Week 49 - USA - Moab, UT to Phoenix, AZ

After breakfast on Monday, we headed north out of Moab and drove past the town of Green River. There was a lot of snow on the flat plain so in parts the countryside was completely white. Then we headed southwest past Hanksville and the Capitol Reef National Park with towering red and orange buttes and we stopped at one point beside the Fremont River to see petroglyphs of bighorn sheep and anthropomorphic figures carved on the red rock walls.

We passed through the small town of Torrey before getting on the Scenic Byway 12 towards Bryce Canyon National Park. We drove up to 9,600 feet on Boulder Mountain and just outside a viewpoint saw a small group of female deer. They looked in great condition but moved off when we stopped and got out of the car. The mountaintop was spectacular with deep snow, large green conifers, and bare birch trees and incredible views over the red mesas and canyons to other snow capped mountain ranges. We had just pulled out and gathered speed going downhill when we came around a corner to find a larger group of female deer including young ones standing in the middle of the road. We braked and they froze and then darted in all directions.

We stopped to have a picnic lunch at the entrance to the Calf Creek Recreation Area in the Escalante National Monument Park. It was warm down by the small river running through the canyon. We soaked up some sun while we ate our lunch. When we went down to the creek to wash our hands, we found some paw prints which may have been from a mountain lion and a fish shot off from the shallows.

After lunch we headed off again and at one point the road ran along a ridge with steep canyons falling away on both sides! We kept driving but had to keep stopping for photo opportunities so that we only reached the Bryce Canyon National Park at 4.00 pm. We scooted around the Sunrise, Sunset, Bryce and Inspiration viewpoints which offered views of different points around the Amphitheatre. From the canyon rim we looked down on thousands of different spires of red and orange below falling away for miles across the valleys. The scenery was magnificent. There were cliffs, canyons, mountains, mesas and pinnacles covered in a thick blanket of snow as far as the eye could see.

We exited the park thinking ourselves lucky to see three national parks over the last three days. The scenic road went through two natural rock arches in quick succession as we headed for Page on the edge of the massive Lake Powell, reputed to have a longer shore line than California. We arrived at 7.00 pm and checked into a Best Western without bothering to check anywhere else. We went out for dinner to Mexican Fiesta and bought lunch for tomorrow from the Safeway supermarket before retreating to our room.

On Tuesday, we woke up at 7.00 am, had a rushed breakfast in the hotel and then checked out. The drive to Monument Valley located within the Navajo Nation on the Utah-Arizona border took us about two hours. Monument Valley is one of the most famous American Wild West landscapes having featured as the backdrop in several classic cowboy and Indian films. At the entrance gate, we paid our park entry fees, and then paid a quick visit to the Visitor Centre to have a look at the gift shop and admire the views of the rock formations from the balconies.

Inside the park we drove along an 18 mile unpaved loop road to get a closer look at the monuments - sandstone mesas, buttes and spire rock formations. The monuments in the park all had names, and we had quite a bit of difficulty reconciling the names to the monuments. Obviously we were lacking in imagination! It took us an hour and a half to complete the drive. We had lunch and then decided to tackle the Wildcat Trail – a 3.2 mile trail that took us around the base of the West Mitten Butte and gave us a sense of how enormous the monuments were.. It turned out to be a very easy walk across some soft rock bed and sand dunes through the native vegetation including Juniper trees, yucca, Sagebrush, Russian thistle (Tumbleweed) and Navajo Tea.

After we left the park, we drove to the Grand Canyon National Park, a steep sided canyon carved out by the Colorado River in Arizona. The drive took us about three hours and the sun was just beginning to set as we arrived at the park entrance gate. The helpful lady at the ticket office directed us to the Desert View Point, half a mile from the gate where we arrived in time to see the canyon turning a rosy pink in the setting sun. From the Desert View Point, it was a twenty five mile drive to Grand Canyon Village within the park. We had dinner at the Yavapai Cafeteria and after viewing an expensive drab-looking room without WiFi, we decided to drive to the nearby town of Tusayan where we checked into a lovely room at the Canyon Plaza Resort and settled in for the evening with a bottle of wine.

We slept in until 8.00 am on Wednesday, had breakfast and then headed over to the visitor centre. At the visitor centre, a very enthusiastic local lady helped us so we knew what to do for the day.

We drove back to the rim and parked the car at the Shrine of Ages and walked to the rim trail. We walked along the rim stopping at every lookout, watching out for ice patches and trying to soak up sun. Every few hundred metres there was a polished rock sample with name and age and as we walked the rocks on display got older. The last rock was an Elves Chasm gneiss 1,840 million years old. Of course there were breathtaking views of the canyon with all its side canyons running off at right angles looking very good in the clear air and sunlight. We saw a lady with what looked like a TV antennae and she was waving it around in the air with faint crackling sounds coming from a battery pack she was carrying. We thought she might be a new age nut, of which there are plenty around – listening for aliens possibly. She left abruptly so we had no answers.

We reached the Bright Angel Lodge and turned down the Bright Angel Trail into the canyon to the Phantom Lodge down by the Colorado River. The trail zigzagged back and forth but unfortunately large sections were iced over and it wasn't long before Suzie fell over so we had to turn back. We did manage to get through a natural rock arch and saw a couple of cowboys bringing a line of mules up from the bottom. How they didn't slip over on the ice was amazing. We watched them but only one hoof seemed to slip at a time. Apparently there were two bridges over the river and the mules would not cross by the bridge with gaps because they could see through to the river below. Only the solid bridge was deemed safe enough by them!

We wandered on several miles further, but we had to walk a long way to get a different perspective as the panorama was so vast. Eventually we turned around and headed back to the Bright Angel lodge where we enjoyed a battleship burger and a tortilla salad. We had a look at the interesting display about Fred Harvey from England who started as a dishwasher and decided that there was money to be made from food services – particularly on the railway routes. He ended up building the Bright Angel Lodge and when he died they had 47 hotels, 23 dining cars on trains, and serviced one cruise steamer. As we walked out we saw a beautiful blue jay and followed it into the balcony of a tourist shop. We lost the bird but saw some great Grand Canyon photos including the California Condor. Keith bought some genuine imitation Indian stone arrowheads.

Afterwards, we caught the free shuttle back to our car. Then we drove out along the Hermit Trail past where we had walked stopping at numerous lookouts. At one lookout the lady with the weird antennae was waving it around so Keith approached her and it turned out that actually she was quite sane and was tracking the 75 tagged California condors living in the canyon between here and Utah. We had a good laugh with her and headed back towards home. We did stop once more at Mather Point on the eastern side of the park to see the last sunset light up the canyon walls.

On Thursday, we packed up and checked out of the hotel. It was a beautiful day as we drove out of the mountains and down to Phoenix, to stay with Keith's cousin Tom and his family. As we approached Phoenix, we started to see the long fingers of saguaro cactus on the surrounding hillsides.

We had some lunch and then drove to Tom and Claudia's to meet them, their children Iain and Madailein, and the five dogs (Boomer, Izzy, Baxter, Lola and Jelly Bean). We spent all afternoon chatting to them and we were joined later by Uncle John and his dog Chloe. Keith and Iain played soccer while Tom cooked up the barbecue. The soccer stopped when Boomer knocked Keith over and Keith broke his sunglasses heading the soccer ball!

We had a delicious dinner of tri-tip steak, salad, spaghetti squash, corn, and Spanish rice with vermicelli. We drank a pinot noir, a zinfandel and a cabernet sauvignon (Charles Schwab – three buck chuck) and tried some of Tom's Guatemalan rum. It tasted like a smooth scotch.

We had a really relaxing day on Friday. We spent a leisurely morning playing with the kids and then headed out to the Mexican Ranch Markets to buy some supplies for tonight's Thai dinner. It was just like being in a Mexican supermarket - there were a lot of unusual ingredients and we found at least eight different types of dried chilli!

Back at home we met Tom and Claudia's friendly neighbours Rich and Linda and admired their beautiful red Corvette sports car and Dodge station wagon. We saw a rabbit at last light and then we went inside and started peeling and chopping in earnest. We started off by making some Thai green curry paste and Thai red curry paste in Claudia's food processor. After that, we put together the ingredients for a prawn tom yum soup and chicken and vegetable curry. In the process Keith broke a kitchen cupboard door and had to drive to Home Depot down the road for a bottle of Gorilla glue. On the way home he saw a coyote trotting along beside 7^th Avenue. We fed the kids and after Claudia arrived home from work, we had the tom yum soup, followed by a red chicken curry and a green chicken curry. Despite several improvisations, the meal was delicious.

On Saturday, Tom was at work and Claudia took us shopping. We went to Kohl's down the road first and bought clothes until it was time to go home for lunch. We had a great time going through the clearance racks and finding pretty decent clothes for ridiculously cheap prices. Claudia, who is an amazing bargain shopper and makes Suzie look like an amateur, had a coupon so on top of the already discounted prices, we received another 15% discount!

After lunch, we went to some factory outlets a few miles away. After some more purchases of clothes and shoes we went home just after dark. Then we all went out for dinner at Chili's close by. We had guacamole, salsa, and corn chips, Buffalo wings, Caribbean salad, and baby back ribs with chips.

On Sunday, we had a family barbecue and early birthday celebration for Tom, with Uncle John, Aunt Maura and Lloyd (Tom's brother) and Rich from next door. It was a really beautiful day and we were able to sit outside on the patio for lunch. The food was delicious – marinated skirt steak, plantains with sour cream, pico de gallo, gallo pinto (rice and beans), avocado salad and Nicaraguan tortillas. We had pears poached in red wine and Tom's tiramisu birthday cake for dessert.

After everyone left, we had a big clean up and then spent the evening relaxing in front of the TV, booking our accommodation for Las Vegas and reading about the next stage of our trip.

Week 48 - USA - Amarillo, TX to Moab, UT

It was very cold, windy and raining when we woke up on Monday morning. When we walked across the car park to the Big Texan Steak Ranch for breakfast there were patches of black ice on the ground. We chose the breakfast buffet option at the Big Texan and opted for fruit, cereal, and omelettes, pancakes and French toast made to order. While we were eating our breakfast someone else took on the 72 oz steak challenge! To our surprise, he actually managed to finish the steak and sides in a little over fifty minutes, receiving a t-shirt and certificate for his efforts. He did look kinda sick though towards the end – 72 oz is about 2 kgs and there is no bone!

We checked out of the motel, packed up the car and then had to spend twenty minutes in the freezing wind scraping the ice off the car windows. According to the thermostat in the car it was minus 7°C! Finally we got going and headed West on Interstate Highway 40. We stopped briefly at the Cadillac Ranch to take photos of a line of ten vividly spray-painted Cadillacs planted nose-down in a dusty field right next to the highway.

As we drove into New Mexico, we noticed a marked change of scenery. The flat gold empty plains of Texas were replaced by flat-topped mesas, purple rocky outcrops and plains dotted with green scrub. We arrived in Albuquerque with a spectacular range of mountains in the background highlighted by the setting sun.

We checked into our hotel and had a rest before dinner. It was so cold that we didn't want to walk too far for dinner so we ate at the nearby St Clair Winery & Bistro.

On Tuesday morning, we checked out and packed up the car before walking a few blocks in the crisp air to the Golden Crown Panaderia. We enjoyed the faux adobe houses and structures everywhere. They were all painted in various shades of adobe brown and were all low set giving the town a completely different feel and look. The original adobe was a mud brick used by the native Indians which lasted extremely well in the desert conditions.

The Golden Crown Panaderia was run by a character called Pratt Morales who had been in the army and then had been running the bakery for 35 years. The New Mexican bakery goods were outstanding. Every customer got a free biscochito (traditional New Mexican cinnamon and anise cookie).

After breakfast we walked around Old Town admiring the pottery, jewellery, moccasins and native art. There were miniature sculptures of animals and spirits called fetishes carved from different stones, shells and deer horn. There was a lizard carved from serpentine, eagles with folded wings carved from a sea shell, an Indian spirit carved from deer horn, and a tiny animal carved from a striking rainbow coloured rock. There were exceptional hand-made pottery vases and figures glazed with black from manure and ash with designs etched into the glaze. We also saw some great bear shape pottery and a couple of cow skulls with small turquoise pieces stuck all over the forehead and then sealed with lacquer. We resisted temptation and walked away with nothing.

We checked out the San Felipe de Neri church on the plaza which was established by the first Spanish settlers in 1709. We went back to the Golden Crown Panaderia for lunch to try their pizzas with special New Mexican crusts – we tried a Hawaiian pizza with a blue corn crust and a vegetarian pizza with a green chilli crust.

After lunch we headed for Santa Fe on Interstate Highway 40 with a brief stop at a Mormon monument to a battalion which had participated in the Mexican American War. At Santa Fe, we checked into the Villas de Santa Fe which was part of an international group of timeshare properties called Diamond Resorts. We headed out to walk to the supermarket and grabbed some groceries for breakfasts and chicken and salad for dinner so we could eat in like normal people for a change.

We had shredded wheat, banana and blackberries with a cup of Dilmah tea for breakfast on Wednesday. Even having breakfast in makes a nice change. Only a couple of Dilmah tea bags left but they have lasted us pretty well - all the way from South Africa!

After breakfast, we walked into town. It was a cold sunny day and Santa Fe looked fantastic. There were lots of great shops, art galleries, museums, and sculptures around town, all framed by the low set adobe brown buildings. We walked around the main plaza and took a side street where we ran into a theatre which had Norman arch windows, wrought iron grilles and a white dragon design running around the adobe roof. We found an amazing carpet gallery across the road and gawked at the amazing carpets from Turkey, Afghanistan, Iran, and Kazakhstan. This place must have had millions of dollars of stock and they were displayed beautifully on walls and floor with light fittings which were also works of art. Suzie bought a purse on sale from Overland. It wasn't quite as cheap as we thought because tax had to be added. It's a real pain – you think that you are getting a really good deal and then you have to add tax (and in restaurants – a tip)!

We walked down to Tomasita's in the old railway station building for lunch. We wanted to try the New Mexico version of Mexican food. We ordered a jumbo plate between the two of us with a side salad. It had a taco, an enchilada, a tamale, red and green chile sauce, a stuffed chilli, beans and Spanish rice. There was also a sopapilla with butter and New Mexican honey for dessert.

We stumbled across Andrea Fisher Fine Pottery gallery which had a collection of incredible hand-made pottery by Indians from the nearby pueblos. Pueblo pottery is typically made from coiled clay and shaped by hand rather than thrown on a potter's wheel. The pots are usually painted and then polished with a stone before being painted with traditional designs. Each of the pueblos had their own particular style. This store had examples of Hopi (colourful designs on terracotta coloured clay), Acoma (brilliant white clay with black geometric designs), and San Ildefonso (black on black, polished on matte designs) pottery. We stopped by the chilli shop and admired the prints of all the different chillis of the world.

After breakfast on Thursday, we did some preparation for our next few legs, reading the Lonely Planet, our large map book and researching on the net. Our next few legs would take us into the southwest corner of Colorado to the cliff dwellings in the Mesa Verde National Park, then into Utah to the Arches National Park, and down to Monument Valley in Arizona on the Navajo tribal nation territory. From there we hoped to go to the Grand Canyon National Park, Sedona and on to Phoenix. We were excited but slightly nervous about the weather at this time of year.

We finished and walked a circuitous route around town to the Visitor's centre. The lady at the Visitor's Centre gave us some information about our first leg to Mesa Verde National Park and a couple of ideas for things to see in Santa Fe.

We walked to the mission next door which was closed. Apparently it was the earliest church in the USA being established in 1610. We walked past the Loreto Chapel to the Basilica Cathedral San Francis of Assisi with beautiful bronze doors and a modern looking interior. There were colourful painted designs in the arches and ceilings, beautiful stained glass windows, and a large marble baptismal font in centre. Back in the Plaza we walked past a lot of Native Americans selling stone jewellery and some pueblo pottery.

We went to The Shed for lunch. We had a chicken enchilada in a blue corn tortilla with red chilli and green chilli sauce (Christmas) and a pork stew served with a cheese enchilada in a blue corn tortilla with red chilli sauce. It was substantially hotter than yesterday's lunch and we both found ourselves sweating at the end. Northern New Mexican food seems to be more chilli-based than its Tex-Mex neighbour. Tex-Mex food seems to have more smoky flavours and tomato based sauces rather than pure chilli-based sauces.

We spent the afternoon walking around town looking for streets that we hadn't seen and soaking up the atmosphere on our last day in Santa Fe.

After breakfast on Friday, we packed up the car and headed north out of Santa Fe to Cortez, Colorado and the Mesa Verde National Park. We drove past a succession of Indian-run casinos (apparently they get tax breaks) and a series of Indian pueblos, some of which looked very run down with dilapidated trailers. Then the landscape changed to large rock buttes in beautiful hues of yellow, orange and red. It was below freezing and the ground was covered in a thick blanket of snow. We drove past a large lake and there were forests of snow covered conifers. We saw a large brown eagle with white head and neck on one of the trees.

We stopped for lunch in the pretty town of Durango. When we got back to our car after lunch we had a parking ticket! Luckily it was only $9. We paid it at the Council cashier a couple of blocks away and then hit the road again.

We stopped briefly at the entrance to the Mesa Verde National Park but there was no one there so we continued on to Cortez where we found a room at the Baymont Inn. We went to the Visitor Centre in town and saw some great photos of the cliff dwellings in the park.

We'd had a really magical day driving through the white snow in the bright sun. It was also a relief to find that the roads were clear and dry even though there was a lot of snow on the ground.

After breakfast on Saturday, we checked out and then drove to the Mesa Verde National Park. It was a cold crisp morning but there was no wind and the roads had been cleared.

Mesa Verde National Park was made up of canyons, mesas, and red rock formations. It was home to the Ancestral Puebloan people who built whole villages around the mesa tops and on ledges, niches and caves in the canyons. Once in the park, we drove straight past all the lookouts to the Chapin Mesa museum because there was a guided tour starting at 10 am.

At Chapin Mesa, we walked along a bitumen path with Ranger Sean Duffy to the nearby Spruce Tree House, the most well preserved of the cliff dwellings. The buildings built under the massive overhang housed 40-50 people in sandstone and mortar apartments up to three stories high. The buildings were beautifully fashioned with the sandstone bricks forming square or round buildings reaching up to the roof and walls of the cave and moulded to fit the shape of the surrounding cave walls. Tree branches or large flat sandstone slabs were used in the lintels over doorways. The exterior and interiors were painted in adobe reds and ochre. There were public spaces and communal areas for grinding corn making the entire area undercover a small village or pueblo. The buildings were three deep with a lot of smoke blackening on the roof of the cave. Doors were very small as the average height of an adult was five feet. We noticed holes in the floor with ladders sticking out. We descended into one of these kivas or ceremonial rooms built underground. It was a round room with a fireplace in the middle and a ventilation shaft opposite with deflector stones set into the ground in front. There was a smaller hole in the ground near the centre of the room which is the sipapu or opening to the underworld. The Puebloans believed that the cosmos was a series of worlds with devils and witchcraft in the lower worlds and light and good life in the upper worlds (sounds familiar).

After the tour of the Spruce Tree House we walked around the museum where they had an excellent video covering aspects of Puebloan history and culture. They also had great displays of stuffed birds, carved stone/bone tools, textiles, painted ceramics, weapons, jewellery and basket weaving including a large snare. Many of the items were in amazingly good condition, probably preserved in the caves.

We drove out along the six mile long Mesa Loop road and stopped at a series of lookouts and excavations of early mesa top pit dwellings and later above ground constructions. Interestingly they all contained the kiva ceremonial room underground construction. The lookouts were extraordinary because you were looking down into the canyon at points where the cliff dwellings were visible along or across the canyon. The largest cliff dwelling was the Cliff Palace housing approximately 150 people.

We stopped at the Sun Temple for a picnic lunch. This was a huge mesa top construction which was never completed. There was also no evidence of habitation. We enjoyed our lunch in the warm sun looking over the miles of golden canyon walls, white snow and green conifers. It was incredibly quiet and peaceful. We drove out of the park slowly stopping at a couple of viewpoints for photos of the snow covered plains below and mountain ranges in the distance.

We drove north on the highway into Utah where we saw some deer searching for grass in the snow. The landscape changed with large brown buttes, towers and walls rising out of the plain. In the setting sun the brown and red colours were magnificent. We reached Moab as it went dark and checked into our hotel.

On Sunday morning we drove out to Arches National Park for the day. The park is home to the world's greatest concentration of natural sandstone arches. It was also full of other amazing red rock formations – fins, spires, pinnacles and rocks balanced precariously on inadequate looking columns. We spent the day in the park driving around stopping at the view points and where possible hiking to view the formations close up.

 

Our first stop was the Park Avenue viewpoint which was a canyon lined with large red sandstone blocks reminiscent of skyscrapers. We had a short walk around Balanced Rock (a large balancing rock the size of three school buses), and then a more substantial hike around Turret Arch, North Window and South Window. We took our lunch with us on the next hike to Double Arch and while we were eating our lunch we watched icicles breaking off and crashing underneath the arches as they melted in the sun. After lunch we drove further on into the park stopping at the Fiery Furnace Viewpoint - so named because the rock formations look a fiery red in the afternoon sun. At the Devil's Garden Trailhead which was the end of the road, we went on a hike to the Landscape Arch (an improbably long and slender arch) with short side trips to the Navajo Arch and the Partition Arch. These hikes were a little more challenging because the bitumen path ended and we had to follow a primitive trail of compacted and very slippery ice over some boulders. We both fell over on the ice but nothing was hurt except our pride. Our last stop for the day was the Delicate Arch Viewpoint where it was just a short walk along a muddy slushy path to see the lone standing arch in the sunset which has become a symbol of Utah.

 

We drove out of the park as it got dark and stopped at Pasta Jays where we had garlic bread with artichoke and spinach ravioli with creamy tomato sauce, and Portobello mushroom stuffed with chicken breast, spinach and ricotta on a bed of spaghetti and tomato sauce. Then we went to the supermarket and bought dessert and some supplies for tomorrow's lunch. We weren't sure where we would be staying tomorrow night so we wanted to try to get an early start and maximise our driving time. We were planning to drive in a big loop and end up close to Monument Valley.

Week 47 - USA - New Orleans, LA to Amarillo, TX

We woke up early on Monday morning and after a quick breakfast, we checked out and hit the road for Austin, Texas. We drove out of Louisiana through bayou country – lots of flat low-lying wetlands and marshes full of trees growing out of the water. At Baton Rouge we drove over the Mississippi River on an enormous bridge.

We stopped in Texas for lunch at Al T's Seafood & Steakhouse. They were still serving Louisiana specialties such as gumbo and jambalaya, but we saw some Texan-sized steaks on their menu and big bags of "crackling" for sale. The friendly waitress gave us a piece each to try, but in addition to the pork rind there was a big crispy layer of fat underneath – probably our fat allocation for the next two days. We settled for a burger and a large chicken salad. We hit the road again across the flat brown Texan plains. There were lots of billboards along the freeway advertising casinos, personal injury lawyers and fundamentalist Christian propaganda.

We arrived in Austin just after dark only to find that there was a convention on, however we still managed to find reasonable accommodation on the edge of downtown. We had a rest in our room and then went out to find some dinner. It was a ten minute walk into town and we walked along Sixth Street which was lined with bars playing live music and tattoo parlours. We walked around a couple of blocks and then headed back to a Tex-Mex restaurant on Sixth Street for dinner.

We were woken up in the middle of the night by some people in the room next to us. One lady was describing very loudly how she got her tattoos in jail! When Keith opened the door to our room, they were really apologetic and quietened down immediately.

After breakfast on Tuesday in the overcrowded dining room, we walked to the stunning pink granite Italian Renaissance Texas State Capitol. Like everything in Texas, it was bigger - fifteen feet taller than the US Capitol in Washington, DC. We entered the building through the South Foyer where we were greeted by life size marble statues of Stephen F Austin and Sam Houston. A guide conducted us on a short tour of the building and then we were free to wander around ourselves. Inside the foyer there was a beautiful terrazzo floor commemorating battles fought on Texas soil, a rotunda and a dome. On the rotunda floor was the Great Seal surrounded by the six seals of the countries (France, Spain, Mexico, Texas, Confederate United States and United States) whose flags have flown over Texas. Portraits of the Presidents and Governors of Texas circled the four levels of the rotunda, and two hundred and eighteen feet above us in the dome was a star measuring eight feet from point to point. We visited the Senate Chamber, the House of Representatives Chamber, the Supreme Court courtroom and the Court of Appeals courtroom, which contained beautiful antique oak and walnut furniture, drapes, and paintings. We left the Capitol building and spent a little time wandering around the Grounds admiring the flower gardens, fountains and monuments.

Then we made our way to the Visitor's Centre on Sixth Street where we got some information and a brochure containing a self guided walking tour. The walking tour started at the Texas State Capitol and finished on Sixth Street so we decided to do it backwards. We had just started the walking tour when it began to rain, we tried to keep going but the rain just got heavier so we decided to stop for lunch. It was still raining when we finished lunch so we walked back to the hotel to collect the car.

We drove to South Congress Avenue which was full of really interesting and unusual shops. We went to Uncommon Objects which had a great collection vintage clothing, accessories, home wares and antiques. We visited Allen's Boots which sold very expensive Western clothing, Stetsons and beautiful leather cowboy boots. There were also a few lots along the Avenue where fast food vendors were plying their wares out of shiny silver retro caravans (Air Streams).

We decided to have dinner at the highly recommended Salt Lick BBQ in Driftwood. It was a twenty mile drive away and appeared to be in the middle of nowhere – but it was worth it. There was a big brick smouldering BBQ pit with big slabs of brisket, turkey, ribs and chickens cooking on racks over the coals and Germanic looking sausages hanging from hooks above. We tried brisket, pork ribs, turkey and sausage with potato and slaw. For dessert we shared a warm blackberry cobbler with ice-cream. It was all really delicious!

On Wednesday we walked into town to complete the rest of the walking tour we had attempted yesterday. Today there was clear blue sky and we started near the Capitol and worked our way south on Congress Avenue past the Governor's Mansion which had been burnt down by arson and was under reconstruction, and the old Capitol building ruins, also burnt to the ground. There was the beautiful Old Bakery building from 1876 which was now a tourist visitor centre. We saw St Mary's Cathedral built in 1874 and Millett's Opera House from 1878.

We wandered around checking out the old architecture including copper bay windows and cast iron store fronts. We stopped at the immaculately restored Driskill Hotel for a grapefruit juice and walked around the lobby and bar areas marvelling at the antique furnishings, stained glass fittings, paintings, trophy heads and sculptures. We continued on to the Second Avenue shopping district past old hardware shops, livery stables, grocery stores etc.

After lunch we set off to check out the northern area of Austin. We walked up Guadalupe Street past the University of Texas with an impressive clock tower, cheap restaurants and good street art. We stopped at Supercuts for Suzie to have a haircut and the lead story in the local paper was the closure of Macy's at a local shopping mall after 31 years. We checked out Trudy's Tex Mex as a dinner possibility on the way to walk through Texas University. The university was enormous with roads running through it and it took us a while to reach the travertine Lyndon Johnson Library and Museum. We saw a recreation of the Oval Office with memorabilia from the LBJ days – the tumultuous 1960's with the Cold War and the Vietnam War. There was a display of the gifts from numerous heads of state visiting the White House at the time. We sat and listened to a great humour exhibit (with a life-size animatronic LBJ doll) give excerpts from famous LBJ speeches including the hard of hearing drunk (I liked what I was drinking, better than what I was hearing), and Winston Churchill receiving the temperance union lady (We have achieved so little and there is so much more to do). We were kicked out at 5.00 pm and on the way back to the hotel we found a mobile phone on the road. The grateful owner gave us a giant chocolate éclair – as if we needed that!

We went to dinner at Trudy's where we shared their infamous stuffed avocado, a salad and flan for dessert. The stuffed avocado was battered, fried and stuffed with spicy chicken and cheese. One of the waiters warned us that "People do not come here for health reasons".

We had an easy day on Thursday as we were driving to Dallas to visit Keith's cousin Sonja and her family and we wanted to arrive after they had got back from school and work.

We checked out of our hotel late morning and drove out of Austin stopping on the way at a shopping centre for lunch. It was only a short drive to Dallas and we drove along the Interstate Highway 35 most of the way. Sonja and Mike live about twenty miles north of Dallas so we had wonderful views of the skyscrapers with the blue sky in the background as we drove past the city on the way to their house through a spaghetti of highways.

It was really great to see Sonja again as we last saw her with baby Jack (now almost fifteen) in 1997. We were meeting Mike and their other two kids Luke and Annie, and the squirrel hunter dog, Max, for the first time today. After we unloaded our bags, we had to head out almost immediately to take Luke to basketball practice, and then we drove on into town for dinner at Patrizio (Mike and Sonja's favourite restaurant). After dinner we headed back to Mike and Sonja's place where we spent a couple of hours chatting before turning in for bed.

On Friday, after Sonja got back from dropping her kids off at school, we drove into town to check out the JFK memorial.

We parked downtown and walked to the Sixth Floor Museum. The museum was housed in the old Texas School Book Depository, where Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fatal bullets from the sixth floor. It was an exhibit detailing the events leading up to, during and after the assassination. There were displays of memorabilia, detailed eyewitness accounts, original photographs taken by onlookers, documentary film and video footage.

Then we walked to the nearby Victory Tavern for lunch. We spent such a long time chatting over lunch, that we had to rush to go and pick up Annie and Luke from school. After we got back to Mike and Sonja's house, we left the others and walked around the lake to the supermarket where we bought fruit, chocolate and wine. It was just getting dark when we walked back to the house, and on the way we saw lots of coots and ducks in the beautiful sunset over the lake.

Back at the house, we helped put together a salad while Mike grilled some steaks on the barbecue outside. We had a lovely dinner with lots of laughter and we spent a pleasant evening catching up.

On Saturday morning, after various children had been collected (Annie from a sleepover and Luke from hockey practice), we had a lovely big breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs and tortillas together. We spent a leisurely morning and then headed out to watch Jack's ice hockey match. The game was on an oval ice rink with two teams of six players wearing a lot of protective gear. It was very fast-paced and physical with the players constantly slamming into the barriers and each other and sliding across the ice. The game was very exciting and Jack scored three of the goals in a 6-3 win.

After the game we all drove to Fort Worth (Cow Town) and it was very touristy, but had excellent stockyards with Texas Longhorns and horses to ride, a stockyard maze, Cowboy hall of fame, mechanical bulls, Indians and cowboys galore, and associated paraphernalia. After the kids had made it through the maze and Annie had ridden a horse, we left for Joe T. Garcia's Tex Mex restaurant around the corner where we had the best Mexican food we had ever eaten. We started with corn chips and salsa, followed by nachos topped with tomatillo salsa and cheese, enchiladas in rich tomato sauce, corn tortillas, flour tortillas, beef, chicken, onions, capsicum, guacamole, rice and refried beans with a smoky pork flavour. We shared some sopapillas for dessert. These were deep fried tortillas with honey and cinnamon. We drove home with a detour round a massive traffic jam and relaxed in front the gas fire in the living room.

After breakfast on Sunday, we said goodbye to everyone and then headed off. It was raining very heavily so we made slow progress. As the morning progressed the temperature began to drop and we found ourselves driving through sleet which turned into snow. The roads were icy and the countryside was white. Just before lunch we came out of the other side of the cold front.

The sun was shining when we arrived in Amarillo but it was still bitterly cold. We drove through Amarillo and then decided to drive back to the highway to check out the Big Texan Inn opposite the Big Texan Steak Ranch - an "Our Pick" restaurant in the Lonely Planet. We had seen signs for the Big Texan Steak Ranch's 72 oz steak challenge (the steak is free if you can eat it together with all the accompaniments in less than an hour) all along the highway. The facade of the motel resembled a street in an old West town and the room was really nice with chunky wooden furniture, fringed bed linens and curtains, all decorated with the Texan five-pointed star.

At 7.30 pm we walked across the car park to the Big Texan Steak Ranch. The inside of the restaurant looked like a big barn. There were light fittings fashioned from cartwheels and antlers and animal heads mounted on the walls. Neither of us felt up to the steak challenge – opting instead to share a 21 oz steak with sides of coleslaw, okra, cowboy beans and green beans and we tried a couple of delicious tender smoked beef ribs. While we were in the restaurant, a man attempted the steak challenge with much fanfare and applause. He gave up after about forty minutes having barely made a dent in the steak. Sitting at the table next to us were three old timers from Illinois who were heading to New Mexico to do some quail hunting. We all left the restaurant at the same time and they showed us their six hunting dogs (setters) in their custom built truck. Each dog had its own compartment filled with hay.

Week 46 - USA - Charleston, SC to New Orleans, LA

On Monday, after a final breakfast in the hotel lobby (including some wicked sticky cinnamon buns with pecans), we checked out of the hotel and started our drive to Savannah. We drove south out of Charleston, to the islands which were cut off from the mainland by inlets and tidal marshes. It was a beautiful clear day in contrast to the snow the day before.

It was a short drive to Johns Island, where we paid a short visit to the Angel Oak, a Southern live oak estimated to be 300-400 years old, standing 65 feet (20 metres) tall, measuring 28 feet (8.5 metres) in circumference, and covering an area of 17,000 square feet (1,600 square metres) with its canopy.

Our next stop was Wadmawlaw Island, where we paid a brief visit to the Charleston Tea Plantation. Unlike the other tea plantations that we had visited on this trip, the tea plantation was on flat ground, there seemed to be no gaps between the tea bushes, and the bushes were a uniform height with perfectly flat tops. Inside the Visitor Centre we found out that the tea was harvested mechanically. We went to the viewing gallery in the Visitor's Centre where we could see the spotlessly clean factory and tea processing machinery. After a brief look at the gift shop, we were on our way again.

We stopped at Beaufort (pronounced "byoo-furt") for lunch. After lunch we walked to the water's edge and then had a short walk along the town streets lined with antebellum homes and magnolias draped in Spanish moss. It was really cold so we were pretty keen to get back in the car for our next leg to Savannah.

It took us a little over an hour to drive to Savannah from Beaufort. On the outskirts of the town we stopped to check out the rooms at a brand new Hampton Inn. The room was really nice and because it was new, the price was really good too. The only downside was that it wasn't within walking distance of the Historic Centre. We drove on into town, checking out another couple of options along the way, but they were more expensive and not as clean and nice. We climbed down a couple of flights of stairs to River Street, had a short walk along the riverfront, and then decided to have dinner and go back to the Hampton Inn.

After breakfast on Tuesday, we drove to the city. We parked in the Visitor's Centre and walked around town from square to square. The historical centre had a small green square every few blocks and each one had either a fountain or a monument in the centre of an area of grass dotted with large shady oak trees festooned with Spanish moss. It was very picturesque in the sunshine and each square offered a couple of good photographs from the monument, fountain or sculpture to the impressive surrounding buildings with shutters, iron work, Greek/Roman columns and capitals, and antebellum architecture. We walked to the edge of the Historic District where we found the large Forsyth Park with a beautiful fountain next to a great Civil War monument. It was so cold that there was ice hanging off the white sculptures in the fountain.

We stopped for lunch and then continued walking to River Street, the historic cobblestone street along the Savannah River. In the daylight we could see that River Street was at least two storeys lower than the rest of the streets in town. There we saw the riverside and converted cotton warehouses in the daylight. The street was lined with sweet and souvenir shops targeted at tourists and there were also tourist river boats offering cruises on the Savannah River. We saw an old pirate's tavern which supposedly inspired Robert Louis Stevenson in the writing of Treasure Island and the First African Baptist Church (which was closed) before we stopped at Mabel Francis Potter's Cupcake Emporium for afternoon tea of a red velvet cupcake topped with cream cheese frosting.

We arrived back at the car having enjoyed walking around Savannah's historic squares immensely, and drove past our hotel on Abercorn Street to a shopping centre where we did a bit of window shopping before having dinner, followed by a warm cinnamon bun with icing and pecans (unbelievable) from Cinnabon. Afterwards we watched a guy making the "Cinnabons". He spread copious amounts of butter onto a big rectangle of pastry, dumped a mountain of cinnamon sugar on it, rolled it up and then cut it. They went into the oven with icing to be added afterwards. No wonder they tasted so great!

We drove back to the hotel and collapsed into bed earlier than normal because we wanted to get an early start for the drive to Mobile, Alabama.

On Wednesday we hit the road after breakfast. We drove out of Savannah on Interstate Highway 95 until for the first hour or so and then we headed inland on a couple of lesser highways. We had to keep slowing down as we drove through small towns. This was the most interesting part of our journey. We drove past more trees draped with Spanish moss, marshland, pine plantations, vultures foraging on the side of the road, lots of Baptist and Gospel Churches and some dilapidated mobile homes in trailer parks.

We stopped for lunch at Granddaddy's BBQ at Thomasville. We tried fried green tomatoes, smoked chicken salad, pulled pork with tasty house BBQ sauce, and fried okra followed by pumpkin pie. It was all really delicious and our first taste of eating at a real home-style BBQ as opposed to a chain restaurant.

We hit the road again after lunch and at Tallahassie (capital of Florida), we turned onto Interstate Highway 10 on which we drove all the way to Mobile, Alabama. On the way into Mobile, we drove past an enormous car dealership containing seventeen acres of brand new Honda, Toyota and Hyundai vehicles. After ten hours of driving and one time change (the clock went back an hour), we arrived at Mobile at a little after 6.00 pm. We had decided that we were going to push on to New Orleans the next day so we drove out of town a little way to check out some accommodation options. After checking out a few places we went back to the Hampton Inn, where Jennifer the friendly receptionist dropped the room rate by $30 and then unasked, gave us an upgrade to a suite. After checking in, at Jennifer's suggestion we went to Carrabba's Italian Grill where we had a delicious meal washed down with some lovely red wine. It was a great end to a long and tiring day on the road.

As it was only a short drive to New Orleans, we slept in on Thursday, and had a leisurely breakfast before checking out of the hotel and hitting the road. We drove out of Alabama and through Mississippi to Louisiana. Just after we drove into Louisiana, we stopped at a Tourist Information Centre where a helpful lady gave us a map of New Orleans, some helpful tips and recommended a Best Western hotel a little way out of town because all the down town hotels were either fully occupied or prohibitively expensive because of New Year and the huge Sugarbowl football game. We checked into the hotel and dropped off our luggage before driving into town.

We stopped "Uptown" and had a delicious lunch at a tiny little cafe called The Milk Bar. It was owned by Inta (from Australia) and Kevin (from the UK) who were really friendly and eager to chat when they found out that we were from Australia. Inta was really helpful and went out of her way to suggest some jazz clubs and places to eat around town. After lunch, we spent a couple of hours browsing at the nearby Borders bookstore because we had some discount coupons to use.

Then we drove to the French Quarter where we had some difficulty finding somewhere to park as the roads were really busy and all the parking lots were full. Finally we found a metered parking space near the French Market, parked the car and went for a walk. We walked along Decatur Street looking for the Information Centre only to find that it was closed. We had a quick look at the Mississippi River before heading into the middle of the French Quarter to Bourbon Street, a historic tourist –trap street spanning the entire quarter. The upper end was home to bars, restaurants, souvenir shops and strip clubs. As soon as we walked on to Bourbon Street, we were accosted by a charming hustler and before we knew it we had donated $20 to Food for Life and we were each sporting a New Orleans baseball cap! We walked along Bourbon Street, past all the flashing neon signs, bars blaring loud music (jazz and cover bands), restaurant spruikers, strippers having cigarette breaks, beggars and street entertainers to the much quieter and less touristy neighbourhood of Fauborg Marigny. We walked along Frenchmen Street which had a number of live jazz bars, cafes and restaurants. We had a delicious dinner at the Middle Eastern Mona's Cafe and then drove back to the hotel.

New Orleans had a very different feel from anywhere we had already been in the USA. It was much warmer and humid, much like Brisbane and was the first place where we didn't need our coats. It was extremely wet and low lying and driving over the massive highway bridge to New Orleans made it feel like an island (although it is in fact on a thin strip of land between the Mississippi River and the huge Lake Pontchartrain). There was a very Bohemian undercurrent – there were many strange people around and lots of evident poverty. For example a lady was begging for money (panhandling) inside the Borders store. There was a strong musical element also visible everywhere in the street with bars and buskers producing music.

On Friday, we had to rush to breakfast before it finished at 9.00 am. Outside it was raining, so we decided to have a lazy morning reading and sending emails and go into town later. At 2.00 pm we were collected by the Triple J minibus organised by the hotel to take us into town and the French Quarter. Our driver's name was James and the Triple J was named for Jesus, Joan (after his late wife) and James. James dropped us off at Bourbon Street which already had a festive feel about it. We walked to the edge of the French Quarter to Port of Call which James said had the best burgers in New Orleans. Other people obviously thought so too because it was full inside and there was a big queue outside. Luckily, because we were happy to sit at the bar rather than wait for a table, we were able jump the queue and place our orders in a relatively short time. The food was really delicious – our burgers were perfectly cooked and instead of the usual fries, they came with a baked potato so we didn't feel too guilty.

After lunch we spent a few hours wandering around the French Quarter. We paid a visit to the National Park Visitor Centre on Decatur Street. There we found that as there was no parkland, the park rangers were actually jazz musicians and there was a schedule of free concerts that they performed.

We stopped at the Cafe du Monde (a New Orleans institution) for cafe au lait and beignets (a square doughnut coated liberally with icing sugar). The Lonely Planet had suggested it was overrated and we had been put off earlier by the lengthy queues, however to our surprise, we really enjoyed the experience especially as we were entertained by a talented street jazz band while we were there.

We walked to Jackson Square which was all lit up and surrounded by tarot card and palm readers. Then we continued walking around the Quarter for a couple more hours before joining the queue outside Coop's Place for dinner. While we were in the queue we met some locals and some Texans who were all very friendly. By the time we were allocated a table, we had a list of restaurants to go to and things to eat in New Orleans, Austin and Dallas. Coop's was a no-nonsense Cajun country shack with wobbly garden furniture and plastic cups but the food was delicious. We shared a Cajun taster plate which included seafood gumbo, rabbit and sausage jambalaya, red beans and rice, spicy shrimp Creole and fried chicken with a bottle of 2008 Tercos Malbec from Mendoza.

By the time we finished dinner, there were a lot more people in the streets and Bourbon Street was crammed full with revellers drinking in the streets (legal in New Orleans) out of large plastic novelty drinking vessels. Some of the drinks were notorious for their potency – in particular the "Hurricane" (a fruit punch and rum drink) and the "Hand Grenade" (ingredients unknown, but billed as New Orleans' strongest drink) served in a long plastic tube shaped like a hand grenade. There was a real carnival atmosphere. Almost everyone was wearing strings of shiny plastic beads (bling) which were being thrown from the balconies of the bars lining Bourbon Street, and some people were wearing carnival style masks, crowns and headbands with feathers. Adding to the chaos were the thousands of young fans who were in town for the Sugar Bowl (a game between two top ranking college football teams) on Sunday.

We'd had enough by this time and we called James from Triple J. He collected us and we arrived back at the hotel just in time to see the fireworks going off at midnight on the TV in the lobby. We'd had a really good day. Despite the rain in the morning, it only rained intermittently during the day and we had managed to walk around without being rained on.

The sky was grey and it was raining when we woke up on Saturday morning. After breakfast we drove into town and parked on Carondelet Street just outside the French Quarter. On the map this is in the CBD but the place was absolutely deserted and a bit eerie. There were rows of buildings with for sale signs on them and everything looked a bit rundown. We had been surprised by the appearance of some suburbs from the freeway. Many houses were still in a state of disrepair and looked like they had been bombed! Apparently when Hurricane Katrina struck many people had either no insurance or insufficient insurance. Most people who were able to recover money from the insurers left and never came back. This meant that rates collection revenue to the city council dived and services were severely cut back. Hence many of these houses are still ruined and deteriorating today.

We walked up to Mother's restaurant near Canal Street but there was a huge queue so we walked into the French Quarter and joined the shorter line outside the Camellia Grill. It was a large diner with extremely professional staff. Our waiter Will barked out orders to the grill chef a few metres away and the food flew out.

After lunch we walked through the French Market and then along the "Moon Walk" – a little path way along the Mississippi River. Unlike previous days it was quite cold and windy. We were only wearing light t-shirts and were unprepared for this, so we were pretty happy to retreat into a shopping centre on the edge of the French Quarter. After doing some window shopping, we decided to call it a day and headed back to the hotel for a rest before dinner.

Later on we drove around in the area near our hotel looking for somewhere to eat. Unfortunately all that we could find were fast food outlets. All of the staff at both these outlets and all of the customers were black.

We woke up earlier on Sunday morning and drove into town after breakfast. It was a much nicer day with sunny clear skies but outside there was a chilly wind. We parked at a parking station that was much closer to the French Quarter. Then we walked into the French Quarter to begin the Lonely Planet walking tour. The walking tour was quite short and took us through streets that we had already walked along, but on the way we saw buildings and architectural features that we hadn't noticed before and took some detours down a couple of interesting side alleys.

We started the tour at Jackson square which led on to the Ursuline Convent, the oldest building in the Mississippi River Valley, and then to Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop where legendary pirate Jean Lafitte ran his tavern (which was purportedly a front for his illegal slave trading activities). We walked along Royal Street enjoying the bright coloured eighteenth century Spanish colonial architecture and fabulous wrought ironwork, stopping to peek through the windows of antiques galleries. We walked past a couple of literary haunts such as Faulkner House, the home of William Faulkner where he wrote his first novel "Soldier's Pay" and Avart-Peretti House where Tennessee Williams wrote "A Streetcar Named Desire". We finished the walk in about two hours and decided to make our way to the Croissant D'Or for an early lunch.

After lunch we walked to Canal Street to catch the historic St Charles Avenue streetcar which took us on a long journey with lots of stops (including Loyola and Tulane Universities) to Audubon Park. We walked one mile through Audubon Park to the Audubon Zoo. It was well set out with lots of great information boards and all the animals looked in great condition. There were some fantastic exhibits including the Asian Domain (with replica Indian temples and sculptures), Reptile Encounter, African Savannah, Louisiana Swamp and Jaguar Jungle (with replica Mayan ruins). We spent three hours there and only left when they closed for the day. One of the highlights was all the wild waterbirds which flock to the zoo to get fed, from pelicans to herons to ducks. Other highlights were the white alligators, bobcats, Cape hunting dogs, Amur leopards, white Bengal tigers, porcupines, white rhinos, various colourful frogs and a giant sloth trying to find a tree to climb up.

We caught the streetcar back and got off just before we reached the French Quarter. We walked to Mother's Restaurant where we shared seafood gumbo, crawfish etouffee with cabbage and turnip greens and a side order of the restaurant's famous baked ham. We had a slice of pecan pie for dessert and bought a couple of cookies to take back to the hotel.

Week 45 - USA - New York to Charleston, SC

On Monday, we got up to the alarm at 6.00 am, got ready hurriedly and rushed downstairs to the basement to have breakfast. After breakfast, we manoeuvred our new suitcases down five floors to check out of the hostel, then along the street, down to the Metro station and on to a train. We had to change to another train at 59^th Street through Queens and then on to the Air Train to JFK Airport.

It was a very short flight to Washington Dulles Airport with the excellent budget carrier Jetblue (half the price of the Delta shuttle). At the airport, we went to the Alamo depot to see what cars had a boot large enough for our two outsized roller cases. To our horror, the only car that was suitable was an enormous Impala LT! We told ourselves it might be a good idea as it was probably safer in the winter conditions that we were unused to driving in. Back at the terminal we caught a couple of Metro buses to downtown Washington. As we drove along, we could see snow piled up in the gutters and in the garden beds. It felt much cooler here and there were none of the New York skyscrapers and high-rise buildings. We were dropped off a couple of blocks away from our hotel and after checking into our lovely room we wandered into the cold to find an overdue lunch. Our room was such a contrast to our accommodation in New York. For less money we got a room three times the size, with its own bathroom, kitchen facilities, a safe, two TVs and a sitting room.

After lunch at a sandwich chain called Cosi we walked to the White House a few blocks away. We enjoyed the views of the White House and the surrounding monuments in the sunset and walked back to the hotel where we spent a happy evening with a takeaway dinner and a glass of wine in front of the TV with 42 channels to choose from!

After a lovely sleep in our outsize comfortable bed, we woke up on Tuesday morning and had breakfast in our room before heading out for the day. We caught a metro to Union Station where we talked to Alamo to see if they could do us a good deal on a rental car. To our disappointment, the lady behind the counter insisted that the online rate was a good rate and that we would not be able to do better than that. We had a quick look at the holiday market stalls in Union Station and then walked to the nearby National Mall.

The National Mall was a two mile long green stretch of parkland between the United States Capitol Hill and the Lincoln Memorial with the Washington monument in between. We started off at the Capitol building and then zigzagged between a couple of grand avenues flanked by trees, gardens and ponds (which were frozen and hard enough for us to stand on) lined with beautiful white neo-classical monuments and museums.

We paid a lightning visit to the West Building of the National Gallery of Art. With the help of a brochure from the Information Desk, we were able to concentrate on twelve of the museums highlights including the only da Vinci in the Western Hemisphere, some Dutch masters, a Turner and a Whistler.

We walked into Chinatown and ended up having lunch at Fuddruckers. After lunch we walked through some more holiday markets back to the National Mall. We walked to the obelisk-like Washington Monument and then across some green lawns and past a long rectangular pool to the Lincoln Memorial where a large statue of Lincoln was seated presiding over the mall.

It was cold and dark by this time so we headed back to the hotel.

After breakfast on Wednesday, we went down to the hotel's business centre to book our rental car and print our booking confirmation.

Then we caught a metro to Arlington National Cemetery where over 320,000 servicemen and their family members are buried. The green slopes overlooking the Potomac River and the Lincoln Memorial were marked with row upon row of marble and granite headstones. At Arlington National Cemetery, our first stop was the Kennedy gravesite where John F Kennedy was buried with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and two of their children who had died in infancy. At the head of the graves an eternal flame burned from the centre of flat circular granite stone. Nearby were the more modest graves of Robert F Kennedy and Charles E Kennedy. We walked to Arlington House which was once the home of Confederate General Robert E Lee. The house was undergoing renovations so all of the furniture was in storage, but there was an interesting display with information about Robert E Lee's family and the American Civil War. Then we walked to the marble Memorial Amphitheatre behind which the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier rested. In front of the tomb maintaining a constant vigil, was a very smartly dressed sentinel. The sentinel paced 21 steps down the mat in front of the tomb, paused for 21 seconds and then returned. We were lucky enough to be there at the changing of the guard which also involved a presentation of arms. We walked around the cemetery trying to find a way out close to the Pentagon building which we could clearly see across a freeway. We couldn't find another exit so we had to walk back around the perimeter wall adorned with plaques of recently deceased people.

We exited the cemetery and caught a metro into town for a late lunch. Then we walked a couple of blocks and popped into the Museum of Natural History where we saw a full size elephant in the rotunda, the Hope diamond and a lot of other extraordinary gems and meteors, displays of animal skeletons ranging from echidna, platypus, anteater, and sloth to whale before they kicked us out at 5.30 pm.

On Thursday, we woke up to the alarm at 7.00 am, had breakfast, finished packing and then checked out of the hotel. We made our way to the Dupont Circle metro station where we caught a train to Union Square. At Union Square we went to the Alamo rental desk where we finalised the paperwork for our car and made our way to the garage to collect our car. Luckily they had an Impala LT in stock for us so that we could fit our monster suitcases into the boot. We were really pleased because it turned out to be a really comfortable car and we had a lot of driving to do over the next seven weeks.

We drove south out of Washington DC. It was much easier than we thought it would be thanks to some very clear road signs and the help of our new Garmin GPS unit. We drove out of District of Columbia and stopped at a pretty riverfront town called Occoquan just before we left Virginia. We admired the bridge with geese in the river and snow on the banks and retreated from the cold back to the car. We drove south on the Interstate Highway 95 and stopped at Millie's diner in Richmond for a delicious lunch of grilled mahi mahi with avocado, rice and beans, and a hamburger with bubble and squeak type potato, washed down by a fizzy grapefruit adult soda and pineapple juice, and followed by pecan crusted chocolate pie.

Then we continued on the highway past large rivers, pine forest plantations, Civil War battlefields and endless advertising until sunset. Soon after dark we passed exit 56 for Fayetteville which was our goal for the day but instead of turning off, we continued down the highway as we had decided to get closer to Charleston. We turned off at Exit 22 at a town called Lumberton and parked at Holiday Inn. We walked around and compared prices and rooms at 5 motels and ended up at Super 8 for $60 including tax and breakfast. We had dinner at a nearby Asian restaurant and then afterwards we walked over to Walmart where we saw hordes of Xmas shoppers snapping up last minute bargains and queuing patiently in long lines.

We began Friday with breakfast in the motel lobby. We started off with cornflakes and made ourselves some waffles in their waffle machine. After breakfast, we checked out of the motel and hit the road. Despite all our driving yesterday, it still took us over three hours to get to Charleston.

We arrived at Charleston after 1.00 pm, parked our car in the historical centre and went for a walk around to check out our accommodation options. We looked at a couple of options before falling in love with a room at the Meeting Street Inn. It was a heritage building and our room had a four poster bed, beautiful old furniture, paintings, fireplace, wallpaper and a walk-in-robe. As well as breakfast they included wine and cheese in the afternoon. It was more than our budget so we decided to have lunch before making a final decision.

We went to Jestine's Kitchen which served up traditional Southern "Low Country" food in a casual atmosphere. Everybody was really friendly when they found out we were from Australia and offered suggestions about what we should order. We had crab cakes and cornbread to start, followed by pork chop with rice and collard greens, and fried flounder with red rice and okra gumbo. We washed this down with some refreshing sweetened tea, and a YooHoo Chocolate Milk. For dessert, we had a lemon tart and tried coca cola pie – a very sweet and moist, slightly chocolaty cake. We staggered out of the restaurant and looked at a couple more accommodation options before deciding to take the room at the Meeting Street Inn for three nights.

We checked in, parked the car and then went for a walk around town. We didn't get very far because Suzie spotted a sale sign at Banana Republic and we spent the next 40 minutes selecting and trying on clothes. It was cold and getting dark by the time we left the store, and as it was almost wine and cheese time, we made our way back to the hotel. We sat on the beautiful couches in the hotel lobby and had tiny sausages in BBQ sauce, cheese, a delicious spicy crab dip and crackers with Burgundy wine while chatting to some other guests.

Already we could see that we were going to love Charleston. The town felt very different from New York and Washington and the people were very charming and polite.

We slept in on Christmas Day and had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel lobby. We chatted with Dean and Cindy over coffee, cereal, fruit, yoghurt and muffins before heading out for the day.

We walked to the end of Market Street past some empty market stalls, and then along the promenade past the neo classical Customs House and into a waterfront park with a flower bed of silver beet, rhubarb and purple cabbage, gorgeous pineapple shaped fountain, jetties with seagulls, reed fields with white and grey herons. Further on, we wandered along the boardwalk where we saw a couple of dolphins in the water. We walked past elegant historic mansions and townhouses to Battery Park at the tip of the Charleston peninsula, where we enjoyed some beautiful views across the water out to Fort Sumter. It had a monument to the Confederate defenders of Charleston and several cannons next to piles of cannonballs. We turned up King Street and zigzagged backwards and forwards across the street to take a closer look at some of the magnificent buildings and mansions. Some of the houses were up to three storeys high and many had for sale signs on them. The old buildings were different to anything that we had seen before. The antebellum plantation homes and mansions had a strong neo-classical influence with Greek style columns, capitals and facades with wooden shutters and beautiful wrought iron balcony and stair rails, gates, and window screens. Many of the more notable examples had plaques attached explaining the history behind the building.

We stopped at one of the few shops open and had a light lunch after queuing for a while. After lunch we walked to the north part of the historic centre where we saw a model of the Hunley, the Confederate submarine outside the museum. As we walked further north the upmarket features of the southern half of the historic centre soon fell away. Many shops on the main King Street were empty and some buildings were quite dilapidated and boarded up.

We arrived back to the hotel just in time for wine, BBQ meatballs, spinach dip, cheese and crackers. We chatted to Cindy and Dean and then went out with them to the King Street Grill for dinner. We shared a plate of mussels in red (spicy tomato) sauce followed by a spicy chicken, shrimp and sausage jambalaya and pepperjack chicken pasta with a delicious salad. It was raining when we walked home. Luckily the forecast rain had not materialised until late in the evening and we had enjoyed clear blue skies for most of the day. All in all it was a beautiful day for Suzie's special day.

The sky was grey and it was raining when we woke up on Sunday. We chatted to Dean and Cindy over breakfast in the hotel lobby and then headed out to spend another lovely day wandering around Charleston's historic centre admiring the beautiful heritage buildings.

Our first stop were the market stalls under the Daughters of Confederacy Museum where we particularly admired the Gullah woven sweet grass baskets and some recycled pressed tin ceiling tiles. We walked up the other side of the Charleston peninsula where we saw an artificial lake before making our way to the College of Charleston complex. In the centre of the modern complex were the original Victorian buildings surrounded by old trees dripping with Spanish moss.

We walked down King Street, stopping to do a little post-Christmas sale shopping and then had lunch at Groucho's deli. When we came out it was snowing but the snow was melting as soon as it hit the pavement. We took photos of some art deco buildings on King Street and a synagogue on Hassett Street. At the Charleston Place Hotel we saw a lovely fountain topped with four horses and a falcon – the water was coming out of spikes on the horses' heads. Further down King Street, we window shopped at jewellery, antique and art shops including an Audubon shop with beautiful pictures and models of birds. Luckily for our wallets most of the shops were closed. We found a small laneway off King Street which took us past three churches and their graveyards. We walked past the Town Hall on Broad Street and turned up East Bay Street. Back on Market Street we were sucked in by a free sample of hot fresh praline (pecans, butter and sugar) and before we knew it we had spent $20 on three boxes when all we had wanted was two pralines to give to Cindy and Dean as a wedding present.

Back at the hotel, we caught up with Dean and Cindy over wine, crab dip and crackers. Then we headed out to Fleet Landing which was a seafood restaurant housed in an old US Navy building on the waterfront. The food was delicious – we started off by sharing a creamy "She-Crab" soup, followed by shrimp and grits (a surprisingly good creamy corn porridge) and black grouper with green beans and red rice.

We hurried back to the hotel in the snow and had one of our rich pralines in our room before bed. It was a lovely end to our last night in Charleston.

Week 44 - USA - New York

On Monday morning, we woke up when the lights were turned on to serve breakfast at 5.30 am. We landed at JFK Airport at 7.00 am and we managed to collect our bags and sail through customs with no problems. However they did take our photographs and fingerprints from both hands.

We caught a shuttle bus with an entertaining driver for the scenic drive through Queens, then Downtown and Midtown where other passengers were dropped off and then finally to our hostel at Central Park West in Uptown. We had a tiny room on the 5^th floor for USD 99 a night. We caught the metro to Canal Street and walked into Chinatown where we enjoyed a much anticipated Yum Cha washed down with copious amounts of Chinese tea. The streets in the area were overrun with young "brothers" all selling copy watches and hand bags, counting money surreptitiously and keeping an eye out for the cops. After lunch we walked up Broadway to find a T. J. Maxx store. When we tracked it down we managed to buy coats, socks, hats, scarves and gloves so that we were properly prepared for the New York weather. It was just as well we did because shortly after we left the store, we saw our first snowflakes falling out of the sky. We walked further up Broadway to Union Square and checked out the colourful Christmas markets there. The streets were such a mix of people and every second person seemed to be speaking a different language which was easily established as every second person was on their mobile phone. For dinner, we went to the Food Emporium – a deli-supermarket – where we tried a hot pastrami sandwich. It was absolutely delicious as it was crammed with a generous amount of warm pastrami, melted cheese, mayonnaise, lettuce and tomato. We decided to call it a night and hobbled to the subway where we caught a couple of trains back to the hostel. Outside the hostel, the cars were covered in a fine dusting of snow.

We had a sleep-in on Tuesday and then spent some time in the basement checking our emails before heading out for the day. There was no breakfast included in our room rate so our first stop was a little cafe called L'Exquisitus, where we had a large mug of coffee each and shared a delicious salmon and cream cheese bagel followed by a fruit salad with yoghurt. Despite the cold (22°F), it was a really beautiful morning. The sun was shining and the sky was blue, so we decided to walk downtown through Central Park. Apart from a few hardy dog walkers, Central Park was deserted. Almost all the trees had dropped their leaves except for a few conifers. We walked along the paths with the remnants of last night's snow fall crunching beneath our feet, meandering past the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis reservoir where we saw ducks and coots. Across the reservoir, we had a fantastic view of the city skyline. We saw some squirrels, sparrows, finches, jays and a large hawk.

We turned onto Broadway to Columbus Circle to see if Best Buy could help us with a 32GB memory card. They couldn't, but sent us on to B & H Photo & Video at 34^th street. This was an amazing Jewish run business. It was the largest photographic shop we had ever seen. They had an information stand near the front door where an old Jewish man sat reading the Torah with a young Afro-American girl standing next to him providing help. At the service counters they had bowls of sweets so that you could have a sweet while you were waiting. The shop was manned by an army of Orthodox Jews. Near the entrance of the store there was a lady handing out free water, coke and cups of pretzels. Above you a noisy conveyor belt sent green crates whizzing around the shop at high speed. We found out later that these were orders flying down to the collection area. After you ordered your goods from the sales people they printed a receipt and an order which you took downstairs to the bank of cashiers and paid. You then went to a separate counter to pick up your goods before leaving the store.

We caught the subway back to Canal Street and Chinatown and found the Shanghai Cafe on Mott Street where we had Xia Long Bao dumplings. These were amazing tiny pork and crab soup dumplings that we first tasted in Shanghai China. These were hand-made at the front of the store and steamed on cabbage leaves in a bamboo basket. To eat them you dip them in black vinegar and then bite a small hole in the top to suck out the hot soup before eating the rest.

Afterwards we walked through Chinatown and then along Fifth Avenue to see the shops, Christmas themed windows and Christmas lights. We stopped at a diner for dinner and then we continued our walk along Fifth Avenue past the limestone Empire State Building and the New York Public Library with a magnificent white staircase flanked by lions until we reached 42^nd Street. At this point we turned off and headed towards Times Square and the theatre district. Times Square was an assault upon our senses. It was full of gaudy billboards, flashing neon signs and large electronic advertising screens. After walking around the square where we were accosted by spruikers who were trying to sell tickets to a comedy show, we walked to the nearest subway station to catch the Metro back to the hostel. We got off one stop early and bought milk, bananas and cereal for breakfast. Back at the hostel, we fell into bed exhausted. It had been a long day.

After breakfast on Wednesday, we spent some time on the internet in the hostel's basement lounge, before walking to the Post Office to find out how much it was going to cost to post our stuff home and buy some packaging. Then we caught the subway to the last stop on Manhattan Island and found ourselves back in Chinatown. We started making our way towards the river, stopping at a food market for a lunch of roast duck and noodles on the way. Further south at East River, we had to make a little loop past Police Plaza (NYPD headquarters) and through the ornate archway of City Hall onto the Brooklyn Bridge bike path and walkway. We walked most of the way across the bridge where we had beautiful views of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.

We walked back to Manhattan and then headed south through the financial district to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. We waited for the free ferry and stood out the front admiring the view of sunset on the Statue of Liberty. It was icy cold over the water and when we reached Staten Island we stayed in the terminal and got straight on another ferry going back.

We walked up Broadway past Wall Street and the big bronze bull, stopping at Borders bookshop for a browse in the warmth. We continued to walk up Broadway looking for somewhere for dinner and searching for some jeans for Suzie. We bought some Levis eventually at half the price we pay in Australia. After stopping in No Ho for dinner, we found a metro station on 6^th Avenue and headed back to the hostel.

On Thursday, we went back to the Post Office to post our parcel. It weighed over 12 lbs, so we were very happy to be rid of it! Then we caught the subway to the Rockefeller Centre to take in the views of New York City from the "Top of the Rock" observation deck. There were three open air observation decks and it was a sunny clear morning so we had unobstructed views of the city in all directions. We could even see the Goldman Sachs Building across the river in New Jersey!

Afterwards, we caught a subway back to Chinatown where we had a lovely lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant. While we were eating lunch there was a small altercation near the front of the restaurant. Apparently a small Asian male customer started throwing his soup at a couple of female customers. When the staff remonstrated with him, he took exception and started swearing, cursing and threw his remaining soup on the floor. He was thrown out of the restaurant, however when we left the restaurant, we saw him hanging around outside and peering in the windows. Just another New York psycho!

After lunch, we slowly made our way back uptown, stopping to try some egg tarts and to buy a bottle of wine to share with Bill (who Keith worked with in Sydney) and his wife Louisa. Back at the hostel, we had a quick shower and then caught the subway to Penn Street where we caught the Long Island Rail Road to Locust Valley to meet Bill. Bill collected us from the station and we dropped into Friends Academy (where he and Louisa have taught for over 22 years) to pick up his books before heading to their apartment for a pre-dinner drink and chat. We spent a couple of hours chatting, met their daughters Kira and Katrina, and then Bill drove us to the Bryant & Cooper steak house. At the front of the steak house there was a window through which we could see big sides of beef that had been hung up to age. Inside the majority of the clientele were males and it was very noisy. We had gorgonzola salad and clams casino (similar to oysters Kilpatrick) to start, followed by porterhouse (T-bone) steak for three, with creamed spinach, sautéed mushrooms, broccoli hollandaise and mashed potato. The steak was enormous and although it was delicious and cooked to perfection we couldn't finish it. After dinner, Bill and Louisa dropped us off at Manhasset station, where we caught a train back to Penn Station and then the subway back to the hostel. We had a really great time, it was so good to share a glass of red wine (excellent Nieto Senetiner Malbec 2009) and Louisa gave us a free pass to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

During breakfast on Friday, we booked our flight on the internet with Jet Blue to Washington DC. This meant we had an extra day in New York (originally we were planning to drive out of New York on Sunday morning to avoid the mind blowing traffic), and would save on the car rental by hiring it a few days later in Washington DC. The car rental quote was substantially cheaper than renting the car from New York. It appears that everything is more expensive in New York. A couple of girls we talked to in the hostel told us that it was cheaper to buy almost anything on the West Coast.

After breakfast, we walked to 105^th Street and Columbus to drop off our laundry. It was very busy with heaps of black ladies in there doing their washing. Then we got on the subway and headed for the Meat Packing District and Chelsea Market. It was a glorious day, clear sky and the warmest day we had had so far. On the subway, we saw some young black guys with their pants half way down their thighs. Suzie was itching to ask them how they managed to defy gravity as when they stood up their pants should have fallen down, but they didn't.

We walked from the 14^th Street subway to Chelsea Market which was a pretty upmarket place with beautiful food and other goods. We saw great bakeries, meat and seafood stalls with the freshly steamed bright red lobsters most memorable. After a delicious carpolocco ham sandwich from a deli and some dried cantaloupe dipped in chocolate, we walked through the Meat Packing district on Bleeker Street towards Greenwich Village and then turned south on Lafayette towards the financial downtown area. Along the way we walked past memorable buildings, gorgeous restaurants, boutiques, parks and gardens. We stopped and bought a piece of New York cheesecake at Pasticceria Rocco and ate it on a bench at the neighbouring Father Demo Park. We saw lots of plump, fluffy brown squirrels at City Hall Park where there was a beautiful fountain framed by decorative winter plants and the surrounding skyscrapers. We stopped at Dunkin' Donuts for a donut and then St Pauls chapel with George Washington's pew carefully preserved along with a lot of 9/11 memorabilia. Out the back was a cemetery and across the road the twin towers site which was alive with construction work. Next to this was a Century 21 department store where we found a couple of hard cases at a bargain price which we decided to buy even though we were unsure if they would fit in the rental car boot! Then we wheeled our new purchases down Broadway to Borders to get a road atlas of the USA for the upcoming road trip.

We caught the subway home and dropped off the two cases before heading back on the subway to Hell's Kitchen for dinner. We walked up and down the main drag with numerous restaurants on either side. Spoilt for choice we opted for a tiny Indian place where we had pappadums, pepper lamb fry, spicy okra, naan and rice. It was all freshly made with large amounts of spice including dried chillis and ginger. We ate every grain and stopped on the way home at a Donut Ice Cream shop where we had chocolate, Irish Coffee and raspberry ripple home-made ice cream. If you have money then New York is definitely one of the best places in the world to be.

On Saturday morning, we booked our accommodation in Washington DC and chatted to Hiroko from Japan. It turned out that Hiroko was also going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art so we caught the subway together to 81^st Street and walked across Central Park to the museum. It was so cold that the lakes in Central Park had begun to freeze over.

Nothing had really prepared us for the size of the museum. With well over three million items in seventeen departments, we didn't know where to start. At the Information Desk, we found that there were several guided tours available with a "Highlights of the Museum" tour starting in forty five minutes. While we were waiting for the tour to start we bought a book of the highlights of the museum and browsed through the Greek and Roman collections. There we saw some fine mosaics and some red and blue painted walls from Roman mansions. The walls were painted with pillars, fountains and urns.

Our tour guide, Sherry started the tour by taking us to the Greek Galleries where we admired the Kouros (athlete) sculpture. Then we visited the Roman Galleries to see a temporary exhibit – a magnificent 300AD mosaic floor excavated from a mansion in Lod, Israel. At the African Galleries, Sherry pointed out a wooden sculpture of a Dogon couple from Mali and a modern art piece made from aluminium wine bottle tops and copper wire (which we weren't too excited by). In the Pacific Islands collection, we saw a ceiling from a ceremonial hut constructed from shields (the shields were made to commemorate a successful head hunt!) and some bis poles (decorative poles carved from tree trunks and used to hang head hunting trophies). We saw a neo-classical sculpture of Perseus with the head of Medusa in the European Sculpture collection before heading past the Christmas Tree to the Medieval Art collection where we looked at a walnut Virgin and Child Reliquary from Auvergne and a limestone Virgin and Child sculpture from Bourgogne.

Then we went to the American Wing which was once a separate museum that had been cleverly joined on the main building by a glass roof structure. It had a neo-classical facade with Ionic columns and vertical windows that had once been part of a bank. We admired a beautiful porch/loggia designed by Charles Tiffany. It had beautiful columns, topped with capitals constructed from ceramic peonies, magnolias, lotuses and poppies with fine glass stems. There were beautiful glass tiles in a frieze above the columns and in the porch were beautiful lamps and windows painted with flowers.

Our final stop was the European paintings collection where Sherry pointed out "The Harvester" by Pieter Bruegel, a "Madonna and Child" by Duccio (the museum paid $43 million for this item ten years ago), a self portrait by Rembrandt and a portrait of Juan de Pareja by Velazquez.

By this time we were ready for lunch so we made our way to the cafeteria where had soup and sandwiches before heading back to the galleries.

The Islamic Art galleries were closed for renovation, but we were able to see a small part of the collection on a balcony before going back to the European paintings collection. We spent the next few hours browsing though paintings by Rembrandt, Velazquez, van Dyck, Titian, Tintoretto, Vermeer, Gossart, Fra Angelico, El Greco, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, Monet, Manet, Picasso, Cezanne, Renoir, Degas and others. While we were shopping for carpets in Kashmir, we had seen some copies of silk rugs that were held in the Met so we tried to find them without success. Instead we found ourselves looking at Chinese sculptures, paintings and porcelain in the Chinese and Asian galleries.

We made our way to the American Wing and visited a series of "period rooms" full of stunning furniture. On our way out of the museum, we walked through part of the Egyptian Art collection and the reconstructed Temple of Dendur which was even surrounded by a water-filled moat! We left the museum after 7.00 pm after having spent over eight hours there.

We caught a subway to Hell's Kitchen, where after wandering around a bit we settled on the Pam Real Thai Food restaurant for dinner. It was really delicious and the closest thing to real Thai food that we'd had in a while. After dinner we caught the subway back to the hostel and then crashed – exhausted after yet another long day.

After breakfast on Sunday, we caught the subway north to Harlem and walked a few blocks. It was pretty quiet as it was Sunday morning, but it definitely felt different to the rest of Manhattan. It was a bit more run down with 99¢ shops advertising ATMs supplying $10 notes. There were signs about a gun amnesty, prominent NYPD cameras and a sign of court ordered closure of a restaurant due to supply of minors with alcohol. There were street vendors selling incense sticks, perfume oils and raw African shay butter. The fast food chicken outlets were advertising genuine Southern food including collard greens, catfish, macaroni cheese etc. Some places had a distinct Jamaican twist with jerk chicken, beans and rice etc. There was a guy with a van sporting posters of the Black Panther party, hands off Zimbabwe, and an African nation flag but he was pretty friendly. He explained that the USA was really two nations – a white nation and a black nation. He also told me that Ho Chi Minh had lived in the area and listened to black speakers on that corner in 1916. It could well be true although we thought he lived in Paris before returning to Vietnam?

We got back on the subway and headed further north to Washington Heights and Fort Tryon Park on 190^th Street. Here, overlooking the Hudson River was a European style monastery cloister built with pieces imported from various European monasteries and churches. It was part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the iconic item here was the Unicorn Tapestries. We had seen copies in Stirling Castle in Scotland. The building was very interesting because it was composed of two internal cloisters and two external cloisters. Most of the capitals, gargoyles, stained glass, sculpture, reliquaries, mausoleums, wall hangings, and furniture were from different parts of Europe – Spain, France, England and Germany. The cloisters had a very authentic feel about them - even to the extent of the gardens which were planted in medieval monastery style with herbs and trees and there was even pomegranate in the external cloisters. We worked our way around methodically and left after a jam-packed couple of hours.

We caught the M4 bus from outside and it carried us down Broadway, across the northern side of Central Park and down 5^th Avenue past many museums including the New York Museum, the Solomon Guggenheim Museum, the Ukranian Museum, Neue Galerie and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We jumped off just after this on the southern point of Central Park with the Plaza Hotel and very upmarket stores lining the street. We walked through to the Rockefeller Plaza with its ice rink but the crowds were so large and we were starving for lunch so we took a couple of photos and fled down 5^th Avenue. Eventually we found a diner called Toasties where we had a couple of the best sandwiches we have ever had. We had spicy roast beef and a Cobb with bacon, chicken, lettuce and tomato.

Afterwards we wandered around town with its incredible Christmas shopping crowds and bought a GPS to use with our rental car as it worked out a lot cheaper to buy one. We walked to the Grand Central Terminal which was a terrific building. Outside were massive columns and golden eagles crouching on globes, inside was a cavernous marble hall with the tracks leading off it and the night sky painted on the roof with the various constellations outlined and highlighted. In the entry was a small high quality market and the light fittings hanging off the ceiling carried about 60 electric light bulbs each in an oval configuration. Considering all the dodgy stations we have seen around the world it was remarkably clean. There were still some weird people around including one androgynous individual with hair spiked to a single point a good 30 cms above his head.

We walked back to the Rockefeller Plaza but if anything the crowds were now larger and it was nearly impossible to get to the skating rink. When we did manage to get close it was empty as they were cleaning it so we gave up on the idea of ice-skating. We took a couple of beautiful photos of the surrounds including a huge conifer tree decorated with lights, angels and lights in an adjacent garden bed and a light show of snowflakes playing on the front of the Saks 5^th Avenue building where there was a queue to get in.

We walked across to Hell's Kitchen again and queued up at Totto Ramen on the corner of 52^nd Street and 9^th Avenue. We had to wait a while but it was worth it for the avocado and tuna, and tonkotsu miso ramen. It took us back to Japan immediately – the tiny cramped ramen shop and the perfect ramen soup. We caught the subway home, packed for Washington DC and crashed again after a great week in New York.

Week 43 - Peru - Arequipa to Lima

We slept in on Monday, had a leisurely breakfast and checked out of the La Casa de Melgar. We walked to Plaza de Armas where there was a huge parade going off with police, army, and cadets all represented with lots of uniforms, flags and speeches. The South Americans seem to be really good at this stuff. All the roads leading to the plaza were blocked off by fleets of official cars and motorbikes.

We walked across the Rio Chilli on Calle Bolognesi into a dodgier part of the city to see the Museo La Recoleta located in a convent. The street was lined with leather workshops all the way down to the bridge. They had the usual handbags, belts and wallets but also chaps, saddles, and whips as well. The Rio Chilli was running quite strongly but one local was up to his thighs fishing with a large cane rod. The old stone walls on the river side looked in various stages of collapse. We found the museum on the far side but it was just about to close for siesta from 12.00 pm to 3.00pm so we decided to come back later. We walked back towards the centre over Puente Grau with a grim statue of the general overseeing the traffic. We took a couple of turns and got completely lost and walked for an hour through busy market streets. Eventually we found our way back to the Mercedaria pedestrian strip and Capriccio where we had lunch. Then we wandered back to the Museo La Recoleta and wandered through several cloisters with exhibits on pre Colombian art, colonial religious art, the nun's cells, Amazon animals, Amazon tribes' artefacts, and an old and impressive library upstairs.

We walked back to the hostel and sat down in the bar to update our diary, upload our photos and read. We went out for dinner at around 7.00 pm to a parilla (BBQ). Back at the hostel, we caught a taxi to the Terrapuerto bus station and got on our overnight bus.

We woke up after sleeping reasonably well on Tuesday morning to see huge tawny brown desert dunes with a belt of green running through the middle. These were trees and fields of various crops including large areas of grape vines. We arrived at the dusty town of Nazca, where most of the passengers disembarked. We rolled on through the desert and then climbed up a mountain range. To our disappointment, we couldn't see any sign of the Nazca Lines. We arrived at Ica two hours later and shared a taxi with Amber from Boston to the little oasis town of Huacachina. We checked into our room at Hotel El Huacachinero and admired the pool and the indigenous art in the foyer. To our delight our bath towels had been folded into the shape of two swans. We walked around town to the lagoon where we could see that the sand dunes were encroaching on the edge of town. There was a picturesque walkway encircling three quarters of the lagoon. The oasis was circled by trees including some large palms with a variety of birds flying around. After an iced passionfruit juice, we walked back to the hotel where we spent the afternoon lazing by the pool, reading, swimming and chatting to other travellers. There were quite a few birds in the pool area including a couple of parrots and a macaw which appeared to be the hotel pets.

Our alarm went off at 5.45 am on Wednesday and we had breakfast quickly so that we could be ready in time to leave for our Ballestas Islands tour at 6.30 am.

We spent an hour or so driving out to the port at Paracas where we jumped on a boat to the islands. On the way to the islands we saw some dolphins and passed the El Candelabro – a 50 metre high candelabra-shape traced in the desert hillside overlooking the sea. The islands were spectacular – eroded into many caves and arches. The islands were home to thousands of seabirds and hundreds of sea-lions. We saw the Humboldt penguin, cormorants, boobies and pelicans nesting in the rocks and on the shores we saw large numbers of sea-lions with their young. On our boat of about 20 people the only person who got anointed with guano was Suzie! Thankfully we were forewarned so Suzie did have a scarf over her head. The islands were completely barren and covered in guano. Every five to seven years when the guano reaches a depth of 30 cms, it is removed to be used as fertiliser. The stench was overpowering so we won't be applying for that job! The sheer numbers of birds turned the red sand of some of the islands black. Huge numbers were constantly flying in and out in formations of long lines or V shapes. The gannets, terns and pelicans also dived spectacularly into the water like missiles. The birds were also beautiful flying along the surface of the water, gliding within centimetres of the surface. There were some fishermen allowed to harvest scallops, squid, octopus and mussels. We arrived back at Paracas and saw a large shark on the jetty. We had a good time on the drive back with all the people in the minibus so we decided to go for lunch together to the Bamboo Cafe. After lunch, we had to rush off on our winery tour.

We were ferried off in a battered mini taxi to Tacama winery on the other side of Ica. We passed cotton fields, grapes, pecan trees, avocadoes and mangoes. The winery was previously a monastery but had been a winery since 1889. The view over the grapevines from the bell tower was lovely. We tasted some wines and pisco but couldn't get too excited as the Peruvians preferred sweet wines and the pisco was a strong grape spirit which didn't really appeal to us.

Then we drove to the next place which was called El Catador. In contrast to the last place this was an "artisan" or boutique winery and it was located with a handful of other similar sized wineries with a field of grapes on one side and antiquated equipment on the other. They had some interesting tastings including a lemon flavoured pisco which we mixed with honey before tasting and "Peruvian Baileys", a mixture of pisco, milk, vanilla and honey.

We got dropped off back at Huacachina, and spent some time back at the hotel and organised our bus tickets to Lima. Today our towels were folded into a dog.

We slept in on Thursday morning and then had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel garden with the parrots and the macaw. We went for a walk around the lake which looked beautiful in the morning light, took photos of oasis, dunes, palms, turtle, tiger herons and a red insect eater, bought some water and then headed back to the hotel to read and laze around the pool area. It was a hot day and there was a lot of construction work going on around the hotel.

In the middle of the day we went out briefly for lunch, then we went back to the hotel pool until it was time to leave for our dune buggy trip. We got into the strange contraption with big wheels, big motor and roll cage, with six other people. We roared out of town and into the sand dunes. It was a bit like a ride at the Ekka with climbs up near vertical dune faces and then stomach turning drops down the other side. At first, we were convinced that the buggy would roll. After a while we began to relax and enjoy the harsh desert sand scenery. We stopped five times to sand board down large dune faces and it was actually very easy because we lay down on our stomachs, tucked our elbows in and went straight down. To slow down we could use our feet as brakes, but we were all trying to go the furthest. Poor Suzie split her cargo pants getting back in the buggy towards the end. We stopped at another small oasis hidden in the huge dunes and that was amazing – to see in the midst of all that sand another patch of green and palm trees that had obviously been there a long time. We watched the spectacular sunset with the light and shadows changing the dune colours and all the shades of gold and purple that came and went.

We got back to our hotel, where we found our towels were now an elephant.

On Friday morning, we woke to the screeching of the parrots in the huarango tree behind the pool. After a shower we had breakfast with the parrots and had a last walk around the Huacachina oasis to get a bottle of water. Then we were in a taxi to the Cruz del Sur terminal in Ica where we boarded the bus for Lima. It was hot and sticky when we got on but the bus had air con, music and a movie before lunch of chicken or beef with rice. First we headed back to the coast for our first stop at the port of Paracas, then we rolled along the coast on the flat Pan American highway. At first the scenery was desert sand with spectacular mountains on one side – dark rock half covered with drifting sand. There was intermittent irrigation with fields of tomatoes and corn. Later on we saw surf on the coastal side and the water looked a dirty brown. There were fields of avocado trees and construction of extra lanes for the highway. Small one room hut settlements sprang up, some with livestock in makeshift wooden pens. There were long wire barracks full of brown chickens in poor condition. The cold Humboldt current meeting the warm air caused a surreal fog to roll in over the dunes so that visibility was poor on the highway and the view became snippets through the mist. As we got closer to Lima the slums became more congregated with the tiny box dwellings joined together like beehives. After over five hours we arrived in smoggy Lima and caught a taxi to our hotel in Barranco. We were very careful as we had been warned that petty theft was particularly prevalent prior to Christmas!

Our hotel in Barranco was really modern and we had a lovely large room with silver Japanese stencils on the wall. We had a cup of tea in the lobby and then we went out. We stopped at a very large artisan store a couple of blocks away and then walked along the cliffs and flower gardens overlooking the sea. It was late afternoon and the sun was just beginning to set so the views were magnificent. We walked through the Larco Mar shopping centre on our way to Miraflores. We had a light dinner at Hot & Cool and then we walked back to our hotel in Barranco through the main shopping strip in Miraflores. After all the negative feedback from travellers our first afternoon in Lima was surprisingly pleasant.

After breakfast on Saturday, we headed out for the day. We had decided to spend the day in downtown Lima and we caught the "Metro" into town. The "Metro" turned out to be a very efficient banana bus with a dedicated lane and special stops so that it didn't get caught up in Lima's crazy traffic.

We arrived in Lima after about half an hour and made our way to Plaza San Martin with its lovely gardens, fountains and the usual equestrian statue of General Jose San Martin. From there it was a short walk through a pedestrian mall to the Plaza de Armas right in the middle of Lima's Historic Centre. Around the plaza were the Cathedral of Lima, Government Palace and Archbishop's Place.

After admiring the plaza and its surroundings, we made our way to the Iglesia de San Francisco. The church was a striking yellow and white colonial building. The baroque church had a red and white Moorish style ceiling and an impressive neoclassical altar. There was some sort of military awards ceremony/service going on and so we decided to visit the monastery next door.

The visit to the monastery was by a guided tour which took us past the cloisters to a fine museum of religious art, with scenes from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi and a series of portraits. The cloisters and the rooms were lined with hand painted glazed ceramic tiles from Seville . We climbed up a staircase with a breathtaking domed carved cedar Moorish ceiling to visit a fantastic seventeenth century library containing 20,000 books. While we were upstairs our guide took us to the choir where we saw beautifully carved saints above the choir stalls, a pipe organ in need of restoration and an elaborate rotating bookstand. Back downstairs again we visited the refectory, where there was a painting of The Last Supper – Peruvian style with potatoes, chillis and guinea pigs on the table. In the Chaplain's room was a series of paintings depicting the Passion of Christ that had been attributed to Peter Paul Rubens and in the Sacristy, there was a large painting of the Franciscan family tree.

The final part of our visit was the descent into the catacombs, a series of crypts underneath the church which served as a burial ground for the monks. We filed past pits of bones which had been arranged by size and type by archaeologists. The most macabre sight came last - a round well lined with perfectly laid out skulls and femurs.

We had a late lunch and then we paid a quick visit to the Casa de Benardo Higgins. There were some traditional masks and costumes on display but we were more interested in the beautiful colonial building with its lovely cornices, columns with roman capitals and stained glass doors. We walked over the Puente Trujillo with the dirty river flowing underneath. In the distance colourful slums climbed up the hills and the other side of the river was considerably run down. We spent a few minutes walking around the mall before retreating back to the Plaza Mayor. We walked to the Plaza Bolivar with the Congress building behind heavy security and vultures resting all around in trees and lamp posts.

Then we gradually made our way back to the Metro stop. We walked along a very busy street which seemed to be the bus stop for lots of old clapped out 1950's style local buses. There were lots of people coming and going and street vendors selling fried liver, fried pork, fried chicken gizzards, corn with cheese, popcorn, stuffed potatoes and churros.

We walked past the huge Mercado Comercio 5 Continents which extended off the street on a couple of levels. We turned onto Avenida Grau and found the Estacion Central where we caught the metro bus back to Barranco and had a short rest at the hotel before heading off to central Barranco for dinner.

We walked down Avenida Grau across a bridge and through a night market to the small Puente de Suspiros. At the church next door a wedding was taking place and we spotted the Fiesta de Sabores nearby. This was a collection of stalls manned mainly by women with home-made Peruvian foods. We tried a couple of dishes and the sweet maize beer followed by some dessert before walking back to the hotel.

We slept in on Sunday and after another fresh breakfast in the interior garden of the hotel we prepared for leaving for the USA. We walked down to central Barranco stopping at a salon on the way for a haircut for Keith and a pedicure for Suzie. We walked around the same route that we had taken last night. In the daytime we could see the views out to sea and appreciate the old colonial buildings. We walked back towards our hotel stopping at the Canta Rana (Singing Frog) restaurant recommended in the Lonely Planet where we had some lovely fish ceviche (raw fish with lime, chilli and onion). We bought a pair of leather sandals – leather is generally good quality and cheap in Peru. We walked back to our hotel to drop them off and ate our granadillas and mangoes. The fruit and fruit juices have been outstanding in South America and we will miss that. Then we walked to Miraflores and started shopping for boots and jeans for the New York weather. The leather boots looked good and soon we had found what we needed. We caught a taxi back to Barranco and went to an Italian restaurant near our hotel. We had a quick dinner and then we raced back to the hotel for a shower and some last minute packing before the taxi picked us up at 8.45 pm. We drove through some dangerous looking parts of Lima on the way to the airport and the processing took ages so we were just in time to board our flight. On board, we quietly celebrated making it around South America without any problems.