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)