Fourth (and last day) in Polski

Breakfast alluded us again today and we spent 45mins trying to find somewhere. The Elephant Club had a great breakfast menu but didn't open until 1pm. So we ended up having a KFC breakfast which is pretty much the same as a KFC lunch.

We then boarded the train to the zoo, Kerri got on quick and got some empty seats. Turned out that they were the only seats in that carriage which we think must have been an empty livestock cabin.

Google lied to us about a 12min walk to the zoo, it was more like 40, but hey ho, we got there first time.

The zoo was quite empty (of people not animals) and was pretty good. They had loads of a-maz-ing tigers and bears and elephants and cool chimps and shit. Most animals wanted to come and see us and Kerri fed some four legged thing some leaves. The elephant wanted in on this action and tried to grab her with it's trunk.

Mark had a foot long hotdog, it wasn't the best and by the time he'd scraped all the crap off it, it wasn't exactly a foot long.

After the zoo we braved a bus back to the train station and then back to Gdansk, we're black belts in public transport now.

We decided to pack before we went out as there wouldn't be much time in the morning.

We finished the holiday off with a curry, it was pretty hot stuff, Kerri didn't eat hers. So we washed that down with some cocktails at The Elephant Club (it was oipen by now).

Third day in Polski

Very late start due to not getting home until 5am the previous night/morning.

We rushed straight to the station at midday and scoffed our way through a Polish McDs. Mark ordered a burger with no cheese and got a burger with no cheese, if they can get it right over here with the language barrier then why not at home (probably because I don't speak chav innit).

We took the train to Sopot a nice city on the coast which is quite modern. After a stroll around we stopped for a coffee at the square and watched the world go by. After dodging beggers and gorillas we went to the pier, an impressively long pier too (no smoking on the pier - learn a lesson Western!).

Off to Sopot museum next, we got there at 4:03, it closed at 4:00. Stupid museum. On the walk back Kerri met a polish cat which made her happy.

We went to the oldest bar in Sopot and then grabbed some food. It started to rain. A lot. Bad times for the suckers sat outside, especially those eating soup, it was filling up quicker than they could eat it,

At home time we mostly froze on the station and then got rained on a little bit. Kerri got confused and thought it was time to nip out and get dessert then realised it had gone midnight.

Second day in Polski

An early start was needed today to enable us to get to Malbork castle, a massive legendary castle about an hours train journey away.

Needless to say that we didn't get an early start as we were a little late rising and then Mark hadn't factored in Kerri's 'getting ready tax'. So an hour and a half later we left for breakfast.

Breakfast is harder to find than you'd imagine, unless you want ice-cream that is! After a while we found somewhere and suffered the normal quality Polish service. After that we went to the train station to find that we'd missed the hourly train by 2 mins.

This is mainly because the English guy in front of us in the queue insisted in trying out his Polish rather than taking the help offered to him by a fluent english/polish translator (we took this option).

When we did get on the train we swiftly got to Malbork Station. Well I say 'station', it'll really just a few paving slabs next to the line that the train happens to slow down for. There are no steps or underground way out of the 'station', you have to run across the tracks.

Malbork Castle was a short 40min walk...if you're a crippled old woman, or a 5min stroll for anyone else. The castle was fairly impressive, al though as we didn't have DNA samples to hand, we were not allowed the audio tour.

The people there are fluent in many languages including Polish, German, Spanish and italian; just not English. So we made our own History up instead. Who would have thought that the Teutonic knights trained killer attack monkeys under the leadership of King Wolf.

Upon leaving we needed the train back, and as there were no ticket booths at the 'station' we had no idea when the trains were, whether they'd stop and if they did, how you get tickets. So we followed a couple of local drunks around and jumped on the first train that arrived (90 mins later). Mark spoke made up German to the conductor and scored us two tickets to somewhere.

Luckily the train went the right way and we recognised the station. There are no announcements and very few signs at the stations so there's some guesswork involved.

Later, out for dinner we went to Sphinx as it looked nice (indoor trees growing) and it had great reviews. Kerri ordered a red wine and got a white, so ordered a Cosmo instead and got a Carling. She did get a free cocktail because of this though, so it wasn't all bad. Oh and then another two free drinks later, I think they're trying to get her drunk, they may regret that.

After consuming large quantities of food and many drinks we paid the whole £40 bill and headed back to the apartment. While in the courtyard, outside we met Jake, a friendly polish chap and then his friend Viktor. Jake immediately ran to the shop to buy us all beer, not going to turn that down.

We then went to Jake's apartment (probably not advised behaviour according to the foreign office) for a party and Vik tried to make Kerri dance to old polish records, didn't happen. The apartment was FULL of photos of his dead grandfather and had the most disgusting toilet ever (full of floaters). After an hour they decided to give us a 3am tour of Gdansk, nothing strange about that at all.

The tour involved climbing through ruins, walking by the river and taunting guard dogs. Mark thought that murder was on the cards and kept the Polish away. Luckily they didn't want to kill and rape us, they were just friendly and wanted us to appreciate their nice city.

The crazy tour ended at 5am and we returned to the apartment wondering what the hell had happened in the last 4 hours. Mark doesn't understand how Badger manages to attract so many crazy people. You will all get to meet then soon as they said that they're coming to Birmingham in 3 years time.

First day in Polski

It's time to go to Poland. Unfortunately this involves getting up at 3am which didn't make us very happy.

Mark had a tight agenda timed to the minute to get us onto the plane. Kerri mostly moaned about this in between drinking the largest cup of coffee in the world (it came with it's own tray).

At security it was deemed that Kerri's bags were too heavy and large so some organisation of the cases was needed which screwed up Mark's schedule.
Also we had to remove our shoes, this meant that Kerri had to strut around the airport in cow print socks.

The plane journey went pretty fast, in fact we landed early, go Ryan Air! We were delayed however as in our excitement we left Departures before collecting Kerri's oversized pink luggage. Security wouldn't let us back in so we went to Lost and Found. The nice man there calmly informed Kerri that her luggage didn't make it from Birmingham. Kerri was not calm about this. Luckily the nice man was an idiot and didn't know what he was talking about and the case turned up 5 mins later.

We were soon at the apartment which is nice, Thomaz who owns the place showed us several times how the door lock works which is good really, as we don't have those in Blighty.

Food was in order so we wandered around, on the way we passed several dozen people all selling amber. Every shop here sells amber, people sell it outside their house, market stalls sell it. Basically the whole amber industry is saturated, why does everyone sell the same thing? Someone should start selling hats or something, they'd clear up. We soon found a nice looking restaurant next to a river. After a bout of slow service we tucked into our grub and then a pirate ship pulled up. 10 mins later we were on a pirate ship sailing to Westerplatte (yarr!). The trip there was very interesting and we passed many a sight. Unfortunately our guide only spoke German so we had no clue WTF was going on and spent the whole trip pretending to be pirates.

Westerplatte was where the first shots of WWII were fired. Kerri re-enacted this for the tour party, they were mostly impressed. Oh did I forget to mention that several beers had been consumed by this time. Bad times for the Polish although apparently they put up a good fight. Not so sure about that, perhaps they're being a little bit biased as the general understanding is that they got their asses kicked a little bit.

We caught a different pirate ship back, it seems there are a lot of pirate ships in Gdansk!

Following our pirate adventures we grabbed an ice-cream. These were served in thimble sized cones but held 2 tonnes of ice-cream. As we tried to eat these we saw someone wearing clogs, this was funny but we're pretty sure she didn't cotton on to us taking the mick out of her (maybe not).

It was time for more beers after that and some more noms. Food wasn't great so we just got hammered. Don't remember much after that.

Day 13 - Gators

Another late one last night meant that neither of us felt great in the morning, or afternoon for that matter which was when we headed out into the swamps to find us some alligators.

Captain Mike took us out in his boat and after about 30 seconds a gator swam over to say hello. Saw a few different sized gators during the tour and then Mike, which we don't believe was his real name, more like slack-jawed fat Billybob - who married his sister... Anyhow 'Mike' has a pet baby alligator which we got to hold, but he wouldn't let us bring it home.

Following the tour we went to see the movie Drive, a strange film and excessively violent in parts but not bad, I'd give it a 7.

On the way back to the hotel, someone offered Tim a shoe shine, this would have been ok if it wasn't for the fact that he was wearing flip-flops
.
An early night followed, it doesn't seem right being sober in New Orleans!

Day 12 - Who Dat?

Mark's back in the game! I was quite ill this morning, I think it's because I had mustard on my burger, yes that's exactly the reason.
After waking up we had to put the room back together, Tim had trashed it a little bit by denting the lamp shade and throwing everything around.
Today has been all about the hand egg game or 'football' as they call it here.
The Saints (local team) won which was good and the town has gone even crazier. We figured that 12pm was a good time to start drinking so we worked our way from bar to bar including a few more hand grenades. Some people from Chicago befriended us but thought that we were French so we called them Canadians and bugged out.
Later in the evening the bars were giving out free sets of beads so when we found a balcony I invented the human hula game where you have to throw some beads over passers bys heads. This proved a success and many people joined in so much so that I think it may be included in the next olympics.
It was Tim's turn to be wasted this time probably due to drinking pints of vodka and coke, so we headed home, met Ferris Bueller (who was impressed at my hand egg knowledge but apparently Jo Montana and Jerry Rice no longer play for the 49ers).
Back in the hotel room and Tim did his usual throwing everything around routine before falling off the bed and sleeping.

New Orleans 1 Mark 0

Today's blog is brought to you by Tim as Mark is poorly - we'll get on to that later.
We left Biloxi in the morning & after spending an hour driving around trying to find somewhere to eat eventually stumbled across an IHOP. For a country that seems to revolve around eating I can't believe that it took so long. Anyway it was worth the wait as the four course breakfast was the best so far!
We drove directly to the Big Easy but stopped off on the way to book a Gator tour for the following day, a tour that I'd have to move to the Monday due to Mark's mystery illness - again, we'll get to that.
On arriving at the Marriott we spent an age at check-in as they didn't have our reservation - not a good start. We'd heard a lot of differing views about New Orleans so didn't really know which way it would go. However it went in our favour, this place is awesome!!!!
There are Jazz bands on corners & the loudest bars ever selling 3 for 1 beers, not the place to go if you've got a headache. We hit Bourbon St intending to have a mouch & be a tourist but decided to have one drink in a random bar. It turns out that there's a football game on Sunday between the Saints & the Bears, you'd think it was a local derby by all the fans but strangely there was no fighting or people throwing darts at each other - weird eh! The bar was pretty good, it had a load of girls shaking their asses off on the bar in a Houston vs Louisiana dance off.
From there is went down hill rapidly as we went from bar to bar stopping briefly for what Mark described as the best Ribeye in the world. Then we stumbled across a place that sold a drink called 'hand grenades' in a novelty glass described as the strongest in New Orleans, we had 2 each - big mistake! It also turns out that people from N.O. Just seem to make up words as they go and therefore are completely unintelligible. Mark tried it out and had a nonsense conversation with someone for 5 minutes.
About 9:30 we were wasted so finished the night off with a Macdonalds. Mark's must have been poisoned because this morning he was sick 4 times and couldn't get ready until 11.

Day 10 - Top Gun

For the first time in about a week we were up in time for our free breakfast, but for some reason we didn't bother and went to Waffle House instead. There was a 15 min queue so Tim offered to have his served to him in the trap while I sat next to the bin.

After breakie we high tailed it out of the to Biloxi, a place we hadn't heard of until the previous night until the mullet featured fat redneck taxi driver advised us to go there. Obviously we couldn't turn down advise from such a well grounded individual so off we went.

Along the way we saw a sign for the National Navy Aviation Museum so we popped in there. What a find! For a start it was free which is always a bonus. It was full of planes you could climb in, so for us two it was like being 12 again, pressing all the buttons and climbing in everything, although it seems that aircraft aren't built for people our height. There was also a 360 degree simulator which we had to try out (we got a confirmed kill). Unfortunately we had to leave as they were closing, and Tim was so close to getting his wings.

It was night time by the time we got to Biloxi which is a Vegas wannabe. Large casinos and hotels everywhere. Things started well, we were both up in roulette, we tried video poker and that worked out well too. Then someone tried to explain craps (the game), it turns out that if you flip on the pass line then the wax pig turns and if you roll snake eyes, someone wins some money. We decided to leave craps alone. Besides, the woman giving out the free drinks was nowhere to be seen. Tim decided that a fruit machine would be a good thing, so put $5 in one, it was 5c a roll, so 100 goes right? No, it turns out that there was a x20 multiplier on, and he hit bet 5 credits, so it all went in one roll. Fruit machines are also not for us. Some woman who talked too much next to us on the roulette table didn't have a good time, she started with about $700 and would bet aound $100 at a time and then get excited when she won $16 back. She was broke in about 30mins.

Friday night meant heading to a club, we picked one in the Hard Rock casino. We asked the bellboy for directions and he told us that it wasn't possible to walk there as it was a mile away! It was pretty shit to be honest. But the drinks were cheap so we stayed until about 2ish, then played some more roulette as we left, had some mandatory crap to eat and stumbled back to the hotel.

Day 9 - Jetski jeoprady

A late start so we missed breakfast again, one day we'll make it!

We decided to go straight for lunch instead and went to Pineapple Willies for ribs. They sell them there by the bucket and they're good. Even though we ordered 1lb of ribs and sides the waitress asked "is that all?".

We then went for some jetski action, 1 each this time. The sea was choppy so it was good fun. Tim got more air than Eddie the Eagle! We both have a few more bumps and scratches now though. 30mins is a long time in the waves but it was the best jetskiing ever.

Afterwards we chilled on the beach before working our way through a few bars drinking oversized beers.

Later we got a taxi to a sweet restaurant that had awesome food (can't remember the name), and then we headed to the Boat Yard for the final LBD (little black dress) night of the season. It turns out that noone got the LBD memo, but it was a good night.

We grabbed a McDs on the way home to the taxi drivers disbelief and now tim has found 'Killing TV' a show all about rednecks shooting things, although the advert breaks are all about bladder problems, I'm sure this isn't related.

I think it's best we call it a night

Day 8 - Panama City Beach

After uploading last night's blog where we realised that we'd gained an hour we had some time to kill, so Tim started flicking through the TV channels. Of the channels that were not on adverts there were 14 reality TV shows on, the best of which was Repo-games where a repo guy would offer to pay off peoples debts if they got questions right. Our favoute guy was in the car that was being repo'd at the time getting high, after the second question he had to 'go over there to have a chat with himself'. Let's hope Sky Atlantic buy this show! Also Tim managed to block the bog and no matter what he tried to use (including a suitcase rack!) Couldn't get it unblocked, brilliant!

We started the day with some waffles and bacon and then set out for Panama City Beach aka Spring Break capital. Along the way we went through the Peanut capital, they have a massive show for peanuts here every year. We can't believe we're in the deep south and haven't seen one bar or gun place that let's us fire guns.

Got to Panama City Beach, 94F, very hot. Awesome room with balcony overlooking the beach and no blocked toilet. Womens beach volleyball game going on outside so we thought we'd grab a bite to eat next door. Turns out next door is Hooters so we popped in there and they do food as well :). Only wanted a snack so just ordered some wings and some fries and some onion rings with a couple of beers each to wash it down, absolutely stuffed now, we never learn.

We then decided to go on a Jetski tour, we had 1 jetski between us and took it in turns. On the way out Tim got a bit over eager and we fell off twice, no one else fell off. This did have it's benefits though as we ended up swimming with dolphins! We then went to an island and chatted with Captain Billy, what a character! It was my time to drive then. We fell off another twice... No one else fell off.

Later we headed to Schooners, a busy bar with live music, I forgot my I'd of course so had to head home to get it.

Just been forced to drink jaegar bombs by the jaeger girls giving us free stuff, life is hard.

It turns out that the bar we were at closes at 10 so we rocked over to a locals bar. Half way through our first drink the gap toothed state 'table soccer' champion challenged us to a game, we won 2-0. We came, we saw, we kicked ass - Guvi would be proud.

Blah blah had more beers, played pool, pissed up CBA writing more tonight. Submit.

Day 7 - No idea where we are

We started the day by skipping/missing breakfast as we were till bloated from last night's meal, so decided to get an early start and see what there is to do in Atlanta.

A few blocks from The Bronx (our motel), was Coca-Cola world (aka the land of happyness), here they showed us lots of things like cartoons of how coke isn't made, a 4d adventure staring some kids with ADHD and a broken Coke factory. There were also polar bears and strange creatures with long necks. I think at this point I need to state that is was Coca-Cola and not that other famous brand of 'coke'. We did ask if Coke originally contained cocaine, and it went quite quiet so we hot tailed it out of there.

We were going to go to the aquarium but they wanted $50 to let us in, presumably they thought we were coked off our faces (see what I did there), so instead we stood outside some restaurants and stole their wifi.

Next stop was Andretti World, an indoor karting track. Tim and I posted the fastest two laps of the day and this is after eating a week's worth of american food! I do recommend the place, it's not the greatest track, but they were not anal like some places and it's a massive well polished place.

It was then time to leave Atlanta and head towards the place where we are now (that's about as much as I can tell you, I have no idea, really). On the way, the satnav went mad, we thought it was self aware at one point and nearly threw it out of the window.

Once in 'this place', we asked the motel man for any decent bars. He just shook his head, so instead we went for some food. It was a local restaurant and the food wa good, although the waitress thought that we were Swiss and they didn't serve deserts.

So on the way back to the motel we stopped at the supermarket to get some icecreams and beers so we could chill in the room and plan the next couple of days at the beach.

This is when Tim decided it would be a good time to fumigate the room against bugs, so we spent the next 20 mins sat at the back of the motel next to the bins eating icecream and drinking cans of beer, this is our holiday people!

It's 9:30, we can go back into the room now, do some interneting (such as writing this), and then get an early night. Then we saw that the alarm clock said 8:30, was it wrong? Had we crossed into CET time already? Only one was to find out, Tim phoned reception to ask them the time. I think that motel man now thinks that the Terminator is staying...

Day 6 - Charlotte to Atlanta

We woke this morning still full from last night's'gut busting steak. Good job really as we'd'missed the breakfast by 15mins. There were still some Cheerios on the floor which I had and Tim stole a muffin from the birds.

So we hit the road, help me out someone, what do flashing yellow or flashing red traffic lights mean at night? We've mostly been ignoring them.

We stopped in Westminster for some food, everyone says grace before they eat their burgers which makes us feel a little like devil worshipers. Tim found a new meal, a BBQ sandwich (aka pulled pork) which is basically the meat from ribs in a sandwich, yum. On the way out of Westminster we found a proper oval dirt track, but bottled taking the Mustang on it.

Took a detour through a national forrest, very pretty with some gorgeous lakes. Although we felt ripped off that there were no falls in Tallulah Falls.

Been to many states so far, currently cruising through Georgia which is a beautiful place.

Later we arrived in Atlanta, a huge city, typical of the US. We drovwe past all the nice upmarket hotels on the way to our accomodation only to find it in a not so nice area. On the street corner were a bunch of guys counting dollar bills, and securiity came to greet us as we pulled into the parking lot and we had to shw ID before we could go to reception. Upon leaving the car some heroin addict shouted at us through the fence asking for money. Don't think we'll be walking tonight.

Day 5 (I think)

I think it's'day 5, typing this in the car as Tim takes his first stint behind the wheel. We have a long days drive, probably about 5 hours, with no real destination planned, if we like the look of somewhere, we'll stop there. So most likely it'll be a place surrounded by bars :)

Breakfast at the hotel was 'continental', which is a little different to the continental that we're used to, for a start someone had stolen all the croissants. And then there was this strange burger like patty stuff, no ideas what that was. Waffles of course and then toast.

The journey went quite well switching between Interstates and smaller roads every hour or so. Lunch was interesting, the place was a real small town and everyone was very polite like back in the ol' times. The lingo is different down here. What we call 'southern fried chicken' they just call ''fried chicken'.

Later on our journey we stopped off at some lakes and then a dirt road to try out the Mustang on the rough stuff. Good fun.

Got a little lost in Charlotte but here safe and sound now.

Just heard the sad news about Ross losing his battle with cancer, RIP mate!

Day 4 - Cars!

Today we left Washington after getting a free buffet breakfast at the hotel (shhh!). We got to the rental place and there was a sweet black Mustang convertable. While Tim played Tetris getting the cases in I found the all important 'traction control off' button ;).

The journey to Richmond was pretty uneventful, I only had one incident that had people blasting horns at us, the satnav even got us to the hotel. Or should I say what is left of the hotel, it's had some hurricane damage courtest of Irene, not to worry, our room is fine.

We quickly headed off the Richmond International Raceway to watch the NASCAR race, we were there early so had a few hours to kill while the build up started. The build up comprised of some fighter planes flying overhead, singing national anthums, parachutists, thanking the army, some soldiers singing, thanking the marine core, speeches about how America is the best, thanking the army, etc. What I've learned from this is that America is THE BEST country because they have the military. There is no thanking of doctors, nurses, teachers or bin men, just people who blow things up.

Anyway, the race started and it was pretty quick, those cars are seriously loud. There were a whole bunch of crashes, and we stood by the fence inches from the cars doing 200mph right at us! The end was very close too, we were right by the start/finish line for that so it worked out well.

After that we hot footed it back to the car which we parked on someone's lawn in strugglerville and got out rapido before it got gridlocked.

An early start tomorrow for some F1 action, not had enough of cars yet!

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Day 3 - more rain

Day 3 started with more rain but we stuck to our plan of walking a couple of miles to a busy area for some om nom nom breakie. Unfortunately after 90 mins we still hadn't found anywhere so we headed back to the place next to the hotel albeit wetter and more justified in ordering a fat bastard breakfast.

After eats we took a cab to Georgetown to have a mosy around and do some shopping. While there we found the worlds shitiest mall so decided to find donuts. It turns out that Georgetown isvthe only place in america without a donut shop. Instead we had a Five Guys burger (recommended) and stuffed out faces.

We were promised a 30min walk back, in reality it was double that and included a trip through a hilly muddy park just to make sure that we got even more wet. The sun did appear briefly, so we headed back to the room to make sure we didnt scare it away!

After a little rest we headed out to meet up with Saurabh and grab a few beers, unfortunately a hurricane broke his house so he couldn't make it, so me and Tim decided to get hammered. Tim had asked the gay conceige which bar to go to, but we weren't allowed in because I didn't have any ID - all those years using Oil of Olay finally paid off. So after a quick trip back to the hotel we went to the recommended place. What a dump. 1 toilet (unisex) for the entire bar, stuff coming off the walls, cables everywhere, but they served beer so all was good. After speaking to some locals we found the actuall good place to go, which it turns out is right by the hotel so off we went and did a mini bar crawl. One bar had a woman next to the entrance with a table asking for $5 entry, so we paid and then she grabbed her table and ran off!

On the way home we stopped at the irish bar, Tim tried some crazy bourbon which the uber fat barman recommended (despite never tasting it), it wasn't great. Some old timer then started playing his banjo on a mini stage in the corner, it was 1am, the uber fat barman's uber fat wife started to talk to us, time to get out!

Hopefully I'll get the wifi sorted better tomorrow so I can upload some pics, which reminds me, need to take some pics.

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Day 2 - Roaming around DC

More rain and lightning overnight, but it's calmed down to an England like drizzle this morning.
Tim has gone for one of his legendary strolls while I try to figure out a way to get around the hotel's $9.99 internet charges (I didn't). Outside there are about 20 different newspaper booths, this must be because the americans like to read or the fact that they have to pay $10 a day for the internet!

We found a local place for some breakfast an abused their free internet to plan the day ahead. Soon after we walked into downtown Washington which is about 4 miles. It was very quiet compared to cities like New York or London and we accidentally stumbled upon the White House. I'm a bit annoyed to be honest, we came all the way from England and Obama couldn't even be arsed to walk downstairs to say hello, I bet he was only watching Jerry Springer too. Lazy bastard!

After that we went to the spy museum, me and Tim are now official spies and know all the tricks of the trade, so from there we went to the air and space museum to steal some secrets. Both museums were pretty good to be honest, turns out that the moon landing might not have been faked after all (they're not so happy with you when you ask).

One observation I've had is that the americans live up to their legendary customer service, they couldn't do more to help you and be more polite. However, unfortunately, most of the people working in shops or restaurants aren't american, they're some non-english speaking, ignorant, grunting foreigners (I suspect Mexico). Sounds like I'm being racist, but it's just an observation.

On to the evening, we were due to meet Darkman but had some slight technical issues. My phone failed to connect to any wireless points, and I can't make international calls, Tim's phone is actually mental and half the keys don't work, it switches to camera every time you press 5/D and locks up until you play Track'n'Field on the keypad. So we were unable to contact Darkman and had to abort.

The only thing to do then was to grab some beers. The yanks have gone metric and you have to order 0.5 litre glasses now. Several litres later and a few games of pool we staggered back to the hotel and found the hotel closet open. We now have quite a lot of dressing gowns.

In other news, Tim has done the biggest poo ever, he was so proud of it that he took a photo, I think it's a proper 18 incher!

Oh and dont text me, cant get those, email is best.

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Day 1 - Getting there

The journey away is always interesting and this one didn't let us down. The plan was for me and Tim to drive to Heathrow, jump on a BA flight to DC and then get a 'super shuttle' to the hotel. From there we spend the next couple of weeks working our way down to New Orleans.

So the first part worked, the drive to Heathrow was easy as expected at 5:30am. We then sat around in the terminal waiting for to board looking at all the interesting and stupidly expensive things in the departure lounge. I have to ask why they sell luggage in the airport, isn't it a bit late by then?

Anyhows, after a couple of hours we boarded to face a 40min unexplained delay on the runway, what's 40mins when you're facing a 7 hour flight,
we had legroom seats, so it wasn't so bad. The bigger problems were yet to come, first we saw the plane was going towards Canada, with 9/11 looming some of the other passengers thought the worst but after an hour the Captain came on to tell us that he'd been looping (not loop the looping!) as the airports in DC had been closed for bad weather. Unfortunately we were now low on fuel so had to land elsewhere to refuel and reassess. Things got a little worse when we saw a massive flash on the wing as we were hit by lightning. Right, better land in Philadelphia then!

On the ground we sat around for a couple of hours until the captain told us that the service was being cancelled, the plane couldn't be risked and we were in for a nice bus journey from Philadelphia to Washington (3 hours). But they couldn't get us off the plane for another hour and a half as we were parked in some arse end of the airport, how big is the airport?!?!?

So we got on the bus, convinced enough passengers to get dropped off in central DC as opposed to the airport and a few hours later we were in a rain drenched city some 24 hours after we'd set off. There was only one thing to do, beer and curry.

In america, apparenly it's fine for the waiters to fart while serving you.