Round the World in 253 Days!

Internet access isn't as easy to get as you might think in the States. Or if it is there - usually in a hotel lobby - it is stupidly expensive. $9.95 for 15 minutes was the going rate in one hotel! But, thanks to everyone's favourite Greek and his line of practical, affordable, gaudily-coloured ventures, we are currently sat in an Easy Internet Cafe by Time Square in New York. At $5 for 4 straight hours, you really can't go wrong!

Anyway, we do have a crazy backlog of blogging to catch up on. We'll try and add more detailed descriptions of each of the places we've been to over the last week and a half, but just in case we don't get the chance, I'll sum up our activities as briefly as possible...given this will probably turn into a 5000 word epic, but I'll try my best!

We left a dull and rainy Heathrow at approximately 4.15pm on April 11th on Virgin Atlantic. The flight was fantastic! The in-flight entertainment was incredible. We had the choice of about 50 movies, 20 or 30 TV shows, a load of full CD albums, plus network gaming! You could start the movies when you wanted, pause, fast-forward or whatever you wanted. Same with the TV and the audio. We watched Good Night, and Good Luck which was great, and Derailed, which was turd. Kate didn't vomit once during the flight, even during the worse bits of dialogue by Jennifer Aniston.

When we landed, our first encounter with any US lifeforms was with the customs sniffer-dog thrusting its nose toward my crotch. The American authorities shouted at us with all the aplome you would expect and we were ever so slightly worried that we had arrived in some kind of boot camp but that was quickly over with and we set off to see if our bags had been lost in trasit or some such thing. (Bear in mind we have spent the whole of the last two years watching American Airline religiously in ITV2 and it seemed fair to assume that something went wrong on everybody's flight!) In fact we only waited about twenty minutes or so for our bags after which we had to make the dreaded walk to customs to see if they would actually let us stay...

Kate was a little paranoid having, through no fault of her own, watched the end of the Terminal the previos week (thanks Mum!) and was panicing that perhaps England had been bombed into little pieces during our flight and we would have to make a life in the airport with Mr Hanks - this was not a pleasing prospect as Kate rather hates him! This said, customs was stupidly easy to walk through and we needn't have wasted sweat over it, the nice man at the counter just scanned our fingers (it seemed odd to me too) and we were on our way into the USA!

We eventually managed to find out from a Mexican sounding voice who answered our hotels phone, that we could get a free shuttle out to the HoJo (that's street for Howard Johnson) we were staying at so we waited, watching all the people with more money than us getting into Hilton and Marriott hotel shuttles until eventually we boarded a semi-working minivan which would take us out to New Jersey.

Newark was uneventful - we only stayed the night as our flight was a late night and our journey into Pennsylvania was a slightly long one to be attempting at 9pm! The next day we tried to collect our Amtrak passes, which were rather essential to the whole "travelling" thing and which we had been assured we could get at any manned station, only it turns out that wasn't entirely true...instead we ended up getting a bus to the airport, a monorail to the station (where they didn't have the right paper to give us our tickets or something), thn the monorail back to the station, then a bus to New Jersey , then Penn Station where they did have paper (hooray!)and we had to get the train through where we were intially! All without getting lost too!

We need to rush along a little now as Kate is rambling too much and I can't keep writing this much so we are going to have summerise from days 2 - 14 and fill in the gaps when we can! I'm going to stick a load of bullet points of things we've seen and done, and maybe elaborate when we get the time...

PENNSYLVANIA
- Imposed ourselves on my over generous aunt and uncle (Lynne and Michael) in Collegeville, PA...about 45mins out of Phildelphia.
- Visited Boulder Field in a National Park... was amazing!
- Saw a real US college campus at Bloomsberg University, and even saw an authentic frat-house!
- Lynne drove us out into the sticks to see lots of geniune Amish people in a place called Intercourse (where the film Witness with Harrison Ford was filmed!) We chased them with cameras...it was fun!
- Did midnight bowling with my cousins Emma and Greg plus the crazy locals, and got ID'd buying beer (they even sent a spy out to watch us drink because we had minors with us!)
- Went to Philadelphia and had a Phili-Cheese Steak (Well I hate cheese, so Kate did...I just had it without the cheese)
- Saw Valley Forge, which is basically a place where the yanks were trained to kill British in some war we had a while back, when we decided we didn't want their country afterall..
- Visited the King of Prussia Mall (Yeah, we thought the name was silly too!) Apparently its the second largest mall in the States.
- To Lynne & Michael: Thanks again for having us... you are far too generous! We had a wonderful time and a great introduction to the American way of life!

WASHINGTON DC
- Ate pizza and drank beer on our first night. Getting ID'd was already getting tiresome. And Kate wasn't too impressed by the Mexican who served her Guiness in the 'Irish' 'pub' round the corner from our hotel.
- Saw all of the awesome monuments and constantly amused ourselves by renaming the Washington Monument (that big pointy one) the Clinton Monument out of respect for Futurama.
- Saw the FBI Building as featured in many X-files cuts.
- Went in the Ford Theater (sic) where Lincoln got shot.
- Attempted the walk around the outside of the Pentagon, but got accosted by armed guards half way around side 4, who forced us to retrace our steps in the burning heat (around 30C!)
- Got sunburnt!

BOSTON
- Spent 8 hours on a train getting there...longer than our trans-Atlantic flight!
- Got screwed around at the hotel...our booking didn't exist. Luckily the nice guys at the Midtown Hotel let us stay the night while they investigated - turns out you should never use Unpackaged Holidays (.com) unless you like companys who change your bookings to other hotels without telling you! A small amount of almost-shouting sorted it out, and we moved ourselves to another hotel round the corner.
- Walked the Freedom Trail, ending at Bunker Hill - a nice monument to killing the British...except we actually won the battle...but they Americans claimed a 'moral victory'. Yeah right.
- Saw Scary Movie 4 - our first US movie-theater experience! Was fun.
- Circled the outside of Fenway Park and visited their over-priced and over-merchandised gift shop. You can get Boston Redsox golf balls, lamps, piggy banks and ornate rugs to name a few silly articles.
- Did the Sam Adams brewery tour. Everyone must try this beer as it rocks! Its an American beer that doesn't taste like wee, and should be tried purely for this novelty value. We got free samples but had to 'continue our sampling' at an Irish pub down the road...this one even had a real drunken Irishman in it who even said the word
'bejesus'. Fab.

NEW YORK

(Kate is taking over the writing for a second as Andrew's fingers are dropping off! And before you think it....not from leprosy)

- Took us 4hrs on the train to get to New York from Boston and it rained from the moment we got off the train until our second day here! And not piddly little April showers...full on drenching rain!
- Walked around Time Square at night, finding our mecca (a huge Virgin Megastore!) and eating Japanese fast food (odd, I know)!
- We visited the UN and had a guided tour. Thought about making amusing terrorist related comments but realised we'd probably be deported which might not be a good start.
- Saw the Chrysler building (tall) & Grand Central station (pretty)
- Met up with Andrew's friend Mark who lives in New York and went out for drinks in Greenwich Village (where the ponces live) - Mark knew a cheap bar there...$7.50 for 3 pints! that's less than 5 quid..IN NEW YORK!
-Wanted to go up Empire State building but crappy weather meant zero visability so we decided to do it next time (!)
- Took a boat to Liberty and Ellis Islands...saw the Statue of Liberty and where they vetted immigrants until 1934 or some such time. Weather cleared up in time for about 5 good pics and then got cloudy again!
- Saw Wall Street and the financial district
- Visited Ground Zero which was surprisingly moving (even for me!)
- Met Andrew's uncle Michael who took us out for a Mexican meal in Brooklyn and showed us the amazing view of Manhattan from over the river! It was truly breathtaking.
- Wrote this weblog.

Sorry for the lack of pictures but we've not managed to find somewhere to upload them! Hopefully they'll follow soon!

Bye for now,

K&A

Its late so I'll keep this one short...ish! Certainly no time to look up those big, clever-looking words in the thesaurus tonight, no Sir. I just wanted to say it has been a mad week or so. As avid readers of my two previous posts may gather, the trip upon which Kate and I are about to embark has been literally years in the planning. The thought of finally stepping aboard that aeroplane had seemed just too far away to comprehend. Every extra shift worked, every time I stayed a few more hours at work to clean up somebody's overpriced and under-eaten Nacho Combo(tm), it was with that moment in mind, as distant as it was. Yep, that extra two hours equates to maybe £7 after tax, which amounts to perhaps $11US, which could in turn pay for two overpriced Nacho Combos deals at a friendly hyperplex in the States. That was what I told myself anyway.
But now that moment is fast approaching and our last goodbyes are imminent. Sorry, that sounded dreadfully sombre...perhaps recapping briefly the 'mad week or so' would help lighten the mood and move this narrative in the right direction...

So, we left Bradford a day after my 23rd birthday. My mum and brother came to Leeds to say their goodbyes and wave us off in our GNER First Class carriage. Crazy as it sounds, the first class tickets to Norwich we bought a few days in advance were almost exactly half the cost of standard class, had we bought them at the station on that day. With our complimentary newspapers and cups of tea, we motored down to the city where we had met, studied, and grown to love. We had planned to meet and say goodbye again to a bunch of old friends from both university and the UCI where we had worked for over two years. It was fantastic to see all the old faces again, and quite remarkable to note that almost everybody was sporting a radically different haircut from when we left less than five months earlier! I met two old uni friends, Jack and Pete, who I'd not really spoken to for about two years. It was fab to note they'd not changed a bit, and had a great laugh catching up with them. For the outsider, sorry for the in-references, but I have to say cheers to Vic, Jude, Desi, James, Owen and everyone else who came out too! [Damn, while on the subject, cheers to the Odeon posse who made it out for my leaving do too!]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnyway, after staying just one night at a friend's house, (thanks again Desi!) we headed back down on the train to Kate's parent's place in Kent to spend our last few days in the UK furiously packing and saying bye-bye to even more family and friends! There's not been any tears shed yet by either of us, but I suppose there is still time outside the airport! Hopefully from the next post on, this weblog should start to get interesting as our journey will have properly begun! Either that or it'll become a word-desert, maybe the odd tumbleweed of a sentence - such as "We're having loads of fun!" - blowing past every few months or so. As I keep saying to everyone, I'll try my hardest to keep it updated, but I just can't promise anything! Also, I'm not entirely certain they have the Internet in the USA, so you might not hear anything for a while!

Andy.

Oh and for the record, the aforementioned Nacho Combo (tm) was of course competitively priced for the cinema environment - Odeon Leeds/Bradford and UCI Norwich would never seek to overcharge for their quality retail goods. Never. Fact. Yes. Never.

It was probably spring 2002, back in our first year of study at the University of East Anglia that we formulated our plans to go on an extended holiday after graduation. We had originally intended just to travel around the USA for 3 months in September 2005, as I had talked with Kate about how much I'd love to see America one day. This was, by the way, years before that annoying advertising campaign about how we've all "seen the film," and should therefore feel compelled to "visit the set". I seriously question whether watching J-Lo in Maid in Manhattan could really make you want to visit New York. The bog, to puke your guts out is more likely. But to be honest, the said campaign actually hit the nail on the head, despite some of its odd film choices: I wanted to see in real-life so many of the places I'd seen on the small and silver screens throughout my life. It probably seems desperately sad to want to visit a country based on the TV and movies it produces and exports, but I have a good excuse lined up, I assure you! All about being a product of my environment and stuff... actually, it really isn't that good. In fact, forget it. Maybe I'll come back to it in a later entry. I get the feeling I'm losing some of you, so I'll just get on with it.

Soooooooooooooooo, we were going to head to the States in the autumn and planned to be back in time to tell our tales around the Christmas dinner table, our stories of course enhanced by loads of John Smiths and too many bottles of White Zinfandel. However, over the years of watching Neighbours when we should have been studying, it became clear we really wanted to visit Ramsay Street, and maybe some other places in Australia - I'd heard there was an interesting rock that people sat and stared at. Also, viewing that beautiful Peter Jackson movie REALLY made us want to visit New Zealand - although I'd be shocked if anyone else who has seen Bad Taste didn't also feel drawn to such a wonderfully picturesque and geographically diverse country. I also have an uncle who moved to Thailand a few years ago, giving up a career in property management to work with yachts in Phuket. It seemed crazy, if not downright rude to not stop by for a visit on the way back to the UK.

So, with these three essential stops added to our game plan, our 3-month America Tour metamorphosed (I swear that spelling doesn't look right!) into a nearly-9-month World Tour. We added a few interesting-looking stops along the way in the form of Fiji, Malaysia and Singapore. The aim is once more to be home by Christmas - those cans of John Smiths and bottles of White Zinfandel are just having an extra year to chill, the same as us really.

Andy.

Hi, Andy here - or Andrew or indeed whatever you want to call me. I wanted to use this space to let anyone who is interested know a little about myself and Kate in terms of our travel plans (see below), our thoughts and feelings before we depart, and various other generic 'blog' conventions. Hopefully it won't be too generic, and, thinking about it, as a complete newbie to weblogging, I'm sure it will fail to follow any unwritten blog-lore/code of conduct, rather ending up becoming a tangled mess of sentences (such as this one) amounting to our excitement, apprehension, eagerness, fear, elation, along with many other thesaurus-gained abstract nouns... Oh dear, I sound like a pretentious arse already - but let's just see how this one plays out.

In a nutshell, our plan is to spend 253 days out of the UK, travelling first to the USA, then onward to Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. We didn't want to do it on the cheapy-come-scummy cheap, nor could we afford to do it first class all the way (or premium economy either for that matter). We wanted comfortable, but affordable to the average Joes like us who have been slumming it on almost minimum-wage for nearly two years! We will explain in much more detail what we're doing and how we went about saving for it in later entries to this blog. It might get boring, but I'll attempt to intersperse it with cutting witticisms and playful wisecracks to keep your attention throughout!

Anyways, enough with the introduction to the introduction, and on to the introduction of the two loveable protagonists in this unfolding adventure: Kate and Andrew. Due to my paranoia toward identity fraud, I won't give our surnames or other personal details that would give a would-be scallywag the oportunity to become one of us...although why anyone would want to become me is something of a brainteaser... he'd need to pull off long-haired T-shirt wearing self proclaimed 'scruff' who listens to 'difficult music' and quotes the works of Chris Morris and Trey Parker far too much. The scamster would also have to pretend to have grown up in Bradford, studied computer science at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, where he would need to pretend he met his wonderful girlfriend of 4 years! THEN our rapscallion would need to blag that he worked as a projectionist for a year and a half post-graduation at UCI Norwich, then as a lowbie popcorn scooper-cum-body-spillage-cleaner-upperer at Odeon Leeds/Bradford for 4 months after. It all seems like far too much effort for our would-be swindler - they might as well just mug someone in the street. (Oh, and if you're wondering about the term 'difficult music', its not really my term - avid readers of this blog will find out in due course what I listen to...then can make up their own mind!)

It just wouldn't be right to concoct an equally poor ruse to introduce that wonderful girlfriend of 4 years, as I'm sure she will add her own in due course... that is if she can work out how to use the computer - she is arts graduate afterall! All I will say is she's fab and I genuinely couldn't think of a greater person to travel the world with... except of course for Lucy Liu, but I'm sure she'd let me off for that one so long as I gave her Jack White!

That's quite enough of the shenanigans methinks. In the next part I'll write in more detail about where we are planning to travel and what we're wanting to do while there! If you haven't fallen asleep already, congratulations!

Andrew.