Thu 5th
October, 2006, London to Florida
Started the day early with a generous car lift with my sister,
Theresa, from her new place in Dunstable to Luton parkway. What
a fantastic sister she is, I've always said so. As you may
have guessed, I'm hoping for another lift in the future. Caught
the 6:37am train straight through to Gatwick, pausing
momentarily on the bridge over the Thames long enough to take a
few pictures of a fabulous sunrise over Tower Bridge. What
a beautiful sight, and an exceptional last reminder of London as
we depart these shores for six months.
Sunrise over London Bridge. Isn't it
great how I squeezed a picture of London onto our USA page?
We had already checked in online for our 11am departure, but
wanted to get to Gatwick as early as possible as we didn't know
what the queues for security checks would be like, especially as
we were flying to the states. We needn't have worried, we
sailed though all the checks in about 10 minutes and were soon
sat at the Wetherspoons bar having a final taste of real beer
before the hard times to come with no real ale. That's got
to be the hardest part about leaving the UK for me, especially
for six months!
The 9 hour flight passed without trouble, raced off the plane
to try and beat the anticipated queues as immigration but were
pleasantly surprised to find only a few people
waiting. Our luck broke there though, we didn't have
the house number of Rita's old school friend, Mike, who has
recently moved to Florida and will be our host for a few days,
along with his new wife Maria. We thought this would be a
minor matter, but our passports were taken and we were invited
into an office near the immigrations desks. We had to wait
only about 5 minutes until we were seen to, and showing them a
few emails from Mike was enough to satisfy them. What
followed was a bit strange, once we had collected our luggage
from the conveyor, we then had to give it back in, presumably to
be scanned again, before collecting it 15 minutes later in the
main terminal. We had booked a car online with Alamo, and
despite a long line we were quickly seen to and wandered across
to pick up our economy car, the cheapest available! At the
pickup garage, we were told to go to the compact lane and pick
any car, but there was only one car in the lane, a Chevy HHT,
much bigger than the standard economy car, but it was the only
one left so we took it. At the exit we half expected them
to say we'd got the wrong class of car, but they didn't say
anything, so we got a free upgrade!
Mike had emailed directions from Orlando to Archer, they
seemed complex but turned out to be quite straightforward.
Rita did a good job of driving, despite it being her first time
driving a left hand drive car, and we arrived in Archer just
after 8pm. Mike and Maria weren't home yet, so we were
forced to wait in the local bar, where we found the locals very
friendly and welcoming. Mike and Maria gave us a
warm welcome when we eventually made it back to their place at
9:30pm, but by then we were fading fast after a long day
travelling.
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Fri 6th to Sunday 8th
October, 2006, Archer, Florida
Spent the morning at Mike and Maria's place,
lovely rambling gardens (how can they call them yards?), Rita
helped with feeding the horses, and late morning Mike took
us to Cedar Key on the Gulf of Mexico coast. It's a
touristy fishing place, with numerous restaurants and various
types of accommodation, seemed a little run down but an
interesting place to drop in to. Saw some interesting
horseshoe crabs mating on the water edge, not quite like any
crab I've seen before, and apparently they've changed little in
25 million years! After an pleasant seafood lunch on the
waterfront, we went shopping in Gainesville, Mike for some
swimming pool parts, and me for a new power cable for my
laptop. The plastic coating on the power cable I bought in
India last year has mysteriously started to disintegrate, so I
need a new one quickly. Also tried to buy an Americas
style plug, so I could swap it for the UK plug on another power
cable, but I couldn't find one in several electrical
shops. I find it easier (usually) to buy and fit a local
plug instead of using a travel adaptor, especially as UK plugs
are so bulky. For dinner we had a traditional slab of pork
ribs, cooked al dente by me on the bbq.
On Saturday Mike took us to the Paynes Prairie
State Reserve for a walk, hoping to see an armadillo in action,
i.e. rustling around the undergrowth. We had burgers and
ribs for lunch at a roadside diner, locals place, before walking
around the park for a couple of hours. We didn't find any
armadillos, but we did see some bison, deer, alligators, big
spiders and some vultures. In the evening we met some of
Mike and Maria's friends for dinner at their place.
Sunday was a bit of a day of rest. Rita
and I went into Gainesville to have a look around one of the
shopping malls in the morning and chilled out in the
afternoon. Maria was preparing for a big meeting in the
week, but she still found time to cook up a fantastic dinner of
local specialty dishes. The main course was cilantro chicken (I
think cilantro is coriander) with spaghetti squash in a sweet
sauce, served on a bed of rice with beans, fried onions and
tomatoes. For dessert we had a lovely rhubarb and strawberry
cob. My description doesn't do it justice, but it was a
lovely meal.
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Mon 9th to Wed 11th
October, 2006, Archer,FL to Seattle, WA
Monday morning Mike left early to fly to his
work in Galveston, we set off around 10am to leave Maria to get
ready for her busy week ahead. We set off east to St
Augustine, arriving around lunchtime and checked into the Anastasia
Inn, just across the Bridge of Lions, and only $40 a night with
free wifi internet access . The guy who first landed
here was called Ponce de Leon, so I guess the bridge's name is a
corruption of his name. We walked back over the
bridge, under severe repair, back into the old town. I say
old, but it was founded in 1576, which I guess is old by
American standards. On Aviles Street we had lunch at
a Mexican cafe called La Herencla (or something like that),
before wandering along the touristy shops on St George
Street. We found an upstairs bar with live music, it
sounded good so we stopped by for a couple of hours and
eventually stayed on for a snack for our evening
meal
Tuesday morning we collected our free breakfast from the
reception area and took it back to our room. Not a huge
selection on offer, some cereal, bagels and muffins, but it was
included so it would have been rude not to partake. Rita went
for a walk down towards the lighthouse while I made maximum use
of our free internet access to upload our website to my new
ISP. I've been trying to sort out hosting of our
paulandrita.com website for almost a month now, I ran out of
space on our original host last year, so, being unable to buy
extra space there at a reasonable price I bought some cheap
space elsewhere. It was getting a little difficult to
maintain so a while ago I decided to consolidate the whole
website onto one host, which should have been straightforward
but I seemed to be going round in circles for several
weeks. Ok, I can see your eyes glazing over, so all I'll
say now is it's been sorted and all should be ok now.
Rita's turn to drive, we set off down the East coast of
Florida, aiming to find a place to stay near Orlando
airport. We stuck to the minor roads, actually the A1A and
A1, passing through famous places like Daytona and driving
right passed the JFK Space Centre. It was getting late so
we didn't want to pay to actually go in. We got slightly
lost on the way in to Orlando, we only had the basic map that
came free with the hire car, but eventually found our way to the
La Quinta hotel only 5 minutes drive form the airport, where we
found a good room with free wifi for a little over $50 for the
two of us.
Up early for the flight to Seattle.
Dropped our car off at 6:30am and walked the short distance to
the departure terminal. We were a little worried when the
guy directing passengers to the appropriate check in desk didn't
recognise our flight number and had to go and ask someone
else. All was ok, the flight stopped off at Dallas first,
and he hadn't realised it went on to Seattle. We'd
been told to expect long queues through the security checks, but
they weren't too bad and we were through to the other side by
7am.
At Dallas we had the option of staying on the
plane or getting off to stretch our legs, which seemed like a
good idea to us so we did. We had half an hour and managed
to squeeze in a couple of beers and bought some food for the
onward flight, as American Airlines don't seem to provide
in-flight food any more. How tight is that?
Arrived in Seattle pretty much on time and we
were met by Rita's distant (possibly very distant) cousin,
Linda, and her husband Ray. Rita had been in contact with
Linda for over two years, after Linda had contacted the Knapton
family in Dorset to try and trace her relatives, but this was
the first time they had met. However, after so much email
contact over the past two year we all felt as though we knew
each other very well
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Thu 12th to Sun 22nd October, 2006,
Seattle, Washington
I stayed in Seattle with Ray while Rita and
Linda drove over to Montana to see some more distant cousins, a
drive of some 600 miles each way, so they were gone for the
weekend. In the mean time I explored downtown Seattle and
got to know some of the locals beers a little more
intimately. I'll try and get Rita to fill in the details
of the Montana trip when she gets time.
Linda and Ray looked after us very well and our
time there flew by, with visits to the city and even a special
open house day where all of Rita's distant relatives came round
to meet her and for a chat.
(Rita's contribution to follow)
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Mon 23rd October, 2006,
Seattle, WA, USA to Vancouver, BC, Canada
Caught the Amtrak bus over the border to
Vancouver, stayed in a nice hostel on Richards St in central
downtown, the St Claire. Had thought about a day trip to
Victoria but instead spent the day in Vancouver, good long walk
around Stanley Park, out to the Lions Gate bridge.
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Thur 26th October, 2006,
Seattle, WA, to St Joseph, MI, USA
Flight from Seattle to Chicago delayed by an
hour or so, which meant we missed the Amtrak train to St
Joseph. Instead we caught a South Shore train to Michigan
City, and Mark very kindly drove out the 30 miles to pick us up
from there.
We had a chilled out time with Mark in Michigan,
Mark took me out to his narrow gauge train club and I had a go a
one of the little electric trains. Gave me a few ideas for
our place in France. Oh no, said Rita. Also had an
interestin night in the Livery bar in Benton Harbour, where they
make their own beer. It was an open mike night, and there
were some interesting entries, and some were even fairly good.
On Wednesday morning we caught the Amtrak into
Chicago and spent a day in the city. It was a bit on the
cold side, a couple of degrees above freezing, so we sheltered
frequently in warm buildings, the warmest we found to be the
bars. Walked all the way up to State and Walton street to
try and find a Blues bar I had been to 15 years ago, only to
find its been knocked down and replaced with a Walgreens drug
store. The b*****ds! The cheapest hotel we could find for
the night was out near O'Hare airport. The Chicago
Transport website told us to take the green subway out to the
end of the line and catch a bus to get to the hotel, but when we
asked a passerby for directions to the green line. He
looked at us shocked, and told us we should not go on the green
line, it would be too dangerous for us. I wont say the exact
reasons he gave but I thing they may have been racially
motivated, but as it was getting late we took the longer option
of a tube to the airport and catch the hotel transfer
bus.
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Thur 2nd to Mon 6th November, 2006,
Boston, MA,USA
American Airlines let us down again and we
arrived late in Boston, but only by 45 minutes, and to cap it
all, they had no beer or wine on the flight. Well, not for
economy passengers such as ourselves. It's not as if we
weren't prepaired to pay for it.. Caught the T (the Boston MRT)
into town and 20minutes later we were at my brother Andy and his
wife Carroll's place in town.
Had a great weekend with Andy and Carroll, we've
been to Boston a few times before but it was nice to go to some
familiar places as well as some new. Rita squeezed in a
trip to the Art Museum, where she was even allowed to take
photos, most unusual,. Andy and I had a few hours of pool
at our regular place, I had a lucky streak (or so Andy claimed)
and I think I won most games, but Andy won the "Winner
Takes All" final game, so he claimed the victory.
Meantime, Carroll was busy with a promotion in a wine store in
town, part of her work for her cookery based website, www.helpmecok.com.
Check it out for some great easy to prepare recipes, and you can
subscribe to a free monthly newsletter too. (Yet another
un-paid promotion link)
The weekend passed all to quickly, and early
Tuesday we caught the T out to the airport for our 8:40 flight
to Chicago, connecting with an 11:05 flight to Narita,
Japan. We had been a little concerned about this
connecting flight when we realised we only had 35 minutes to
make the second flight, but we had been assured it was a valid
connection. Our first flight went ok until just after we
had pulled away from the gate, when they announce a 20 minute
delay. That might have been ok, as we only had a hundred
yards between the gate we arrive at in O'Hare and the departure
gate, but we were further delayed in the air and didn't land
until 11:05. We ran to the gate but they had long since
closed it, and although the place was still sitting at the gate,
they wouldn't let us and the other five passengers who wanted to
make the same connection get on. We tried to get American
Airlines to put us on another flight with another carrier, but
they couldn't find seats for us, so we would have to wait for
the same time flight tomorrow. And, because they said the delay
was not their fault (it was air traffic control and the weather
that delayed them) they wouldn't put us up in a hotel for the
night, although they would give us discounted rooms at a hotel
airport.
So we had an extra day in the US, meaning we
would have a day less in Japan, so we changed our future flights
to allow us a whole week in Japan. That's one of the
benefits of our OneWorld Alliance round the world ticket, we can
change the date and times of our flights without charge as often
as we like, if we want to change the routing though we'd have to
pay.
On Wednesday morning our we caught our flight
with no problems, and set off for Japan. Our route took us
over Alaska, a state we had planned on visiting this trip but
didn't make it. Our RTW ticket seemed to imply we could
fly there as part of our allowance of stops, but we couldn't
find any flights we were allowed to book.
Continued on our Japan
page
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Tue 7th to Wed 8th November, 2006,
Boston, Chicago and set off to Tokyo
Our American Airlines flight from Boston to
Chicago for our connecting AA flight to Tokyo seemed to be going
well until we had been pushed away from the gate and had taxied
a short distance, then we had the announcement that Chicago air
traffic control had delayed us by 20 minutes. As we only
had 35 minutes between our scheduled arrival at Chicago and the
take-off time for our Tokyo flight, this was not welcome
news. We eventually took off 30 minutes late, and just to
complete the misery, we had to circle for an extra 10 minutes to
get a landing slot. Our arrival gate was only 100 yards
from the Tokyo flight gate, but when we arrived there the flight
had been closed for 10 minutes and there was no way we were
going to get on. Oh well, we had to miss one flight
sometime, I suppose, and this is our only planned
connecting flight for this trip so we'll just have to make sure
we turn up in time for all our future flights.
We phoned the re-ticketing helpline who thought
they might be able to get us on the United Airlines departure at
12:45, but no such luck, our only option was to wait for
tomorrow's flight. We tried to get AA to pay for a hotel,
but the best we could get was a reduced rate room at the Ramada
Plaza. Apparently, because it was not there fault (by
their estimation) that was the best they could offer. Not
even vouchers for food and beverages, although I did wonder if
our reputation had preceded us. We have been here recently,
after all.
Nothing to do now but sit back and watch the
results of the mid term elections, seems to be the only thing on
TV today. Perhaps we'll have a beer or three to help it
along.
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