Am a little bit drunk at the moment

Edwina arrived today. Having a ball. Had amazing time in San Francisco. LA is great. Have lots more to say but will do it at another time when I'm not quite as inebriated :) Lots of love xxx

Recap and Arrival in San Fransisco

Well, here I am in San Francisco... SUNSHINE! YAY!

Luckily I missed the worst of the storms in the North East. Got out just in time. Didn't completely escape though.

Washington DC was fantastic in the end (my grouchy mood only lasted until I met up with Annie). The weather was still fairly shitty but we did get a decent enough Saturday that allowed us to visit Arlington Cemetery. I say "we/us" because as I mentioned above, I was lucky enough to stay with my friend Annie and her boyfriend Scott in their home. They took me out to fun places and cooked for me and gave me beer and were just generally kind and lovely. Thanks guys :)

DC is a lovely city. Very pretty. The war memorials are especially beautiful and very moving. Going around looking at the memorials for WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam and seeing all the headstones and memorials at Arlington really shocked me. I realised then how huge the number of lives is that have been lost in so many wars, in such a short space of time, in such a young country. It's very sad and it's only when I was standing in front of these structures reading the names of those who died or looking at "dead numbers" in the tens of thousands that I fully appreciated that the people of this country have in fact suffered a lot through war. Even though there hasn't been a war on American soil for a long, long time they feel the effects of war a lot more than we would in Ireland for example purely through the fact that there are very few Americans who don't have a family member or friend or colleague or college friend who has served at some point or is serving now or who, sadly has died. All this might seem obvious to many of you reading this. But for me, it's a revelation and I'm very glad it happened because it's helping me to gain a better understanding of American culture and people, which to be honest I wasn't expecting to find.

I'm feeling a little bit tired today and I can feel a sore throat coming on but I'll struggle on! :) So, today I reckon I might go for a stroll around the city and get my bearings. Might try and visit Alcatraz tomorrow.

Am getting my car on Friday. Driving down to LA Friday/Saturday. AGH! Will definitely try to update again before that though.

Siobhan - I can't believe I missed the PAV! I LOVE the Pav. Frisbee and Bavaria... mmmm...

HJ ... it's really hard to find nice shoes/boots in this country. Shoulda bought some in NYC! That'll learn me to think I'll find better shopping elsewhere :)

Erin - sorry about the spelling. I'm still kind of confused haha I LOVE YOU!

Miss you and love you all loads!

Quick Recap

Better make this a long one. (ish)

I found my travel journal - yay! But then I lost my Mets cap - boooo :(

Siobhan - the food in NYC is yummy. There's every kind of food you could want. But the easiest and cheapest stuff is fast food or deli food. Not very healthy but delicious. I had bagels frequently. I also had sushi, Korean, Vietnamese, Italian etc.

On my last full day in New York I went up the Empire State Building. It was so beautiful and inspiring. The images of the city from up there are firmly imprinted on my mind. I'm already pining for it and can't wait to go back.

I'm sad to have left NYC, but Plimoth (where Erin lives) is beautiful - loads of coastline and trees! That's a bad description though because it's actually completely different to anywhere I've ever been in terms of the architecture and landscape. There are wooden houses and it all looks very pretty and very "American". Like I said to Erin, I felt like I was in TV.

I stayed with Erin and her family in their home (which is completely gorgeous) and she showed me around and looked after me for my whole time there (except when I ventured out into Boston city on my own for a day - nice and historical).
One of the best parts of the trip (besides crying laughing at Erin's stories - woman you crack me up) was that I learned loads about American history because we went to the Plymoth Plantation. Completely weird but very cool. Plymouth (today spelled Plimoth) was where the ship Mayflower landed and it was also the site of the first thanksgiving meal. It's a famous town, historically speaking and so to mark this, they have a recreation of the first Plymouth Plantation. Not weird at all - yes you're right. I like a good historical recreation as much as the next person. However this just went that one little step further. There were people involved in the recreation and their job was to inhabit the Pilgrim village as the 17th Century pilgrims would have done. They interact with the visitors in character at all times - so you're having a conversation with them about history but you're phrasing the questions like: "what's it like living here?" and they're answering as if they're living in the 1600s. Bizarre. I also got to chat with some Native Americans about their history and their life now in terms of language and values etc. I found this really interesting also as I knew almost nothing about the Native Communities in North America.

Got to DC yesterday morning and immediately was in a bad mood. I hadn't eaten for hours and I was tired and lugging a huge case around with me. I got lost for about an hour and a half and had to ring my mom and get her to ask my auntie Mary to ring me because she and her family had visited DC last year and would be able to locate where I was! So eventually I got my bearings and chilled out in some bookstores for a while. DC is nice but the amount of time I had people look at me about to walk through a door with a big suitcase and not hold the door for me or walk in front of me and let the door swing back in my face, is shocking. I've never experienced anything like that kind of rudeness before. Normally it wouldn't bother me too much. But it was very much accentuated in my mind because I was really struggling with my case. Hopefully I'll meet some more polite people today.

Hope you're all well and had a great Easter Weekend and a good week this week.

Lots of love xxxx

OH NO!

I lost my travel journal! Nooooo!

But I think I might know where I left it. Fingers crossed it's actually still in the bar and that nobody took it :(

Come on babe why don't we paint the town...

Still having a blast here in NYC. The weather is really bad (it was snowing yesterday) but I'm struggling on! I hear is gorgeous at home. Typical!

Have done quite a bit of touristy stuff at this stage - Walked over the Brooklyn Bridge, went to the Museum of Modern Art, the Met, Natural History Museum, walked through Central Park etc. Am going to go to the Rockerfeller Centre this afternoon.

Am so glad I'm keeping a travel journal (thanks to all of you who strongly encouraged me to do so!) because I can barely remember what I did a couple of hours ago, let alone a couple of days. Honestly, in a few weeks I'll be like "New York City?... never heard of it" haha :)

Last night I met up with a couple of friends from London and joined them in a tiny piano/cabaret bar. It was amazing - everyone sitting or standing around the piano singing songs from musicals. "Doe, a deer, a female deer. Ray - a drop of golden suuuunn....." LOVED IT!

I do have more news and tales of adventure but I'm paying by the minute for internet access so have to run!

Lots of love and kisses for everyone! :) xxxx

All about the Middle East

Tonight was strange. I just happened to meet several Middle-Easterners.

I met two guys from Bangladesh in a pub I went to and spent the evening chatting to them. They were very nice and chatty.

But then when I got into a taxi back to the hostel, it turned out that the driver was from Cairo - Yay! I love Egypt (as most of you know) so I was chatting all about it and when I got to the hostel, he wouldn't take any money from me! Sweet! Free taxi ride and he also said that any time I went back to Cairo I could stay with his family. Love it!

Then I was hungry and went into the little deli/grocery store beside the hostel and the cashier guy was from Yemen... and I was all like "No way! I was going to go and work in Yemen!" and he's now determined to teach me Arabic so I can go and teach English in Yemen and stay with his family. This city is completely insane. And fabulous.

Also, today I bought a necklace in Tiffany's. Far too expensive; but wonderful nonetheless :)

Oh yeah and I got offered a green card from an Indian taxi driver who said we could get married if I wanted a green card. Nice.

Sleeping on a Bench in Central Park...

That was my prospect last night as I desperately searched Hostelz.com to try and find a hostel in NYC that had rooms for the next 5 nights. My search criteria went from somewhere with good reviews and available beds, to available beds. So I found a small little place, 7 blocks down from where I am now. I'll be checking in to it this after noon. So fingers crossed it will be clean, safe and friendly!

I'm DEFINITELY doing some touristy stuff today - it's raining so I have a good reason to spend time in museums and not wander the streets!

AGH!

Too much is happening for me to be able to keep up! I've done so much stuff over the last few days (none of it involving sight-seeing, by the way). I think I'll have to take a good hour tonight and actually write it all out for you lot.
I'll give you a little preview here though - spent all of yesterday with a Canadian girl shopping in Chinatown and then drinking Guinness in a bar run by a Dubliner chatting up Irish American boys from the Bronx. Nice.
More to come later...

Ok. Now I have some time. Phew.

So, where was I? Oh yeah... when last I left you, I was considering going for brunch.
Well, I did go for brunch and it was delicious (but expensive). I then went downtown to see if there was anything good on in the cinema. But there wasn't. Went back to the hostel and was feeling a bit lonely at this point (boo hoo) when all of a sudden there appeared a very chatty roommate from Canada (living in Wales). She was lovely and more than a bit crazy (but in the good way) and we went out to get some food.

Yesterday then we had very noble intentions to go to the Natural History Museum and Ground Zero. However, as with all the best laid plans, they didn't quite work out. We did go to the Natural History Museum. For about an hour. It's an ok place but I found the general lay-out, the lighting and amount of provided information a disappointment.
So after an hour of cultural saturation, we succumbed to our girlie impluses and went shopping! Yay, yay, yay! (cue jumping up and down, clapping hands and squealing).
We started with a sushi lunch and then spent the day strolling around Chinatown and surrounding areas; trying stuff on, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at sparkly things and occasionally purchasing.
After a very long and arduous day we were dying of the thirst and found our way accidentally to a lovely little pub called Josie Green's. It's somewhere off Broadway, north of Bleeker Street: can't quite remember where... We went in and after about an hour met a lovely group of guys from the Bronx who were all "Irish". Ended up blabbering on with them for hours and generally having a laugh. Great night and no hangover today! Yay! No idea how this happened as I had a good few pints but not complaining :)
Tanis (Canadian girl) left today so I'm all alone again. I'm getting a bit braver about making friends though so I'll be fine.

Suppose I should do some touristy stuff. Went to go up the Empire State Building this afternoon but there was a big queue so we had coffee instead.
Yeah, I need to do actually DO some touristy stuff haha :)

Again, I'm sorry about the lack of pics - the computers don't actually have any USB ports :(
And Google Chat doesn't work on them either, so I apologise to those of you who have tried to IM me - I'm not ignoring you, I swear!

Hugs and kisses xxxx

It's my fourth day already!

Am a small, little, tiny, baby bit hungover today. Had a fantastic day with Hyo-Jung yesterday (thank you! and it's still a shame about those shoes...); strolling leisurely around, chatting and eventually ending up in a lovely bar drinking cocktails :)
Ate a cannoli - it was magnificent. Delicious.
Going to go for brunch today and then maybe do some sightseeing. Maybe.
Or I might just sit somewhere in a corner somewhere nice drinking coffee and reading/dozing... it's a hard life.