So here we are, exactly one month in... has it been everything we hoped it would be, and more (as asked by the eccentric airboat captain in Florida after a wild dash round the outskirts of Lake Okeechobee)?
Well... no. Perhaps. It's been... good, but not great.
It seems churlish to be less than breathlessly excited in the first report back, but it would also be wrong to pretend that we've been having an awesome time, all the time. Having travelled reasonably widely before, having visited the US several times, and being in a (relatively) sensible couple with an eye on our budget (and our waistlines!) at nearly all times - all these things have contributed to a slightly muted reaction to our experiences.
Many people said, before we left, 'Oh, you must be so excited', and I had to reply 'Actually no...' - I wasn't excited, I was a bit stressed with the intricate planning, but I was hoping the excitement would kick in on departure. It did, to a degree, but this first phase was always going to be a bit duty-bound rather than adventurous. We pretty much had to fly in to New York because that's where all the RTW tickets go, and we really wanted to visit friends, which meant Tennessee and Miami, and so the itinerary kind of wrote itself... I'd never been to Washington DC, neither of us had been to Philadelphia, and the Deep South was a mystery to us both...
I think everyone has the stage on a holiday when they feel they really ought to do the adult thing, visit the worthy sights, go round the museum etc. in order to justify the fun bits, and in a sense we've done that with the east coast and the southern states of the US. It's a bit silly really - both Kate and I will happily explain how we rebel against the ought when we make our life choices, and yet we've ended up spending precious travelling time doing just that. That's not to say it's been wasted - it's been exploratory, informative, even revelatory - just not, on balance, something we'd particularly recommend or rush to do again.
Having said all that, we have got lots to report back on...
New York was almost exactly as we remembered it (bar the change from the Twin Towers to the Freedom Tower), but having lived in London for several years (nearly 15 in my case) it was significantly less overwhelming than our first experiences back in the day. I actually found it quite nice - at least the idea of living there seemed quite reasonable, except for the fact I had mentally adjusted to leaving big-city life behind me! It just had an air of being a fully realized place, where there was so much going on that you could be confident that you wouldn't run out of things to do, places to go and stuff to see, and yet you could carve your own path in it - exactly like London. There's a lot to be said for places like that. Perhaps I will miss London more than I thought when we return and live in Bath!
We were only there for an evening and a morning, with time to walk to find dinner and a longer stroll the next day, but the sun was shining, and we found good food - especially at the diner we happened upon in the morning, where we were introduced to the concept of cake as a starter course for breakfast. It was really good cake too - tear-and-share cinnamon syrupy cake - but there was enough of it for 8 people and we still had big plates of eggs, bacon, sausage & pancakes to follow... so we kept most of it for later! All in all it was a great introduction to our trip.
The heavily-laden slog to the bus stop which turned out to be several streets over from the position indicated in the guidebook was not so great - but at least we knew we'd have a hire car later in the trip and wouldn't be beholden to pick-up points and fixed schedules! The Bolt Bus and Megabus trips we took from NYC to Philadelphia and on to DC were much better than I had feared. Greyhound buses have a bit of a reputation for shady characters as your fellow passengers and questionable comfort as you ride but these new competitor services were surprisingy good, including wifi as you ride.
Soon we were in Philadelphia, which neither of us knew anything about (I haven't even seen Rocky) so it was a pleasant surprise to find ourselves to be based in the quite charming historic district, in a quirky but actually very liveable hostel (the Apple Hostel). We were easily able to roam around the genuinely old buildings, learn about American independence and absorb a bit of history that neither of us knew much about, to our shame. We both liked it a good deal more than we thought we would.
Washington DC was less compelling - the monuments and museums of the National Mall were definitely worth visiting, and our epic walk to Arlington Cemetery and back, and around, was certainly informative, but the hordes of exchange students, school parties and generally uninspired children were pretty soul-destroying. The Smithsonian exhibitions were excellent, but the number of visitors who literally ignored all context and captioning in favour of taking a blurred iPhone photo and moving on were just depressing. If they weren't doing that they were slumped in the corners in packs looking at Facebook. I'm sure it wasn't *actually* the case but at times it felt like I was the only person there actually *reading* anything and appreciating why what I was looking at was important... the curse of the accessible museum, I suppose. I did feel the museums should have days where you have to pass a basic test to show interest before you're allowed in to clog up the place. OK, so I'm already old and grouchy - deal with it.
The escape from DC was at the wheel of our first hire - sorry, 'rental' - car. After another minor trek in the hot sunshine (carrying all our possessions) to locate the Enterprise office, we were soon on our way in our little white Hyundai Elantra. Kate was driving on the first day, as she had the experience (both of driving in the USA and driving in general - did I mention I only passed my test a couple of months ago?) but the car turned out to be extremely biddable, with a smooth automatic gearbox and all necessary mod-cons, barring sat-nav. Fortunately I had thought ahead and downloaded maps for an app on my smartphone which worked surprisingly well.
We commenced the first leg of driving, which took us almost directly inland, firstly to Shenandoah, where I first took the wheel on the classic drivers' road Skyline Drive. Despite alarming Kate with my tendency to flirt with the white line at the edge of the carriageway (it's tricky to judge your road position in a left-hand drive car!) I did OK, and soon came to enjoy it. We weren't expecting much from Luray Caverns, just outside the national park, but they were really stunning and well worth visiting.
Onward and inward we drove, through Virginia and Kentucky in to Tennessee. Not many people seem to explore that direction, but it was surprisingly nice - the landscape is covered with gently rolling hills, small towns and fields, some of it quite reminiscent of English scenery. One thing that became clear early on was that driving in the US was not of the quality we are used to in the UK. There are a number of differences...
- exits from high speed highways and interstates are often abrupt and poorly signposted, and the road surface is way worse than is considered acceptable back home.
- drivers like to tailgate you even though they don't actually want you to go faster, get out of their way or let them pass (even if they have the opportunity).
- the light turning green is just the signal to start thinking about getting ready to move off in the near future...
- undertaking, failing to indicate before manoeuvring, swooping from lane to lane to gain a few places, diving into inappropriate gaps with zero stopping distance: these are all fine.
We worked our way through to find Kate's Canadian friend Kate and her husband Wayne (an ex-Brit, now American) just south of Nashville, and were welcomed into their little oasis of rationality in the Tennessee insanity.We'd been sort-of hoping that the 'God, guns and fried food' reputation of the South was an exaggeration. We also hadn't realised that the South starts almost as soon as you leave DC. Kate & Wayne assured us that it was all true. Wayne had in fact fully adopted the 'guns' part of the mantra and I took advantage of that to go shooting with him the first day we were there. What can I say... boys like toys, and guns are pretty much the ultimate toy - even if they do have a few awkward issues about death hovering around them. For the record, my educated, liberal parents really did try to avoid raising me to play with guns - we weren't allowed realistic toy guns (beyond cork pop guns and the cowboy cap gun I've seen photos of myself wielding at a very early birthday party), gun-based computer games were frowned upon, and I certainly was never allowed to own an airgun or BB gun at any stage. I am very glad we can't own the real thing in the UK (bar certain exceptions) and I think the US rules are insane (though they've dug themselves into such a hole I'm not sure there's a better alternative at this point).
Nonetheless, I wasn't going to turn down the opportunity to play here. Wayne had a couple of handguns (.22 and .45) plus a .22 rifle, but the range we were at had a literally-incredible array of guns for sale, some of which were also available to rent, so I went for the top of the range (of course) and borrowed the FN SCAR 5.56, a proper battle rifle (single shot mode only, in this case - they weren't THAT crazy). This is a highly-engineered, precision-made killing machine - the range staff approved of my choice, citing its excellent shooting characteristics including very low recoil, despite its ear-hammering noise. It was simultaneously thrilling to hold and use, and deeply disturbing that for a couple of thousand dollars, nearly anyone could buy one. There was absolutely no call for your average citizen to own a gun like this - it laughed in the face of concepts/excuses like 'home defense' or 'hunting'. I do kinda want one though... as long as no-one else can have one.
We spent a really lovely few days there, because Kate & Wayne were so nice rather than because of where we were. Apparently we'd hit one of the two weeks in the year that the Tennessee climate is actually pleasant! After visting Nashville proper (somehow smaller than we expected), soon enough we were heading back to the east coast, through the Carolinas, and down through Georgia into Florida. We found a few nice spots along the way - Ruby Falls were spectacular, Asheville and Charleston were rather lovely and the Georgia coastline was an unexpected pleasure, but there was a lot of driving and not much stopping. We did manage to get a decent hike in the forested hills of North Carolina though.
Following the A1A down the coast of Florida was a seemingly endless ribbon of beach to the left (rarely actually visible from the road, unfortunately), and strip development of low-rise housing, shopping and junk-food restaurant to the right, punctuated by the high-rise condos of Daytona Beach and other resorts. The relentless barrage of adverts, billboards and signs promoting this, that and the other became simply exhausting - even when trying to ignore them the mental effort in separating them from the background clutter, evaluating and discarding them became quite tiresome.
We've already ended up spending quite a while in the so-called Sunshine State (Stormy State, more like - rain and thunderstorms everywhere), and we've still got a week or so more to go - we came down the east coast as planned, took an improvised side-trip to the interior (where we met the airboat captain of the quote above) and spent a day at the Kennedy Space Center - sadly the rocket launch we were hoping to witness was postponed, but we might see a different one on the way back up. The other attractions were pretty good - the mighty Saturn V rocket and the shuttle orbiter Atlantis were well worth seeing. After all that we spent a few days with Andres and Tom, ex-Miniclip workers both, who also made us very welcome in their homes and freed us from the motel routine!
Fort Lauderdale and Miami are both cities with a lot going for them... if you want to adopt their very American lifestyles. Clearly it was working well for Andres and Tom - but it's not for Kate or me! We are nonetheless very grateful to them both for looking after us, feeding us and giving us beds for the several nights we stayed with them - and especially to Viv for giving us the excuse we wanted to not go out much!
From Miami we took a day-trip to the Everglades before our temporary escape to the Caribbean - very interesting, provided you are into geography like we are, with a huge diversity of plant habitats and great wildlife to spot, even if we were in the wrong season (winter would have been better, it seems). Still, we saw enough alligators to keep us in shoes and handbags for life, which is the main thing.
After that it was straight to the airport, and on to Montserrat... but that will be a whole other blog post.
