The part of the roadtrip where we actually got on the road..

Welcome to the second installment of our American adventure. A lot has happened since we last blogged, but we've been too busy doing it to write it down, sorry!

So, when we finished up our last post we were just setting off to the shops. We spent the day looking around the mall, getting over our jetlag, and doing a lot of 'ohmygod, look at the size of that', 'what is that?' and 'how muc h is that in pounds'ing.

We then ventured to the 'theatre' and watched Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, which came out in America before it was released at home! The evening was spent eating and talking. Not a particuarly eventful day, but a nice way to ease into American life.

We spent Wednesday in Montgomery, the town where our host, Dodie and her lovely family live. The town is really cute, lots of little gift shops and cafes. We found an amazing alcohol store and realised what we'd been missing! Apparently it's the norm here to buy spirits in 1.75l bottles!! Everything looked doubly as exciting as the stuff in England, and cost about half of the price! We visited a gorgeous artisian bakery and an amazing antique shop with lots of beautiful handmade brooches, boxes, jewellery and furniture made by a lovely lady called Sandy. She gave us a tour of her work and explained where she got her materials from etc. Everybody over here seems to be super friendly and helpful! We left Montgomery and headed back to house, where a bbq was on the cards. Unfortunately the weather didn't comply, and the rain (combined with extreme gardening) put us off the idea. We decided the best thing to do was to bbq the steaks on the grill outside (having a massive outside grill seems to be the norm here! ) and eat them at the table. The steaks were lovely, the company was great, and the evening, a success.
Us: 1
Weather: 0

Thursday was the first day of the 'road tripping' part of the road trip. We headed off to pick up the rental car and were suprised when we were presented with a gorgeous, new shiny Chrysler somethingorother. We worked out how to turn it on, crammed our not-so-big suitcases in to the supposedly massive boot, and we were off! We hit the I-90 and headed for Medina, stopping at a ridiculous amount of toll booths along the way.
We arrived at Kelly's around late afternoon and after a quick tour of her house, swimming pool AND hot tub we set off for a tour of Medina. We stopped at a lovely ice-cream shop and bought some 'small' cones (2 massive scoops) of flavours that are definitely not available at home. Mine was a lovely blend of raspberry, white chocolate, milk chocolate and vanilla. Mum's was amaretto and marichino cherries. Yum!
We took a stroll down the canal, carefully tiptoed under the canal bridge (the only place along the whole canal that you can walk under....it drips!), posed for stupid photos with a big apple and headed back to town for some dinner.
We ate at an amazing Italian place, the portions were (of course) ridiculously big, we shared one and still struggled, then we ventured to Kelly's new house for a spot of 4 wheeling.
We have a feeling that 4 wheelers are the same as quad bikes, either way it was the best way to spend the evening. We took the trails behind Kelly's house and drove around until nightfall, crashing our way through a fair amount of foliage!
Kelly and I left the mothers chatting and headed off to her friend Michelle's house for a night out in Buffalo. We picked up a couple of people there and headed off to Marcellas, a gay-bar with a late-night drag queen show(www.clubmarcella.com)! The place was great, the people were lovely and everybody seemed interested in the English accent! It's strange that the drinking age is 21. People can go clubbing, watch people dance for money..but can still only order a coke at the bar! Things there started pretty late, with the place starting out as a club/bar before the show. The show was in a catagory of it's own, with some very convincing (and a few not so) drag queens, and even a drag king! We left in the early hours of the morning and headed to the 24 hour Dennys, with a kind, but tired waitress who was very interested in hearing about England! We headed back to Michelle's for a quick 2 hour nap before heading back to Kelly's ready to start the next day (very tired!).

Friday started with waffles before heading out to the mall for a quick shop. We then drove to Niagra and hit the falls! We toyed with the idea of doing the full tour, but after talking to a few sales-people we realised just how much people were being ripped off! The view from the American side of the falls was amazing enough, and we weren't really feeling the 'let's get soaked at the bottom of a waterfall' vibe! The views were spectacular, and we shouted hello at Canada, which looked very casino-y! From Niagra we headed back to Buffalo, nipped in a few more shops, discovered Michael's (an amazing craft store) and the Dollar Tree and ventured to a restaurant for Kelly's work friend's birthday.
The evening consisted of some awful waitressing, a freezing dining room and some ridiculously large portions of pizza and 'no, don't worry, they're not really spicy' (really really spicy) famous buffalo wings!! Some massive fishbowl cocktails were thrown into the equation, and we headed back for a much needed sleep!

Change of writer - Laura now knackered.
Saturday
Kelly's mum cooked the most enormous breakfast consisting of sausages, bacon, scrambled egg, bagels, toast, muffins, yogurts, bananas, fruit juice and tea, and then, there were only us two eating it. We tried to do it justice.
We decided that trying to make it to Chicago in one day was far too ambitious so did a quick couch surf to find a host in Toledo. Whilst continuing our travels down I-90 we got a couple of promising responses to our request for beds for the night.
It took us about 4 hours to reach Toledo, and then another two hours trying to reach our selected host's house. Dusk fell as we finally located Toledo's self elected ambassador for couch surfing, Mike, a well meaning but misguided young man and his friend Dane.
Dinner was suggested, and two options offered. We, of course, chose the wrong one (although it came with high recommendations), Schmuckers, famous(!?) home cooked pies.
Laura was extremely brave and accepted the challenge of the day's special. This consisted of chicken, biscuits and gravy. Not the wisest choice (although, yet again, it came with high recommendations). I opted for a chicken salad, which unfortunately came smothered in mayonaisee with packets of crackers on the side. The idea of this was to leave enough room to sample the famous pie; I needn't have bothered.
Both meals were fairly horrific, the restaurant was full, noisy and garish, surely the pie could redeem it? No.
After stupidly asking for the waiter (who had a fair few teeth missing and a slightly too casual approach to his job) for his recommendation, I thought I ordered Chocolate Suprise. The surpise revealed itself to be the lack of chocolate. I misheard the 'tropical' part and the dessert was ruined. No amount of awful artifical whipped cream could make up for the chocolate dreams I'd conjured in my head while trying to digest the mayonaise nightmare.
We ventured back to our host's for a locally brewed beer, where I excused myself and went to bed. Laura was invited to a gig the guys wanted to attend. The host was generally unhostlike, the gig was good (outside with a volleyball net!) and they arrived back at 3am to an uncomfortable cot bed and a blanket. The accomodation left something to be desired, adequate but not luxurious. We were both awake by 8am and decided to leave our awkward and not too helpful host sleeping while we tiptoed to the car and make a quick getaway.
(Pictures so far to follow shortly, we need to catch up on our beauty sleep)

Hi, and welcome to New York!

So, we finally made it..but not without some hiccups along the way!

After some traumatic coach-travel, a mediocre 4 star hotel and an early(ish) morning we realised mum's first mistake.

BAD SUITCASE.

When travelling do not take an awful suitcase that's older than the ages of your children combined, doesn't have a proper handle and falls over lots. It is not a good idea!

So, trotting around Heathrow, navigating escalators and generally being bashed about by all the other holiday makers with a ridiculous bag was the first faux-pas.

Mistake two.

So, apparently to get into America you have to have the address of where you're staying. Who'd have thought it. Of course this is what any normal and sensible human being would have done, but not my mother! When asked where we're staying the unhelpful airport woman was told Montgomery. Apparently that's not enough. We didn't have a number for where we're staying, or an address or anybody who could help us with it. We were pretty stuck.
Luckily Miss Las Vegas, the girl standing next to us had an Iphone, so with some nifty fingerwork and a cunning mind we googled 'cheap hotels in New York', and there we had it. Our first 'port of call in America', The Marriott.

The plane was delayed for an hour and a half and we generally did a lot of waiting around, then we boarded, only to find that the film selection was appalling and there wasn't much to do for a very long time.

The highlight of the trip was the kosher meals we'd somehow managed to put ourselves down for. While the rest of the common travellers were eating bags of own brand crisps, we were chowwing down on smoked salmon bagels and apple pie!

We arrived in New York a while later and set off to find our bags, only to fall upon:

Mistake three.

While stood waiting for our luggage a sniffer dog comes up to us, he seems very interested in mum's bag.
'Excuse me ma'am, do you have any food products in your bag at all?'
Well, we just so happened to have brought a banana with us, all the way from the little Co-Op in Columbia Road.
Damn.
So the man writes 'BANANA' all over our little sheet and sends us off to the 'Agricultural Goods Scanning Department', or whatever it's called.
After some scanning and some lecturing on how we could have got a $200 fine we were finally let loose to find Dodie and leave!

We took a few detours on the way back from the Airport, arrived pretty late, did some sleeping and here we are! Relaxing in a lovely house in Montgomery.

Now it's time to hit the shops!
Catch you later :)
Laura x



Right. Now for the real version!!! No thats pretty much what happened and I wont bore you with the justifications!!
My good friend Dodie (with whom we are staying) just kept emailing me saying it is hot, hot, hot in US so I just brought hot clothes and told Laura to do likewise. Of course it is now cold and wet!!! But we shall manage. Must go now as everyone is looking over my shoulder (more later). x Stephanie

18/08/10

What to take???

16/8/10

Hello you!
We haven't quite started our adventure yet..but we'll be heading off on Sunday.
If you want to see our beautiful faces before we leave, then hurry!!

Here's where we'll be starting-




Exciting exciting =]

Laura