Wednesday 30 April 2008

The Big Apple

After Cincinatti we wandered off the beaten track again to see Falling Water the Frank Lloyd Wright house which was worth the effort! Though the snowy mountain roads were a bit scary. Amazing how you can go from snow to sunny in such a short space of road in this country. So here we are in sunny and cold NYC (well NJ to be precise) and a much needed day of rest. My husband has gone into the city with plans to spend the afternoon in a bar watching Chelsea v Liverpool which is even more bizarre cuz he's a Man City supporter. Oh well no accounting for taste....

Oh and I thought I hated mobile phones at home....at least at home it is now illegal to use them while driving (tho I can't help but feel they shd be illegal to use while walking too) but the Americans haven't quite grasped that idea. On the road yesterday there were sooo many people wandering around the road, suddenly putting brakes on for no reason, changing lanes with no warning all because they are either yapping or dialling or in one case READING A TEXT whilst doing 70 miles an hour! Surprisingly we saw at least three accidents over the last two days and I doubt people walked away from any of them. Add to that their somewhat casual attitude to drink driving and the roads here are certainly dangerous places to be. I love the traffic signs warning you to be alert for drunk drivers. How bizarre, that the sober driver needs to be careful because so many others may not be and how exactly are you supposed to know they are drunk until they're heading towards you in a threatening manner by which time it may well be too late. Thankfully they have superb public transport systems both above and below ground and the bus network in NYC is fantastic for someone like me cuz we can get a bus and go just a couple of stops so I don't have to walk that much and where the buses don't go the subway does. Tomorrow we go into town and I don't really know where we'll go. My son wants to obviously hit the comic shops but he says he also wants to do some sightseeing so we'll see. There are parts of Central Park we haven't seen and his father and me can do a museum or two on Friday. There is always something more to do in NYC.

Saturday 26 April 2008

Do Americans realise how lucky they are?

We have just come from Pittsburgh to Cincinnatti and this country just never ceases to amaze me. We ended up staying in Pittsburgh 2 extra days cuz it was just beautiful. Now we arrive in Cincinnatti and that's just as surprising. I haven't had a look round yet but my husband says it's pretty lush. We are here for the Transformers convention which sadly will take up most of the day but it means I get to just chill in the hotel room whilst my son and his father go to the Botcon. (After all there isn't a huge amount worth seeing. I went out to get something to eat and okay it was Sunday but I've seen more life in a graveyard. Plenty of homeless... My husband went down into Kentucky on the hunt for bourbon distilleries but at least my son went over to the convention on his own for the first time ever! so RESULT!) The drive a few days ago from Buffalo to Pittsburgh was great. We took the less main roads down the side of Lake Erie and saw a bit of real rural America. 100+ miles without a single McD's, BK or KFC or chain motels of any kind. Yes folks it can be done! Anyway, crap internet in this hotel so I'm gonna go try and get the brat out of bed. Wish me luck....

Tuesday 1 April 2008

Sunshine!!!!


Yippee after apparently the coldest Easter weekend in 40 years, the sun's out. I feel like a new person today, I actually have energy. There are so many things I want to do I don't know where to start. I've had the chap round this morning to fix the alarm that my husband managed to disconnect last week whilst decorating and the engineer and I had a good bitch about everything that's wrong with this country. It's all very well bitching about it but we British don't actually manage to get much changed do we? I was pleased to hear that someone is at last actually saying they felt the government has over-stated the usefullness of immigrants in this country so hopefully we will stop letting quite so many in. Whilst I appreciate genuine refugees deserve to be helped and if someone is bringing skills that we do not have and is therefore genuinely improving the country then fine but we do have to draw the line somewhere. The engineer was saying how he'd had an altercation with a traffic warden recently who actually said he did not read English!!!!!! How the hell is that acceptable? Anyway I am happy to ignore the outside world today cuz there's more than enough to do round here. I have a pooter I want to get up and running, an old laptop I want to try and resuscitate, lots of holiday video to get onto dvds. That's the trouble with this illness - my life goes on hold for long periods and it's depressing to look at all these things just lying there waiting to be dealt with. Right The Bold and The Beautiful is over I can start on the other important things tee hee.

Sunshine!!!!

Yippee after apparently the coldest Easter weekend in 40 years, the sun's out

Sunshine!!!!