Route 66 part 1 and memphis detour

So where were we? Ok we have our SUV and we are driving route 66, it seems like forever ago when we started driving. Andy took to the road quite quickly, Illinois' 66 was a nice drive with lots of old road alignment and it was easy to follow as some nice person had put 66 road signs along the way. We bought a tent and camping equipment and spent our first night in our tent with one sleeping bag between us (we read the packaging wrong and thought it was a double). The next night we stayed on basically the side of the road it was terrifying even though it said campsite. A cat shrieking through the night kept us awake, man the cat was loud... I told Andy it could of been some kind of mountain cat!!! I'm not the biggest fan of camping but I am getting better at not being so terrified. After illinois we moved on to the state of Missouri and we visited St Louis, we went up the huge arch and we ate frozen custard. We also drove to Memphis that day, I love Memphis (the nice areas) we went to Graceland SO good for me! Andy not so much as he isn't a big elvis fan! We also went to Beale Street and got plastered, I don't even remember all of the evening but I do remember talking to a lot of people and Andy posing with a friendly cop :) the next day we were so hungover. We were meant to drive back to 66 but we couldn't move so we booked another night and watched tv all day and ordered pizza.

When we joined back on we visited Meramac Caverns, MO if you watched Billy Connellys tv show it was just like that, the cavern at the end of the trip lit up to the national anthem, corny! We stayed on their grounds that night in our tent and it was chilly again, I've been sleeping with a woolly hat on with the sleeping bag over my head!
After leaving Missouri we drove through Kansas and Oklahoma, the sky turned black and few times and we seriously thought that we may run into a tornado! But they were just mini storms. Whilst in Oklahoma we stayed in a cool 66 motel and camped in a state park called red rock, we camped right under a red canyon, pretty cool!

Today we drove from OK to Texas, we were enjoying a bit of TX then the sky went black again, I quickly googled the weather and it was a severe storm weather warning! We decided to book a motel instead of camping and it was good that we did because soon after it started pissing it down, the wind was crazy mad and there was thunder and lightning too! We stopped at the Big Texan motel and restaurant (home of the 72 ounce steak, if you can eat it all under an hour it's free! We didn't try the challenge though) we settled with 18 oz steak and it was gooood! One of my favourite meals so far. Our motel is set up in a row that looks like an old Texan town which has been brightly coloured and there is a massive moo cow statue outside. We went over our budget today but it's worth it, we have saloon doors and shutters in our room! Tomorrow we are going to move on to tucumari but not before visiting some more sights here.

I forgot to mention that if you don't know anything about route 66 it's an old alignment of road that goes from Chicago to Los Angeles which has now been replaced with the interstate. Along the way there are loads of quirky road side attractions, some being giants, old motel signs, murals on walls, lots of museums, antique stores, trading posts and more. my favourite being the blue whale which when 66 was in its hay day it was a swimming attraction, the whale has two slides coming out either side on him and a diving platform off his tail, the whale even has a cap!

Canada we love you! Chicago we havnt made up our minds yet..

From NYC we took a long over night coach to Toronto, it was painful and cold haha. We rented an apartment for two nights in the arts district of Toronto and its just lovely there. Their high street is full of antique shops and flea markets, oh and shops that sell weed, we still aren't sure if it's legal over there or not lol.

On our first day we made our way to the CN tower which was massive, it has two viewing platforms and they are high, I obviously wasn't paying attention as I have no clue how high we were! Andy was loving it, I was holding on to the sides haha. we were about to walk back to the apartment but we noticed that a baseball game was on, so we grabbed some cheap tickets so we thought they would be crap seats but we could see everything and oh yeah by the way I am a fan of baseball now! Let's go Toronto Blue Jays!!! Who Andy thought until halfway through the game they were called the blue jets haha I don't know how it was written every where and their mascot was a bloody bird Hahahaha.

The next day we caught the coach to Niagara Falls. Little bit of info for you guys. The town is called Niagara Falls, the falls are actually called something different the big one being the America falls. Niagara falls is great (well I think so anyway) its like a seaside town, arcades everywhere, big life size statues on top of buildings. We took a trip on the maid of the mist and were given the complimentary and rather dashing ponchos to stop us from getting wet, you get WET near the falls the mist comes down like rain and the waves are pretty massive!

The next day we were back on our bus to chicago, another over night journey! We were on the bus with some scary looking people but no problems, we had to wait forever at customs getting back in to the country, apparently flying in to Canada is different from travelling over land. We had a stop over at Detroit...man that place is rough!!!!! Full of gangster looking people! And outside just as we got there the police has a couple of guys on the side walk in hand cuffs.. Nice!! Two men took a liking to andy, he ha a lovely convo with a man and a rather special hand shake with another! Friend!
We got into Chicago really early in he morning and then the time difference put us another hour behind so we ended up sitting in our hotel for hours until we could check in. Now our hotel was old and apparently haunted, we stayed at the Congress Plaza and it was spooky! The place is so old and big. We didnt encounter any ghosts though, although our cupboard door shut on its on and Andy got very excited... The window was open by the way but he adamant that it wasn't the wind lol.

Next on our trip.. Route 66! Yippee

The big apple

We arrived by greyhound to New York, it was the cheapest coach journey ever for the length of time we were aboad. I am also going to have to apologise for typos we are on our way to Toronto and our coach driver is going a bit crazy! Anyway back to NYC, we bought something called the new York pass which was something like $140 each and it gave us free entry to everything we wanted to do! We saved so much money. We collected these passes and went for a late lunch at planet hollywood, my burger was massive and I couldn't finish it, I was actually no where near finishing it! I was also excited by the fact they had Robert pattinsons suit from Twilight on show, such a geek.. I even took a photo!
Our hotel was great, because I organised everything so far in advance we got a pretty sweet deal! I don't remember doing this but I must of
Put down that it was our honeymoon. Our room was on the top floor we had a view of the empire state building and the river. We even had cake waiting for us and chocolates on our pillows haha.

On our first full day we did loads we visited the statue of liberty, the sea was so rough it was soaking us because of the wind when we were
Queuing. We went up the top of the rock and we went to madam tussauds (no idea if I spelt that right).
Our second day we toured the NBC studios and saw Saturday night lives studio and the today show.. Won't mean much to those of you in the uK but we have seen it on tv haha. We also toured radio city which was a
Beautiful art deco theatre that now holds gigs, whilst we were there they were setting up for Pulp that evening. We visited the Guggeheim museum which to be honest was not to our taste although they had one photography exhibition on so not a completely wasted trip. We also visited
the Empire State building at night as we did the top of the rock in the day. Andy loved the views, I took a couple of photos and went back inside as it was windy and I'm not the best width heights eeek. We also grabbed a slice of pizza, it was so good! Also forgot to mention that the night before we took a trip to juniors cheesecake place and took out two slices. They were massive!!!! It took us two attempts to finish our cake, I'm surprised I wasn't sick to be honest!!! After the empire state we went on the new York sky ride, never ever do this!! It was the worst thing ever and the worst simulator ride i have ever been on! I would have been pissed if I had paid the $42 it cost but we got it free
With our pass. By this point my feet were swollen and rubbing my new
Comfy vans, we had done so much walking my feet just aren't used to it. I moaned a lot but seriously my feet had never hurt so much before.. I thought I was going to be sick at one point and I had to take pain killers to sleep through the throbbing. Anyway I'll
Shut up about my feet now.
We also visited the dead sea scrolls one of the days, we were hoping to go on the csi experience but it had been
Replaced by this. It was hmm boring for us, although we can say that we've seen the first written part of the bible... Yippee?
On our third day we slowed things down a bit and took a 3 hour cruise down the river past the sights which made a change from all the walking haha. We went to the Intrepid air museum which was full of orthodox
Jews! I've never seen so many curly side burns and funny furry hats. We did get to touch a Concorde and go in the growler Hahahaha. For dinner we went to Justin Timberlakes BBQ joint! It was so good! I had some southern collared
Greens which were pretty good! After that we went to a comedy club for the evening and had a few to many drinks and bought 99cent pizza back to the hotel, nom.
Today we went to the movies and watched The Hunger Games which I had wanted to watch since reading the trilogy! It did not disappoint and it's great that the American people think they can talk and clap through the film...that was sarcasm by the way. We are now on our way to the home of maple syrup and my feet are happy.

Washington DC and Philadelphia

We flew in to DC with Delta and had a brief stop over in Atlanta. We were brave and didn't get a taxi to our apartment we took the metro to be greeted by only what could be called a gang of black men calling Andy Jesus white boy. We quickly left the station and made our way to our apartment (hoping we were heading in the right direction and not about to be mugged). Our apartment was actually lovely and so was the owner. Even though we were the only white people in the area every one was pretty friendly. We spent the next day exploring DC, now I'm just gonna say this... I'm not a fan everything is miles away from each other and my legs hated the walking and are still aching two days on. We visited all the main sights and we took a paddle boat up near the Jefferson memorial. It was meant to be cherry blossom season but because of the heat wave before it had all disappeared. The place was pretty though, especially when we were out in the lake.
The next day we caught the greyhound to Philly, we are staying in a college girls apartment and she dog sits a lot.i am currently sat with a pug snoring next to me and Andy has two little terrier looking dogs asleep next to him.

Philly is beautiful, the houses are amazing and look like something out of Sabrina the teenaged witch. Today we went and saw the sights. We of course ran up the steps like Rocky and ate a Philly cheese steak! We even went on a horse and carriage ride :) Philly is good!

Tomorrow we leave for New York! Happy Easter guys!