America - Full of Nice People

After Africa, we’re all still pretty gripped with traveller’s paranoia (holding a rucksack close, swinging whilst stopped waiting to cross the road to make sure no one is trying to get into your bag, pretending not to hear people shouting at you), so if someone comes to start a conversation with you the natural response is to scowl at them until they propose to you and go away.

We’re having to change our ideas a bit in America though, due to the huge number of people we’ve been meeting who don’t actually seem to be keen to rip us off horribly. And it seems the done thing here; to randomly strike a conversation with people nearby (at least, Cosmo seems to think this is the best way to meet men, aside from standing near tall shelves in supermarkets looking forlorn).

So especial thanks to all the nice people in America. Particularly the nice policeman who found three girls asleep in a car outside a bank, and who simply offered advice on the safest places in town to sleep in the future.

Wish You Were Here - New Orleans

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Why would I want to go to New Orleans; isn’t it destroyed? Well yes, in bits, but for the most part it’s really a rather fun place. So get yourself into the party mindset and join us revelling on the streets of New Orleans! How? Just a few simple steps.

1. Put a bowl of water on top of the radiator, at full blast. You want that heat and sticky humidity. No need to fill the room, just get a waft of it every now and then to stop the breath in your throat. For true authenticity, mix in a bit of mud to mimic the Mississippi.

2. Turn off the lights. All the fun stuff happens after sunset. Why would you go during the day?

3. Get as many steroes/radios as you can and play jazz on all of them. No, not the same jazz, but as many different sorts as you can possibly find, all at once. Every bar in New Orleans has live jazz, each competing with the four surrounding it. Apart from one, which you need to set to swing music so you catch a strain of it every now and then and get confused.

4. Make yourself some beignets. These are French square doughnut things, but normal doughnuts will do. Put them on a plate, and cover them in icing sugar. No, not a dusting, that’s rubbish. I means heaps of icing sugar. Little mountains of the stuff. Make sure you brush against it and cover your clothes in smears of white. If at all possible, get an arsey French man to give them to you then watch in disgust as you try to eat them without caking your face in powdery sugar.

5. New Orleans is covered in alligator heads, and feet, sold everywhere as souvenirs. If possible, scatter some about for decoration. If you find this hard, chicken’s feet will do instead, especially since the city is full of voodoo.

6. Grab yourself a cocktail and go outside. Yes, outside, onto the street. Where you drink your drink. On the street. In New Orleans, this is perfectly acceptable behaviour! For a truly authentic experience, try to convince a local pub to give you a drink in a plastic glass, and then wander down the street into the next pub. Try to avoid getting kicked out. I would recommend a daiquiri, which seems to be the drink of choice, but anything will do so long as it’s not nice beer.

7. Surround yourself in shiny things. Every night is a street party, with beads and dubloons! Lower your expectations; they’re just plastic. Cover your friends in these shiny things, but make sure you have none. As the evening goes on and you have another daiquiri, it’ll soon become a good idea to scrabble through gutters to try find some of these trinkets, whch other revellers will break and discard.

8. Throw grapes at one another. No, I don’t know why. Just do it. The party starts here!

America - Albuquerque is in it

I’m in Albuquerque. There is nothing interesting about it aside from the way it is spelt.

America - Meat.

In Texas, there are BBQs. All you can eat BBQs in fact. But not just any BBQ -they have fire pits full of meat.

Now, L secretly made a video of me eating ribs, but unfortunately I just can’t figure out how to upload it. To nauseate/delight you until I can get this up, here’s a photo of the pit in question:

America - There’s a Big Hole in the Middle of It

The Grand Canyon (which does have a ‘D’, despite Mummy’s insistance for quite some time that it didn’t) is a great big hole in the middle of the continent, which is a sod to get round, so we went to look at it. From side to side it is 10 miles as the condor flies, 24 if you walk, and 220 if you drive. We didn’t cross it. Here is me next to it.

That’s a rather boring picture, though. I wanted something more exciting so got as close as I could to crossing it without breaking every bead in my saggy little body. The National Park people aren’t very good at putting up fences, and with a bit of ingenuity, some strong walking boots and a negation of worry about flashing your pants to everyone as you climb, you can get to some really spectacular places.

Here is a picture of Mummy holding me out over the canyon. I’m afraid you can’t see me very well, but rest assured that I am there and that many people watched Mummy retrieve me from her cleavage after the climb to get there.

Some Japanese people told Mummy she was “awesome”, and some American people took similar photos and said they wanted to use them as their Christmas card this year. They also said it was a shame about the hat, but some people have no taste. It’s a great hat. Everyone loves the hat.

America - Rest Areas with so much more

Wow, Texas. Oh my goodness me Texas. There’s a saying plastered all over the place that “Everything’s bigger in Texas”, and they’re probably right. Everything is also much better!

The rest areas are a prime example of this. A rest area is kind of like a picnic site at the side of the major roads, with toilets. It’s not a service station insofaras there aren’t any fuel stations or places to buy food. So really, how exciting can these be?

Well, Texas isn’t just going to have a picnic area. That sounds girly. In Texas’s rest areas you sit on picnic benches made out of enormous old-fashioned wooden wheels, or in the shadow of an immense historical locomotive, or on the edge of a cliff. Not interested in that? Well, you can get heaps of free information and huge maps of every single city in the state-the-size-of-Germany.

Still not impressed? How about the free wireless Internet, then? Yeah, free. In the middle of nowhere. I’m thinkin’ I’m goin’ ta be likin’ this here state.

America - The Streets are Paved with Gold

So, we put on our posh frocks and went to Vegas.

Wham! lied; drinks are not free in Club Tropicana. There is, however, enough fun and sunshine for everyone.* Rather a lot of sunshine, in fact. 38 degrees celsius most days. Las Vegas sits like a mirage in the middle of an enormous, hot, dusty desert, and suddenly pops out at you like a brightly-coloured painting when you turn a corner.

But it’s wonderful, so very wonderful. Yes, tacky, with a fake Eiffel Tower next to the fake Statue of Liberty by the fake Luxor Temple, but it’s all so big and shiny! I really did think I’d hate it, but now I am utterly convinced that there is no better place to go to party.

We arrived at lunchtime and staggered down the Strip (the famous bit with the best clubs in) ducking in and out of casinos to try get some water. The road is bizarre; you have to try really hard to go down it in a straight line. To get across some bits you need to enter a casino and follow the walkways. We’d heard that they hid the exits in the casinos, but thought we’d manage. We were wrong. Once inside, there are no clear walkways, just enormous foyers full of machines and bars and no sense of direction or daylight whatsoever. It took us over 4 hours to get to the other end, and many instances of desperately asking someone the way out.

There’s plenty to see on the way. There are those big famous fountains, which are incredibly loud as they shoot water high into the air, a volcano with a good amount of kerosene, and a pirate ship fight where one lifesize ships sails up from somewhere else, there is a huge and very hot battle and it sinks. There were also semi-naked women, but I think they had to be scantily clad to survive the fireballs. Encroyable!

Even better than that, though, I made money. I sit here now as living proof that the house does not always win, with my 600% profit. Okay, so it was one $2, but still I’m rather pleased. Here’s a picture of me and Greg holding our winning voucher (you don’t get money out of the machines, but a ticket you can either put into other machines or cash. The machines still make the noise of coins clattering when they pay out, though, even though you are only able to put notes in), looking rather hot:

See photos section for other tacky ones.

* ^{Yes, I know they’re talking about Ibiza, but after seeing Club Tropicana no one could stop singing the song for days.}

America - It’s Less Impressive Than You’d Think

Hello everyone! It’s a Hollywood-style zebra here, enjoying the glitz and glamour and lights of stardom!

Or not, as the case may be. Hollywood turns out to be tiny and entirely underwhelming. If you want, go to the photo section to see a shot of me in front of the big Hollywood sign on a cloudy day. It took a long time to drive there, and was about as exciting as it looks. The best bit about the whole venture out there was meeting a man who had a pet wolf, which we got to pet. It made Mummy very allergic, but it was gorgeous.

Central Hollywood was about the same. There’s only really one street, which is short and covered in tourists looking at what is frankly not very much. And they really have no standards! Despite the fact that I am non-mobile, in the few hours I was there I ended up with my own star and concrete footprints outside of Graumann’s Chinese Theatre (they mean ‘cinema’):

That was still rather disappointing, though. The best moment was in Starbucks (we went in so Mummy could wash her hair in the toilets), where a man came in, got a coffee, and proceeded to atrociously and inaccurately recite an audition piece to his friend for a movie he was trying to be in. He then rang his mum to read her a poem he had written in acting class. I had to stuff my (cement-y) hooves into my mouth to stop myself laughing too much.

America - Destroys What Little History It Has

Sacramento. State Capital, home of the gold rush, still full of wild-west-style wooden buildings. You can get postcards for over a dollar, a range of fridge magnets, and frozen cheesecake (covered in chocolate) on a stick. That is all.

P.S. Some new photos should be up by now, if I have worked this correctly.

America - Some Assembly Required

As you already know, L.A. lacks toilets. Did you also know that it lacks a city centre? That’s right, on any scale map of the city no one can point to where “Downtown” is. The city, it seems, comes in pieces.

And there are many pieces. Perhaps you’re interested in Chinatown, Little Toyko, Thai Town (not to be confused with Toy Town, which is not as nice as it sounds. Think of more adult toys…), Filipino town, Pueblo area, Little Italy, or Hollywood? You can go to any of those places fine, each one a distinct island in a sea of factories (not houses. There seem to be very few houses) with no attachment to any of its neighbours. If you’re dedicated, and not afraid, you can walk between two of them, but only just.

A big, soulless conglomeration of people who do not speak to any of those other people from the other pods. And each one has its own little quirks. You might fall over payphones at every corner in Chinatown, but Little Tokyo is devoid of them. And whilst Little Italy is full of Californian oranges, heaven help you if you want any fruit in the Pueblo area.

At some point, maybe the town planners will put the whole thing together and make a real city. In the meantime, though, if you want to see a socially-experimental SimCity in the flesh, I can tell you exactly where to go.