Paul & Clare's USA Road Trip

We flew back to Califronia from New York on Monday which is no bad thing and have been in San Diego for the last few days. We haven't done anything too exciting other than driving around in our red Mustang convertible (what else were we going to drive?) enjoying the southern CA sunshine and going to the odd beach which has been awesome.

Mustang parked at Huntingdon Beach

Having had our last In-N-Out burger (it was our first meal when we arrived and it is also our last), I am typing this entry in LAX airport as our trip has now come to end (like all good things do). It has been an amazing 6 weeks and thanks to all of you who have read the blog posts, posted comments and listened to the podcasts. Once we are back home, we promise not to bore you all with slideshows of endless photos that Clare took on her camera

I better go now as we have to board our plane home.

We've just finished the weekend in NYC which has been great and have seemed to have spent most of the time eating and drinking (not sure whether we were celebrating or comiserating nearly coming to the end of our trip). We also met up with friends Nicky, Erica and James all from London who flew in for the weekend - was nice to see some familiar faces !

Rather than list the touristy things we did (you can read those in your Time Out guides) here are the places where we ate & drank, all of which were just brilliant;

Friday night dinner at Buddakan in the Meatpacking district was spectacular (and not because it featured in Sex and the City). On Saturday, we had drinks at the Flatiron Lounge - I'm not a martini fan but their version included orange vodka which made it taste less like rocket fuel and was really good. We then had awesome cooked cow at Quality Meats which was er..quality. I can't find the right superlative to describe the corn creme brulee as a side dish other than it was sooooooo gooood! Today. we had an amazing Sunday brunch at Cafe Boulud on the Upper East Side (mmm lobster scrambled eggs...).

So there was our weekend of food - yummy! We'll be back to bread and water when we're back in London.

A total change of subject now and here is our last podcast for you to enjoy. It is a lot shorter than the last one! Download and/or play it here

1 month, 5,500 miles (or thereabouts), and 21 towns and cities later, we've arrived in Atlantic City, which is right on the Atlantic coast of New Jersey. So it's official: Paul and I have driven - in a somewhat convoluted way - across the North American continent. Here's the picture to prove it:

Reaching the Atlantic

That is really me - honest - it's just that Paul didn't want to get his new Sketchers (that's a brand of shoe mum) all sandy so I said he could take the picture from the end of the little path onto the beach! If you zoom in you can tell it's me :-)

We arrived here yesterday (Tuesday 19th October), which is exactly a calendar month after I paddled in the Pacific Ocean in Santa Barbara the day after we arrived in the US. Spooky, huh?!

So last Sunday, we thought we would take in some history and we took a 2 hour drive from Charlottesville to Williamsburg.

Colonial Williamsburg is a combination of a historical landmark and a living history museum consisting of an open-air collection of buildings together with costumed reenactors explaining aspects of daily life in 17th century Virginia. The weather was just perfect and we enjoyed walking down the main pedestrianised street and having lunch at the Kings Arms. No sunday roast but they did an awesome peanut soup. The menu was historically accurate to the era.

Here are some pics;

Where are we going again?

Clare in front of the Governor's house

Paul on Duke of Gloucester St

Typical colonial building

A union jack in the US - a rare sight!

Colonial travel

Fall colors - sorry, I mean autumn colours

Hi y'all!

Well, we have been in the South :-)

After maxing out on Country music (well, taking in as much as Paul could bear!) in Nashville, we headed further east to Knoxville - where we stayed in a chain Hilton close to the interstate. There wasn't much to see in Knoxville.

However, just outside Nashville we stopped at The Hermitage - home of America's 7th President Andrew Jackson. It was an interesting and informative couple of hours learning about the life of a privileged family in early Colonial America, and how they and their slaves lived:

Me at The Hermitage - you can see the house in the background

As interesting as that was, on Thursday we stopped for lunch on our way to Charlottesville at the Mountain Lake Hotel where Dirty Dancing was filmed!!! It was only half an hour off the interstate between Knoxville and Charlottesville, and initially I had to promise Paul that I would treat him to lunch there, but it was such a fab little detour even he admitted to having enjoyed it! Here are the pictures for the girls...

'Kellermans' sign, with the Houseman's cabin in the background

Me on the 'self guided movie locations tour' of the hotel grounds!

This is where 'Baby' first came across the Watermelons!

Paul enjoying the visit!!

Of course - now I can't wait to watch the film again to see how it all compares 23 years on!

Sadly, the hotel is looking a little tired - not least because the lake is in the midst of a natural 'dry' period (check out the hotel website page on the level of the lake for background on this) and currently hardly exists - but also because this place is not in any of the guidebooks and it so should be. I can't even remember why I was googling the movie location before our trip, but I'm so glad that we had the chance to go there. Lunch was tasty and very reasonably priced too (and no, I did not sit in the corner!).

Continuing the road trip we crossed over the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia (and yes, I did sing the first 2 lines of that song, although alas Icouldn't remember any more but Paul was very glad about that...) and now we're in true Colonial Country. Trust us though - the highlight of our weekend here so far as been the College Homecoming game of American Football that we went to tonight; the Virginia 'Cavaliers' (team of the University of Virginia) at home to the North Carolina 'Tar Heels' team.

The game in progress

The marching band - they were amazing

Even with the fabulous marching band and our diligent support the home team lost, which was a shame, but the atmosphere was fantastic and now I get the appeal of the game!

Tomorrow we're going to visit 'Historic Williamsburg'. Part of the town exists as a living museum depicting Colonial life as it was in the early days... I think we might have a few pictures of that to post!