vs food location in it! But we simply couldn’t fathom eating another bite! We were gutted… Here are some photo’s of the place anyways.

We did manage to squeeze in a bite of ice cream at a famous ice cream parlour called L.D. Bassett’s. I had green tea flavour and Paolo had cookies and cream with vanilla. The heat was exhausting and we had taken in all the sites in Philadelphia that we wanted so we headed back to the car and decided that we should start on our way to Washington D.C.
I drove this portion of the trip. It was a pleasant run, although we did hit the our fair share of traffic along the way, the 2 ½ hour trip took us about 3 ½ hours in the end. We played an epic game of categories, a game where you pick a category and have to name every thing in that category. So for example of some categories we had, Disney animated films (which I won, Fox and the Hound being the winning film), Cereals (which Paolo won, Apple-Jacks being the winning cereal).

We arrived in D.C. around 8pm, this time without a Police escort. People had warned us about Washington D.C. but all the areas we drove through have been incredible. We made our way up Massachusetts avenue, we were looking for American University, we passed by the embassies on our way up (the British one being the most inspiring of course). We were staying at my friend Jessica’s place who is an Resident Assistant in Lett’s hall on campus. She was kind enough to let us stay on her floor. I’ve known Jessica for about 4 years since I first went to America, but we haven’t seen each other since. She was one of my closest friends when I was here last time but we lost touch, she was the last person I saw before I headed home 4 years ago. It was amazing to see her again

For dinner we headed off campus into a neighbourhood called Friendship, it was just as idyllic as you would imagine. Paolo and I ticked off a box on our American Road trip to-do list, we went to the Cheesecake Factory! The portions here were just as big, if not bigger, than the rest of America. I had a portion of meatloaf (another thing ticked off our list) and for dessert we both had Cheesecake (of course).

We got back to American University and got ready for bed, this was the first time we were using our sleeping bags.

We went to sleep at midnight but we stayed up chatting for about 3 hours! That’s how much fun we were having hanging out with Jess, people were banging on the walls because we were laughing so much (which is ironic considering she is the RA and supposed to make sure other students are quiet)
It was a really good catch up, and a great end to another top notch day in the USA

Quote of the Day: (while heading in Washington D.C.)
Paolo: “The white house really put’s downing street to shame”
Me: “Ye it does”
Paolo: “But I bet the Council Tax is a bitch”

Cue mass mirth and merriment!

Mile’s travelled so far: 760

Goodbye New York, hello Philadelphia!

2010-08-30T15:04:00.010Z

The day we leave New York. Its day 6 of our trip and its the day we took in 3 Man vs Food places in 1 day!

We woke up around 11 from having been out clubbing the night before, we had to check out by 12 so we begrudgingly started packing our stuff up. We were unsure as to exactly we had parked our car, so we wandered up about 3 or 4 streets until we found it, we weren't worried I swear!

The weather was amazing, hot, sunny and a cool gentle breeze. We headed over to Brooklyn to have lunch with my friends Steven and Johnny, we went and had a dipped sandwhich at Brennan and Carr's, this was a Man vs Food location, on that show he normally takes in meals that are massive, but I wasn't prepared for simply how good this sandwich was. It is a dipped beef sandwich, where they cook the thinly sliced beef in a secret blend of beef broth, then dip the entire sandwich back into the broth! It was incredible, and this was our lunch.

However we also knew there was another Brooklyn Man vs Food location near by and Steve said we definately had to try it out. It was Spumoni's pizza place, it's where they take a pizza and put the cheese under the sauce, so the cheese bubbles up through the sauce. This once again was just incredible, I have never had pizza like it, the base was soft and delicious and not overly cheesy and the sauce was just undescribable, both these meals were our lunch, and both of these meals were up in the top thing's I've ever eaten.

We departed from Steve and Johnny, they escorted us to the highway and we made our way to Philadelphia. This trip would have been rather uneventful if not for the fact that when we go into Phili we were pulled over by the police.
The police had followed us off the slip way and onto the 611 into Philadelphia. They followed us for about a mile before turning on their sirens and asking us to pull over. They came up along side once we had stopped and asked us for our licenses. Once they realised that we were English they lightened their tone and began asking us questions like about whether or not we had any narcotics, guns or knives on us. Then they asked me to get out of the car and (Paolo was in the drivers seat) and he wanted to see where on the rental contract it said that Paolo was allowed to drive, so I had to find it for him. He asked me if I had a body in the boot (he wasn’t kidding) and I told him no and then I asked if I minded if he looked through the car for any guns, which I didn’t mind.

It was a brilliant experience and actually ended up being a good thing because once they had finished doing their usual cop stuff, we just stood around and chatted about Philadelphia and England, one of them had a brother who worked in England and they both gave us advice on where not to go in Philadelphia. They pointed us on our way and gave us directions to our hotel. We then asked to take a photo before we left, they wouldn’t let us take a photo of them but they let us take on of their car, so here is the picture of us pulled over on the side of the road with 2 police cars on our tail!

We followed the cop’s directions to our hotel, which was the Crowne Plaza; we were staying in quite a level of comfort. Compared with the New York room this was amazing, we went to the gym and then had a good shower and clean, watched some TV then headed out to Philly for a night out. We firstly made our way to a Man vs. Food place for dinner, Jims Philly Cheese-steak. I wasn’t really hungry, but the queue was out of the building and round the corner so we joined in case I felt hungry later. I did. The smell was incredible! Unlike other fatty grease fast food joint in America this one was clean and there wasn’t that greasy feel you get from the air. The steak was fresh high quality beef that they cooked on a hot plate grill; it sat there stewing in broth that they kept pouring over it to keep it moist. I ordered a Philly cheese-steak with American cheese and cooked onions; Paolo got a Philly cheese-steak with Whiz cheese (this was the recommended combo). We shared a half each and ordered Dr.Peppers each, very American of us. It was incredible, such juicy steak and it truly hit the spot, satisfaction has never had a more fulfilling conclusion as it did after we finished our cheese-steaks, they were surprisingly light and we managed to eat them in about 4 minutes, considering we spent over an hour waiting for them. Totally worth it!

We then went for the first bar we saw, sat down inside and ordered a local beer. We sat for a bit talking about this and that. After a while we noticed that there were a lot more females in this bar than average, mostly with short hair and baseball caps… not in a good way… we looked around us and noticed that there were a lot of girls making out! It turns out that we had managed to make our way to a lesbian bar! We decided to finish our drinks and move on, once the cross dressers walked in we downed them and left!

We found our way to the other bar district and moved from bar to bar, we sat in one student bar and played word association for about an hour! By ourselves! We had to prove to about 4 people that we were really English as well, which was annoying. We eventually ended up meeting a guy called Dom who showed us around and told us were was good to go. So we went and had a brilliant time, it was full of Latino’s who were buying us drinks and were really nice. When we left this place we met Dom again by chance outside, he said that he knew were there was a good after party type bar so we got in a cab with him and went on our way. When we got there it turned out to be some kind of ping-pong club/bar where people were playing ping-pong and drinking. It was very obscure. We figured that we were too tired to continue so we made our way back to the hotel and went and had a good sleep, our beds were amazing so we had to take advantage of it because we would be spending the next week or more sleeping on floors.

Me and Paolo with Dom

Mileage count: 10,880

States travelled so far: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania.

Missing Quote of the Day

2010-08-30T14:52:00.003Z

The missing Quote of the day for our 5th day,
it was when Paolo was buying a beer at a supermarket, and the lady looked his ID and said (as if she was catching out Paolo)
Cashier: "Erm, so what month is the 22nd?"
Paolo: "The 22nd isnt a month, its an English drivers license"
Cashier: "Oh you do it the wrong way roung"
Paolo: "No, the RIGHT way round"

Que mass hysteria from me, Paolo and 2 people behind us in the line.

Empire State of mind!

2010-08-29T16:08:00.010Z

Day 5:

Early doors, we headed out of the hotel around 8am again and made our way up towards Times Square, the heart of New York, had a few photo opportunities. The senses are overwhelmed in Times Square. The flashing lights of the advertising billboards, the sounds of the people and traffic and the smell of chocolate wafting down from the Hershey’s store.

We didn’t stick around in Times Square, we headed over to find Magnolia’s Bakery, (from the Lonely Island lyric “Hit up magnolia’s and mac on some cupcakes!”) The cupcake was amazing, im not really a cupcake fan, but I wouldn’t turn down these bad boys!

One thing we hadn’t had yet was pizza in New York, so we stopped at a Paul’s pizza near central park and had a slice each, generic pizza slice, it was good but nothing to shout about. We headed into Central Park and wondered around for a while until we settled down on a patch of grass in the sun. Central Park is amazing, the weather was amazing, it all combined for a brilliantly chilled out afternoon, we spent about 3 hours just listening to some tunes on my laptop and laying about in the sun. We spent the afternoon in shot of the filming of Curb Your Enthusiasm which was being filmed right infront of us, we didn’t recognise anybody.

We made our way down 5^th avenue and all the stores, its just a bigger version of regents street. Paolo and I got to Union square and met up with friends of mine Mary and Eungee and we went to Max Brenner’s the chocolate man, it’s a dessert restaurant. The smell of chocolate was overwhelming, but not a bad kind. The menu was like pornography for chocolate lovers, we simply couldn’t decide, so we just got something which we couldn’t get back home, we had an American delicacy called Smores, where you get a marshmellow and melt it over a flame, squeeze it between two gram crackers, then pour chocolate all over it, with you choice of adding bananas or peanut butter. We made a mess…

Friday night in New York! And a big group of my Yonsei friends to spend it with! Hamidah, Marina, Zena, Esther, Clara, Steve, John, Jen and Johnny! They had come from as far as Texas, Canada, Seattle and New Jersey! I used this opportunity to introduce Paolo to Korean drinking and Soju, it was an intense drinking session, as it always is with Korean’s. We had Soju and a variety of Soju cocktails in Koreatown.

We headed clubbing, the music was great! Much better than music in clubs at home in my opinion, however the actual experience wasn’t nearly as fun as it is back home, clubbing in New York is much more pretentious than home, I think its because they simply don’t do it as much. We go clubbing from the age of 18, so clubs are much crazier. When you fill a club with a whole bunch of people over 21, its just not as wild. That being said, we had an incredible night! Seeing all my Yonsei friends was amazing! Wish I could stay with them forever.

2010-08-27T18:49:00.006Z

Day 4:

We woke up around 8am, we had to move the car by 9 because the street we parked on had street cleaning and we risked our car being towed. After re-parking it we had breakfast, a croissant and coffee in the meat packing district. After breakfast we went and tried to move our car back to where it was but all the places were gone, so we decided to drive down past the ground zero and drive the path that we were later going to walk down.

The day was just going to be a sight seeing day, so I will just upload a bunch of photo's to show you the sites. They are all sites that millions of tourists see every year so I wont bother to tell you much about them.

We managed to get back to Chelsea area and park up our car, while parking we got into a conversation with a jewish couple from Jersey, we chatted for half an hour about America and the UK. We then parted ways and headed towards the piers on the Hudson river, we sat and ate the last of the sub's that Auntie Zia had made for us. We sat around on the pier for about an hour, it was amazing weather so we just chilled and took photo's.

We then walked all the way down the island towards Battery park and saw some monuments, ellis island, the statue of liberty and wall street.

We walked up through China town, which was massive and Paolo was the only white guy we saw for about half an hour. After finally making our way out of China town we headed up through Broadway and browsed through the shops, nothing much to speak about. We headed over to St. Marks and had dinner. I thought I'd introduce Paolo to some Vietnamese food, Pho, its really popular here in the states and I enjoy it. Its a broth that you put noodles and beef into, and it all cooks itself up to make a brilliant dish!

The plan was then to head back and chill out for an hour, shower then head out, we both however fell asleep while watching The Office, so a long day ended without us going out! Nevermind, we have big plans for Friday!

Quote of the Day: (while talking to Mark, the jewish couple)

Mark: "everybody here thinks that Jews have horns and a tail"

Paolo: "are you saying that they don't??"

Cue mass hysteria (only from me and Paolo)

On the road to the big apple!

2010-08-26T22:12:00.007Z

Day 3:

Another rainy day lay ahead of us. We packed up our things, half of which were soaking wet. We had a traditional American breakfast of rasberry flavoured peanut butter with jam smothered between a toasted seeded bagel.

In the 20 metres of so from the door of the apartment to the car we managed to get drenched. Brilliant first big drive day, rain. Our highest level wiper speed could barely keep the rain off the windscreen, everybody on the highway was driving at half the speed limit. We were making our way along the 95 Turnpike. It would take us all the way to New York City (and eventually it will take us through Phili, D.C. and Carolina) This journey would see us travelling through more English places than I've actually been to back home in England!

We decided our half way stop would be in New London, which is situated on the river Thames of all places! We settled on a pier and ate some incredible sandwiches that auntie Zia had made for us.

After leaving (New) London we headed out down the 95 but spotted a Mall in Hartford, we stopped here to get our first real taste of American Mall life, it was in the middle of nowhere really but it had all the big name brands and was really rather busy considering it was midday on a wednesday. Paolo got himself a new pair of jeans from American Eagle, only $40, his other jeans were still soaking wet. I activated my US number which is 347-573-3964.
The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful but it passed quickly, we saw numerous ridiculous sized vehicles and listened to some tunes on the way down.
We had travelled through 4 states, Massachussetes, Rhode island, Connecticut and New York. We drove into New York via the Bronx making our way through Queens and over the Queens borough bridge.
See here for pics and video's of our entrance!

We easily found parking on 5th avenue, which was 4 blocks from out hotel. Our hotel is called Hotel 309 and is right in the centre of Chelsea, right by the meatpacking district, a brilliant location!
The hotel is simple but comfortable.

We decided to go out for dinner around 7:30pm, we headed over to a Man vs Food location, a deli diner called Katz Delicatessan. Once again there is not much I can put into words to truly describe how good it was, we tipped the server before ordering and he brought us a plate of tasters of all their different meats. We decided to go for the Corned Beef and Brisket of Beef, all made on location and cooked for upto 24 hours! It was juicy and just unbelievable! The Coleslaw was sweet and better than any coleslaw I’ve ever had. Look at the sheer size of them!

After dinner we made our way 2 blocks east and met my friend Esther, who looked after me when I got stuck in New York previously in the Volcano this year. She’s is one of my closest friends and it was so good to see her again, we went for drinks in our regular haunt around St. Johns, Hirai Mong. It was a quiet night and Paolo and Esther were just getting to know each other, a couple of drinks later and we departed and headed home getting ready for a big day tomorrow!

Quote of the Day: (In the car, while listening to radio)
Paolo: ‘All these country music stars sound like Taylor Swift.’
Me: ‘Erm, well this IS Taylor Swift’
Cue mass hysteria!

2010-08-26T13:36:00.008Z

Day 2:

An early morning for me and

Paolo, the 5 hour time difference meant that we were up at 8:30. Paolo's cousin

Giovanni works night shifts so was up in the morning having just returned from work at the Hilton. We hadn't met him yet because we arrived so late the night before, we had a expresso and cookies for breakfast and talked with Giovanni for about half an hour after listening to some advice on where to visit and directions to the subway, funnily enough in the backround James Bond: You only live twice was playing on the TV and we had a conversation about which bond was the best, me and Paolo concluded it was Pierce Brosnan in Goldeneye, Giovanni went for the classical Shaun Connery.

The weather was light and breezy, with a very slight drizzle, to little to justify donning the kag or bringing an umbrella (which we would later regret). It was just over a mile walk to the Maverick subway station, we took in the sights, the wood panelled buildings and wide suburban roads. Today was a day for walking, we had left our car outside Auntie Zia's. We were only going north one stop to Aquarium station, there we exited and took a early morning walk around the piers, it was very quite in Boston, it being around 9:30pm by now and having missed the rush hour, not many people were around. Too early for stores to by open we merely walked around the piers, the misty rain was starting to build up very slightly, but still nothing to be worried around, we were still walking around in T-shirts.

Just across the road from the Piers was Quincy Market, a famous food market in Boston. Here we found taster of what was in-store for us throughout our America trip, Mexican to Greek food, Italian Sausages, Pizza, Cookies and Cupcakes, Bagels to Barbeque and much more! We bought ourselves a classic beef hot dog which we split and shared (we were saving ourselves for lunch).

We headed out of Quincy Market around 11 (we walked up and down Quincy Market around 4 or 5 times in awe!) we headed into North End where the old little Italy was located. There we took photo's with the Paul Revere statue, he was the dasterly fool who alerted the American Patriots to the arrival of the British Liberation Army (back in 1700's). I hate to be so British and talk about the weather, but now it really started to rain, we unpacked our kag-in-a-bag's and made our way towards Old North Church, one of the oldest churches in Boston, it was an established anglican protestant church, in here we took shelter from the rain and had the full tour and history. We couldn't spend all our time in the church so we decided to brave the rain and begin our search for the legendary Barking Crab restaurant, as featured on Man vs Food!

The rain was really picking up so we stopped in a 7/11 to ask for directions (which was a fail) but check out the Rice Krispie square we found!

Lobster!

We found the famous Barking Crab seafood restaurant! The menu was immense and extensive! A seafood lovers dream! We ordered a Junior Lobster selection which came with 1.25lbs of Lobster and 2lbs of Crab (the options went Junior, Neptune, Venus and King which was 10lbs of Lobster!) with the Junior Lobster selection we also ordered a Clam bake which was a side which came with clam chowder, corn, coleslaw and a bag of mussels. I will let the video and pictures show you just how much we enjoyed this meal!

After lunch the time was about 3:00pm and we were looking for something to do for next, the waiter at the Barking Crab recommended the Harpoon Brewery for their free tasters, it was 2 miles from the restaurant and we figured we could use the exercise. However hard to believe, the rain decided to increase in intensity, our bags were begining to really soak through. We arrived at the brewery, it was quiet, they had a bar inside which was frequented by the staff, after all when we arrived, they were the only ones there, all of them had a pint of one of the 12 pints on offer. They began to run us through all the different beers and told us we could have whatever we wanted, so we proceeded to try all of them! Paolo's settled on their own version of cider while I decided my favourite was the 12% Leviathon. We had to leave by 4pm because a big tourist group was arriving for a tasting.

We then headed over to Harvard, which was in Cambridge (confusing I know), the method of getting there, we thought, was a subway TRAIN, but what we ended up getting on was actually an underground subway system that was all run by busses! Underground! They have a network of busses underneath Boston! Weird.

Harvard was quite a disapointment, not really any fault of its own, but because the rain was such that we just couldn't be outside for much longer without being completely drenched. We couldn't really be risking our valuables in the rain. We did however find refuge in the Harvard book shop, here is Paolo reading about Game Theory (which I had to tell him had nothing to do with Monopoly).

Harvard was a wash-out, literally, we headed home and the walk home from the subway station was even more rain! The only real worthwhile event to mention was a hobo man attacking the bins, which was freaky when you combine it with his shouting the weather.

When we got back home, we got changed and noticed just how wet everything was! My bag was soaked through, I’m lucky my laptop isn’t water damaged.

Dinner was an Italian masterpiece! Auntie Zia had cooked us up some of the best pasta sauce I’ve ever had, with Italian sausage and bread, it was a brilliant meal. We spent the rest of the evening catching up with Paolo’s Zia and Antoinette, we watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, we are really immersing in American culture! Still being subject to the Jet lag we ended up sleeping at 10pm. A good full day in Boston!

Quote of the day: (While at the Barking Crab)

Paolo: “We make eating lobster a spectator sport!”

Food Glorious Food!

2010-08-26T09:23:00.000Z

Quincy Market; Boston, MA

Just a quick post of Quincy Market in Boston! A glorious introduction to the gems of USA Cuisine!

This is mainly a picture post! Check them out! A taste of whats to come!

Day 1: London to Boston

2010-08-24T15:44:00.012Z

Day 1:

USA beckoning we made our way towards the airport. I had stayed the night at Paolo's and his parents were taking us to Terminal 5, Heathrow. It was wet and cold, it was London after all! Once we arrived Paolo's dad tried to sweet talk the check in guy into getting us free upgrades to business class, which kinda worked, he put us on the SFU list (Suitable For Upgrade), this merely increased the anticipation! We had final drinks with Paolo's mum and dad before embarking on our truely epic journey.

Check in went smoothly, security was as standard,Terminal 5 is a big and beautiful place, but a bit cold and characterless. After checking in on Foursquare (the really important check-in in my opinion) we went for a little bit of shopping. I picked up the standard 1L of Jameson's Irish Whiskey in duty free and we found ourselves drawn towards the cigar room! Browsing with wonder (and totally pretending we were more sophisticated and classier than we clearly were) and pretending to know what we were doing, we thought it'd be a good idea to get some celebratory stogeys! Unfortunately you can't take cuban products into america, and seeing as they were all cuban cigars, we had to bail on this plan, perhaps Vegas will present more opportunity.

Knowingly eager we had turned up about 2 hours early for our flight, so we had to sit around for a bit, but being the brand new Terminal 5 and it being built by the British, we got stuck in the internal train between the gates! for about 20 minutes we were stuck, and the whole holiday was up in the air! (perhaps an over dramatisation, but you get the picture)

Boarding our plane and not getting our upgrade we were pleased to have the honour of sitting behind a young baby, who clearly for the entire 7 hour flight, was not happy to be heading towards the USA (well not as much as us) the only thing missing from our flight experience so far with British Airways was getting stuck on the runway for an hour and a half... oh wait sorry, we WERE stuck on the runway for an hour and a half! Well done BA!

There isn't much to say about the flight, apart from the aforementioned crying baby, we were perhaps cracking too many america jokes and trying our silly accents, but nobody said anything. At least we had a couple of drinks to get us through :)

Arriving at the National car rental location it was dark at 8pm, we arrived and was greeted with a choice of 3 cars, a KIA Sorento, Dodge Nitro or a JEEP SUV, they said we could simply choose! We were like 2 kids in candy shop, except with huge ass SUV's! Decisions decisions! We went for the Dodge Nitro, for a couple of reasons, it was a Dodge, it had a cool name, and it was comfortable. Check out the Dodge

However a spanner in the works was about to turn up as the lady disappeared to let us explore the cars, she turned up with a Ford Explorer, which was HUGE! 7 seater, more than we had bargained for, but she had a word with her manager and managed to get us swing us this beauty! (SEE PICS!) Now that we had this larger than expected car, our whole plan to buy tents to camp when we our without accommodation was out the window, the seats in our car fold flat, so we are able to sleep in it!

Upon leaving the rental place we followed the directions that they gave us to Border street, however due to a misunderstanding (on their part!) they sent us towards Porter street! So we were lost, after wondering around in the car for a bit we decided to bite the bullet and do what no man does, ask for directions... after a couple of failed attempts, we parking in front of a mexican cafe and the delivery guy decided to escort us to our location! Damn americans are so nice!

The place we are spending our first two nights is Paolo's great aunt's, Zia Maria, who is a sweet old lady who was trying to over feeding us from the moment we arrived! Prosciutto, Mozzerella, Turkey, Provolone and all the condiments and trimmings! And for Dessert? what else! Cookies and Doughnuts!

Now we are off to bed, and we will be watching our little TV that Zia provided :)

Day one not off to a bad start!

So mileage so far: 00010

Quote of the day:

(while Paolo is looking at the map of America)

Paolo: "Hey look, there's a place called charlotte, reckon we'll be going past there?"

Me: "I don't know about you, but im planning on going IN Charlotte!"

Cue lots of childish giggling!

Car is sorted, flights are booked and lift to the airport arranged....

2010-08-22T11:43:00.003Z

ITS TIME FOR A ROAD TRIP!

Roughly 4600 Miles of driving, at least 23 major stops, this is the trip of a lifetime!Im currently supposed to be packing, but I've taken a break while I wait for my clothes to dry and before I begin to do some ironing (gotta look ship shape for our American cousins).
This is a starter note to launch this trip, check out this page for updates etc.

This trip was first dreamt up over a year ago over ribs at our regular Kingston haunt, Tony Roma's, we had all arranged to meet up for lunch, but only me and Paolo turned up! So we got to talking about how much we liked BBQ ribs, and how we should go travelling after university, and being the genius's we are, we put two and two together and decided we needed to go and discover America! Now the British have a long history on US soil, and we most definately wish to add to that!

After just a few days of planning and a few months of anticipation the time is soon upon us to embark (and yes ofcourse we are flying British Airways, who else!). The journey so far has involved me selling alot of my stuff (or 'Junk', gotta get used to the US lingo) and working my arse off to earn a bit of extra mulag. But we have ourselves a Car and we have ourselves a general route.

This is what we are expecting on the car front:

We are expecting highs, lows and food! Lots of it! hopefully we won't have ballooned by the time we reach the west coast. But for the mean time I have other things to think about, I have to pick up my camera from a friend and sort my house out before I leave my room is a tip and its going to stay that way until I get back and have to do the UN-packing.

The general route is not set in stone, but we do wish to proceed with some direction, so here is a map of where we will be going!
I expect to meet many friends and make many friends!

See you in America, or if you stuck in England, I guess we will see you when we are back!

View USA Roadtrip in a larger map

Road Trip Agenda!

2010-08-02T19:32:00.003Z

Okay, so some of you must have heard me babbling on by now about my road trip across america, well i thought it best for my american friends to see when and where i will be at different places, this is a very rough guide, but do keep checking my blog here for more details (because facebook wont always let me post so much detail. I will put an update on facebook to alert you of an update.
So here is the Agenda in terms of timings, and some details of the plans at each location, please message me if you can contribute anything to my trip!
I will be travelling with my mate Paolo!

Iron Man graffiti!

2010-05-03T15:26:00.001Z

Iron Man graffiti!
Originally uploaded by Terocs

Check out this sick graffiti of Iron Man underneath Waterloo station!
check out my other graffiti photo's

Climate Action, where is it?

2010-05-03T11:34:00.004Z

In 1988, James Hansen, a climate scientist for the Goddard institue at NASA, warned a Washington meeting that the world was getting warmer due to the build up of greenhouse gases, and an increased tendency for floods and droughts was to be expected. He made his speech on the hottest day of the year, when the midwest was suffering one of its worst droughts.

Hansen's speech spurred the setting up of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

It's interesting that a change of just a few degree's during an American summer turned climate change into a 'global issue' that was able to mobilize the entire scientific committee into action, when only 3-years previously thousands of famine victims in Ethiopia and Sudan werent enough to move governments towards acting on global environmental emergencies. These deaths took place in Africa after all, and they were still considered 'out there'

Just as Terrorism was never a real issue in America until it landed on their doorsteps, the Environment is still not a big issue there. One would think that it would take a dramatic hazard event to shake the political system, such as 9.11 did with Terrorism. Perhaps Katrina, which had a death toll of 4081, would have been the catalyst for action in the political power house of the U.S., after all it surpassed the 2995 death toll of the 9/11 attacks which spurred a whirlwind reaction. However the lack of action shows how the geography of politics comes into play. Ethiopia and Sudan clearly doesn't have the social, economic or political capital with U.S. political interests and apparently neither does New Orleans.

Sadly this is because even within the borders of America, if it doesn't effect those with the money and power, than it is still an issue which is 'out there'.
It is unfortunately that the U.S. is so blase on the issue, it is the case of the Ostrich Arena of politics, where politicians stick their heads in the sand to avoid doing anything that would appear drastic. The environment still doesn't hold the capacity to be worth any politicians to use any of their political capital on. This means that what little action is taken is often short sighted and avoids any real political breakthrough.

After arriving back form New York, a city I now Love, it would be a shame if it took a disaster such as 9/11 (which clearly still impeeds the memories and emotions of New Yorkers still) in order for a change to happen.
U.S. politicians should see the foresight as a blessing, it would be a shame to see a blessing of knowledge go unheeded.

Cold Turkey

2010-05-02T02:19:00.004Z

Facebook is now off! Its serving as a much too desirable distraction for me during this revision season, and boy do i need to avoid distractions! Since being stuck in NYC ive missed some valuable study time! I'm way behind and i need to take drastic measures to give myself even the slightest chance of doing alright, getting good grades are kinda off the books at this point and doing OKAY is what im looking to do. I'm becoming more and more disenchanted with my course and Im looking forward to getting university out of my life!

It could be interesting for me as well, to see how long I can go without it, Facebook has been such a big part of my daily life and routine, it will be interesting to see if the urge becomes unbearable and I log back in! I started to feel that I was becoming far to dependant on my Facebook as a means connecting to friends that my phone was being under used, and I was missing opportunities to actually meet up and catch up with people. So thats my plan! already I find myself lacking contact details of a bunch of friends whom I would normally turn to Facebook to connect me. I'm a Facebook addict and this is my cold Turkey time

If being in NYC serves as the reason I do poorly in my exams than it would have been totally worth it. The people I met and the experiences I had have definately served to let me grow as a person and Im definately better for it. I'm looking forward to life and the adventures and people it will bring!

This is me bounding towards life!

Also watch this space for another NYC update! (if I can be bothered)
I may also use this blog as a place to write up anything interesting that I've just learned about while studying.

There's nothing you can't do now that your in New York

2010-04-12T16:21:00.006Z

Monday 12th April 2010,
4th full day in New York City.
Ive had a hectic few days with little sleep, many friends and much partying.
My first impression of New York is of a city who’s people have so much personality which is totally reflected in their lifestyle.
First night straight off from the airport I met up with Esther and came across this little gem that reminded me of one of my greatest loves –
David Purdie!

And then proceeded to get to know the local bars and luckily my friend Emma was able to join me! Catching up with good friends is my favourite past time.

On the Friday I met up with Jessica, and we met up with a bunch of alumni from Berkley, who are a crazy bunch! We ran up a bill of $1200 just in our first location which they were able to put on their expense accounts, that was the beginning of a crazy night that took me all over Manhattan. Starting off at a bar just off Times square, to getting dinner at a Pho place downtown near NYU, then onto a bar called ‘the W’ underneath a hotel on Union Square, which eventually got flooded so we had to moved on at about 3am. At this point people in our crew of now about 4 (which started at around 10 people) started to be craving a famous late night delicacy, chicken and rice! On 53rd street, the que at 4m was a mile long, so you knew it was good, taxi’s constantly pulling up to drop people off just for this one late night food stand which is apparently a local must have meal. We tried to get into the lobby of the Hilton to eat our food but they wouldn’t let us, so one of the guys got a room in the Sheraton on 53rd and 7th (just down the road from Time Square and we proceeded to much in our room and watch movies. Here is a few pics of the room and then a view from our room.

In the morning a couple of people had to catch planes and I decided to walk back to NYU, which is around 8th street and I was currently on 53rd street, but the walk was good, ive included some pics of the places I passed and the weather was incredible!

When I got back I decided that catching up on sleep was for the weak! So I walked back up to Central park to see what all the fuss was about, it was only a 3 mile walk and I got to go past the empire state building and times square again. Central Park is way to overcrowded, unlike London where we have loads of big parks, Central Park seems to be one of the only ones, and it shows, most of the grass has been trodden away and there are people absolutely everywhere doing all manner of past times in the park. I was then supposed to meet Esther in Soho, which is back downtown around 4 miles, this took me past the famous Square Apple store which had a que around the ‘block’ for the new iPad still, and also past the Rockafella centre. All these places ive seen in hundreds of movies are all very close to each other, its brilliant.

The weather is great and the company is brilliant, which brings me onto my Saturday night when I got to reunite with Steve, Emma, Esther and a couple of other people from Yonsei. Soju and Kareoke ensued!

Im a feature at Kings College London

2010-03-27T09:01:00.003Z

I had an interview about my subject at the beginning of this year and I've just found I was featured on the main website. So if your interested in joining Geography and Kings College London, check out this video!

Idiots@Work

2010-03-21T13:17:00.003Z

Either there's a god at work or im going Krave!

2010-03-17T11:18:00.003Z

Im going a bit Krave for these cereals at the moment, they are on discount at Iceland for only a pound a box, so ive gone and bought a dozen! They are just immense in every sense, with or without milk! They are the perfect student food and the perfect study companion! everybody has to try them. Obviously the £1 price tag is to attract people as the launch, and i can say that this strategy has worked on at least one individual! its an Oat, rice and wheat pillow containing a chocolate/hazelnut flavoured filling, and god is it good! Its religion in a bite!

p.s. im not working for kelloggs :p

Addict?

2010-03-14T13:13:00.001Z

I have a Macbook and iPhone, but I'm not an Apple fanboy. I've acquired these purely because of matters of convenience. The iPhone I bought because at the time of my contract renewal with O2. I was also looking to buy a Nintendo DS, and I looked into getting an iPhone because of the great value of the games in relation to having to buy games for a DS, and I would be knocking out two birds with one stone, phone and games platform, and also because I’m not much of a RPG player, I prefer games with puzzles etc, such as Tetris, peggle etc. which the iPhone was ideal for.
So the iPhone has served its purpose really well plus it came with a bunch of advantages that I have come to rely on especially living in London, it makes everything I do convenient, so im never lost in anything that I do.
And as for the Macbook Pro, I had never been comfortable using the Apple OS but I’ve always wanted to get to grips with it.
Then when I went to Amsterdam in September 09, I got my Dell mini 9 stolen amongst other things (which was the best computer I've ever owned) don’t feel to sorry for me, I bought it for the purpose that if I got robbed It wouldn’t be a great financial burden to me to get it replaced (I bought it for around £250 and it served me so well) the dell mini traveled around 50,000 miles with me that year around the globe. This left me with a hole in my life that needed filling, and while I'm still a student and qualifying for Apple's 15% student discount, I thought I'd treat myself (also the new Dell mini 10's are much more expensive so the step up to the Mac wasn’t so large). The Macbook Pro is a beautiful piece of machinery and for my simple needs it serves me beyond my expectations and has opened up so many other avenues in computing that I thought were beyond my technical abilities.
Anyways, let me get to my point. Recently I've been having a lot of dreams about bad things happening to my iPhone! What a crazy thing to be dreaming about right? My dreams have ranged from me walking to University across Waterloo Bridge and a bird grabbing my phone and dropping it into the river. To me being at a house party in the US and being pushed into a pool (like in all those movies) with my phone in my pocket. The rest mostly involved dropping my phone in various obscure and unrealistic places :s
What do you recon this all means?
To be honest the only reason I would be upset about if I broke my phone is simply the financial burden, but I survive perfectly well on a plain old mobile phone. So strange right?
Also it makes me wonder how waterproof my iPhone is?
Check out this video ---

I think this video is trolling; however it still makes me curious.

Pacman live's on!

2010-03-11T11:34:00.003Z

I must admit im guilty, guilty of leaving my tea out over night, should have cleaned it as soon as I'd finished it, otherwise it leaves a nasty stain. But not this time! Not unless you think Pacman is nasty for killing all those ghosts!
Check out my tea!

Bringing back some oldies

2010-03-10T11:28:00.004Z

The term oldie can hardly be applied to the world of Youtube in relation to area's such as the music industry, but with all the original content being uploaded daily, the online world moves alot faster than those of the fim and music industries. For this reason I would say that an oldie would be anything from over two years ago and I wish to use my vast knowledge (and time wasting abilities) to refreshen people to some of the classic Youtube videos that helped Youtube go viral!

I will be adding from time to time some of my favourite videos that will jig your funny bone, be it for the first time or for the nth time.

Superman in lecture theatre
----Check it out ----

The Gauntlet

2010-03-09T23:50:00.006Z

Me and my friend Dan In Real Life have a competition!

The first person to get 100 followers on Twitter!

The Prize?

The looser has to buy the winner a three course meal of the winners choosing!

Rules?

No Spamming! We have to gain followers based purely on content. Apart from that I cant think of anything else that I may have missed.

Undoubtably I'm going to win, so I've already started to count my chickens.

The first question? Where to dine? Well Planet Hollywood has just launched on Taste London.

Im thinking

Starters:

BEEF SLIDERS

Three mini beef burgers topped with cheddar cheese, shaved tomato, cucumber and caramelized onions served on a sweet bun.

OUR WORLD FAMOUS CHICKEN CRUNCH

Tender strips of chicken breast with a crunchy sweet coating served with creole mustard sauce.

Main: (so many choices!)

the Classic!

BBQ PORK RIBS

A full rack of tender baby back ribs smothered with our tangy sweet barbeque sauce served with fries and coleslaw.

CHICKEN AVOCADO TOWER £12.50 Mixed field greens topped with layers of chicken, bacon, avocado, bleu cheese, cucumber and tomatoes with our own ranch dressing.

Dessert:

BANANA SPLIT SUPER SUNDAE

Strawberry, vanilla and chocolate ice cream piled high topped with swiss chocolate, strawberry and blueberry sauces, finished with bananas, whipped cream and a cherry on top.

CHOCOLATE BROWNIE SUPER SUNDAE

Our double chocolate chip brownie, vanilla and chocolate ice cream smothered in a swiss chocolate fudge sauce, whipped cream and a cherry on top.

I know I should have picked one of the more refined dining establishments that I frequent in London, but this is exactly the reason I want to go! The experience, I hardly go to places like Planet Hollywood, and I'm keen to buy into the Americanisation, I've never been before and they have just relaunched.

So better get one promoting myself if im going to earn that meal!

Check out the Planet Hollywood website!

Check out the TasteLondon website!

(This sounds like an enourmous advertisement for Planet Hollywood, but I swear it isn't meant to be)

My Guilty Pleasure songs

2010-03-08T21:52:00.007Z

Re: Dan In Real Life

So heres the rules regarding guilty pleasure songs.

Your not meant to like them, but you do.
You generally don't want to tell people you like them
The biggie- No one is judged for their guilty pleasure songs

Unlike the majority of people im not too afraid to tell people my guilty pleasures, infact sometimes i make it known! however I would argue that mine aren't perhaps so embarrassing, but I will let you be the judge of that.

Firstly I start with Enrique Iglesias - Hero

Already I've realised that perhaps my guilty pleasure songs are actually quite embarrassing. I love this simply because it's a bit of inspiration, shows great humility and vulnerability and the give and take of being in a relationship and for those reasons along its a guilty pleasure. I can be your hero, and you can be mine. However, It's also a blast to sing along to, and often people will catch me out while im cooking and singing along.

Secondly: Daniel Bedingfield - If your not the one

Yup, i definately take it back, my guilty pleasures are exactly that, something to be guilty of. I just cant help it, this song seems to say to me everything that love should be, writing a love letter is terribly hard when you somebody has already written it all down in a song better than you could ever conceive in your tiny mind!

My Third Pleasure: Survivor - Eye of the Tiger

Why is it guilty? because it's over played and everybody says it's the most inspirational song for them, and I guiltily have to join and say I too find this to be one of the few things that can make me want to go out for a run and punch a few cows. Watch the video, go out have a skip and pull a log or 2 up a mountain, then come back to read my final two!

Im Guilty of liking Nickelback!: Nickelback - Photograph

It's guilty because you're simply not meant to like Nickelback if you want to be cool, but im sorry, i like this song. Reminds me of all the friends around the world that I've had to leave behind at one point or another. Your never alone in this world, the people you meet will always be in your memory, and thats what this song reminds me.

Guilty? Pleasure: Gene Wilder (as Willy Wonker) - Pure Imagination

Play this to me and my eye's will glaze over and I will float away! Why is it Guilty? Because this is the song that reminds me of my childhood (which Tim Burton and Johnny Depp unabashedly destroyed in their remake) and real men don't reminisce about their childhood!

Whatch the video and the you feel like this is what a world without war would be like (a.k.a. full of oompa loompa's). Have a listen and I dont think I will need to explain myself any further. (this is a very close second to my next ultimate guilty pleasure)

My Ultimate Guilty Pleasure: Disney's Hercules - Go the Distance

Enough said, this is my ultimate guilty pleasure song, i love it. Inspirational and motivating, for me, even more so than the Eye of the Tiger. Guilty why? because it's Disney, and it's way to cheesy, and it implies that you sometimes need to be inspired and reminded that you can be all you can be and all that crap. But with this song playing on my Ipod, I feel I can take on any of Titans (must be what Steve Jobs was listening to when he decided to come back to Apple to take on Microsoft). Nothing beats an original Disney track, sorry Peter Andre.

P.S After reviewing my choice of songs, I thought it appropriate to mention that I am in fact NOT gay. Unlike State Senator Roy Ashburn - Prominent Anti Gay rights activist

The King of pop Lives on!

2010-03-08T21:40:00.002Z

The King of pop is still alive! In the hearts and minds of us all. He still inspires us with his music and his life. This video is merely one of millions of inspired fans paying a tribute!

Waiting for a bus in Jan 2010

2010-03-08T21:34:00.002Z

This is what it was like waiting for a bus this year during the snow! (well if you believed the media firestorm!)

Exchange rates and Deforestation

2008-02-09T03:21:00.000Z

A little topic of conversation from a couple of geographers studying at kings college london, 6th best uni in UK and i think it tells, videos speaks for iteself really

Deck the Hallz

2008-01-15T20:53:00.000Z

I thought id show everybody what me and jimmy got upto during the winter semester at uni. The story is that we got completely nocturnal and had no lectures for the last 3 weeks so we decided that we would wrap the hallway with wrapping paper and that is shown in this video :p
we also covered a wall of the kitchen in foil, put up some mistle toe, a christmas tree and tinsle, hope you enjoy,
This is less comedy, its more just comedy in what stoopid stuff we get up2 :p

Revamp

2008-01-14T03:24:00.000Z

Since starting uni at Kings College London i have decided to revamp this blog and continue with the content, so expect to find much new content!

I was on French television!

2006-06-25T02:12:00.000Z

Hay i just got back from GYLC, ill being posting about that later, but when i got back to the UK i found out that i was featured on a French TV show and the public of france voted on my video in a competition and they voted it into 3rd place competing with other videos! go me!

Check out the video here!
im featured after 50 seconds!

Googlidol

2006-06-04T13:30:00.000Z

Hay every1, my video made it into the heats of www.googleidol.com , its a world famous site and on the first day of the event my video was watched 6000 times! go on and vote for me , im currently loosing to a terrible video by Dream Team, what an injustice!

Gorllaz : Clint Eastwood

2006-05-28T15:42:00.000Z

Hay people check out my clint eastwood lipsync video i created, its already had a couple of thousand views and my m8s all love it, so check it out.

Click here!

Quotes 2 live ur life by

2006-05-28T15:39:00.000Z

Chris's Quotes 2 live Chris's life by
"hay everything taste's good with vodka, even you!"
"todays the day i make up with myself"
"Sometimes i feel that i could never find somebody to love me as much as i love myself"
"Sometimes i feel that when people meet me all they see is a pretty face, but infact if they got to know me they'd realise im also inteligent and funny too."
"apparently a picture of my face is up for the nobel peace prize"
All the quotes here are my own
Saving all my money to buy all the new Nintendo Wii stuffz, im gunna get the console on the day and all the avaiable games!