Easy as DC eh?

We're a week in now so are starting to get a feel for the States and are generally finding our feet. It's a whole new mindset to achieve; to remember that we're not due to go home after a week or two meaning we can slow it down, take our time, soak it all up. Generally when I travel I cram so much in as to be almost untrue. An example of this would be our week in Sharm-el-Sheikh in January 2009. We had one night in our resort bed before catching the bus to Cairo next morning, had a couple of days there before getting the overnight train to Luxor, rickety old bus across the Eastern Arabian desert to Hurghada and catamaran back to Sharm. Insane to some but exhilarating to me. However, we have to roll differently now or else we'll keel over from exhaustion. In the first week we've seen and done an awful lot. We bought a 48 hour tour bus pass for NYC which enabled us to make all 4 separate loops of the city, including Brooklyn. It was fantastic value for money at $49 each, especially as their "hop on hop off" nature enabled us to use the buses as taxis to get around the city. Ok, it's tiresome hearing the same spiel time after time but a free ride is a free ride and our money has to go a long way. Kerry is the perfect travelling partner in that respect; it takes a certain calibre of lady to agree to save even the tiniest amount of money at every opportunity, and not whinny about going shopping even once. Some of the architecture in NYC is truly gob-smacking. My personal favourites are the Chrysler building and the Empire State building, the latter of which we paid to go up and admire the tremendous 360* view of Manhattan and beyond. Though these two are beautiful they are the tip of the iceberg. At every turn there is something to make your jaw drop and if you saw any one of probably 75% of the buildings in Manhattan in isolation they would be big draws in their own right. I'm waxing lyrical about NYC because I think it might just be the greatest city I have been to on the planet. We had a stroke of luck with our departure from New York as the bus stop was only 5 minutes away from our gaff. This was a result because our packs are cumbersome and unwieldy and the subway is not particularly easy to negotiate with a humungous bag in tow. We caught the bus to Washington DC at 10am on Thursday, a bargain at just $20 for the 4.5 hour journey through Philadelphia and Baltimore. It was largely uneventful on the bus, save for the guy opposite us placing his large coke in the luggage locker above his head and immediately knocking it over and spilling the whole lot. Everyone on that side of the bus was treated to a slow drip of coke onto them and their effects which, from the comfort of our side, was the epitome of schadenfreude. In DC it was scorching hot as we walked the half mile or so to the hostel we'd booked for 2 nights. "10 bed sex segregated dorms?" I hear you cry. Well, it's a gamble I know. I've stayed in hostels before where the cacophonous snoring of one individual had the whole room up and griping, another where the whiff of someone's feet was enough to tranquillise an elephant and my last such foray into hosteldom, in Inverness with my mate Nick whilst cycling to John o' Groats, was notable for the extraordinary gent who insisted on talking to us whilst he expunged his previous evenings meal from his system. Yes, it's a lottery but this time I won. Comfortable bed and no snorers, all for $40 too. As it was only about 1600 we went out for a hike with our número uno mission to book ourselves on the train to Miami on Saturday night. "have you got your Amtrak priv card?" asked Kerry as we set off. "yes" said I and off we yomped the mile up the road, over a multitude of pedestrian crossings, all in the baking heat, to the station. Union station was fascinating. I love stations anyway, I love the life and the vibrancy, that people are on the move, going places, meeting people. To me they're a gateway to the unknown, you just have to hand over a wad of notes and you can go anywhere, something that appeals greatly to my psyche. We found the booking office and started to ask about Miami. I rooted around in my money belt and........ No Amtrak pass!!! Starving, we decided to eat at the station and had a tremendous buffet feast for less than $20 before walking back to the hostel and collecting my pass. Bless Kerry for not going apeshit at my ineptitude, in fact, a couple of hours later, we had a laugh about it. So, back to Union station, this time in a change of shoes as my trainers have pinched my little toes and given me agonising blisters. I had the option of wearing the shoes which make my heels bleed or my flip flops which rub my toes. I opted for the heel bleeders and soon enough we were at the booking office again, being told that tickets with Amtrak priv cards can only be purchased within 24 hours of your departure time, ie, 24 hours from then! A little miffed, we walked back to the hostel via Capitol, where congress meets, another stunning building sitting in beautiful surroundings. By now knackered we turned in at about 2130 and I was out like a light in my pretty comfortable top bunk and I didn't stir until 0630 next morning when 2 Indian chaps started rustling and banging about in the dorm. Friday was spent taking in all the sights of DC including the White House, the Watergate building, the Lincoln memorial (which overlooks the pool which Jenny wades through in Forrest Gump), FDR memorial, Potomac river and the Washington monument. DC is an amazingly historical place cram full of magnificent buildings. There's money here too. Serious money. Every other car is a shiny black Merc, baby Bentley or sinister looking Lincoln and if you're into bling alloy wheels then this is the place to come. Choppers periodically fly overhead and police sirens wail as either cops or the FBI speed by giving a strange air of paranoia about the place. It's a truly fitting capital city though. Clean, imposing, impressive and, after NYC, exceedingly low-rise. On Saturday we hit the museums. I'd read a lot about the Smithsonian institution before coming, not all positive, but it has to be said that the exhibits are world-class, if sometimes a little random. I'm not much of a museum goer to be honest. For some reason I begin to focus more on my aching feet and legs than what I'm trying to crane my neck to see. We saw some interesting Americana in the museum of national history: a tub-thumping and chest beating rendition of the national anthem whilst a group of people unfurled and then packed away a large American flag and then some play acting about the civil rights movement in the 60s. We'd seen a Globe Trekker program before we came about how the yanks like to act out history rather than the more staid way that us Brits do things so once we saw this developing we slinked away. And so to our journey to Miami, on which I'm typing this blog. For about $300 we have 2 coach seats on the "silver meteor", 1930 DC to Miami. We're about 20 hours in now and it's been a great trip. The seats are really comfortable, big and reclining with footrest and leg support. Mercifully there were no screaming brats in our carriage so we had a decent, if fitful, sleep. There's some simple but effective points to note that uk railways should really pick up on: even 20 hours in to the journey the toilet is clean, you can get suitcases in the overhead luggage racks, there are about 5 or 6 attentive and humorous guards (in Patrick Swayze voice: "ladies and gentlemen, this is Kissimee, now I don't want you ladies to be disappointed but if you do try to Kissimee then my wife sure is gonna be sore so please bear that in mind". Or how about "you may now leave the train to smoke but if you do not return when I say so then I surely will leave you behind in Orlando Florida". All in all it's been a great journey though I will admit that it's wearing a wee bit thin now. So, we're nearly in Miami with the rough aim being to stay a few days on Miami beach, hire a car and drive down Hwy 1 to Key West and maybe visit the Everglades before heading to New Orleans. How we're going to get there though is open to debate right now. I think it's around 24 hours overland and only a 2 hour flight so that may help us make our minds up.