Week 46

Week 46 - Local Louisiana Lunch!

Can't tell you how proud I am of that alliteration and I'm not joking when I say I did actually spend half the day thinking "what word beginning with 'L' could I use to describe that meal I had in the middle of the day...?"

Anyway, I've stopped patting myself on the back so I'll carry on - I spent a couple of nights in New Orleans, which is a crazy and wonderful city, but due to torrential storms during the day I couldn't actually do any of the culturally important things like plantation visits... so naturally I just ate instead. 

I walked past a bar which had a three-legged dog wandering in and out of it which I found a little hilarious (sorry!), so it had my vote for a lunchtime stop-off. Their speciality, like every other place in Nawlins, was crawfish, or "cheap greyish prawns" as I now like to call them. Cheap and delicious and hilarious! (I mean, when you have a three-legged dog hopping about the place, all meals are much more entertaining.)

And this is what you get for just $7, which was described as a "small portion". Having never tried them before, I would've been utterly clueless as to how to eat them had I not overheard a woman at the bar telling someone else that you crack the shells open in a savage-like fashion and just eat the tail. Luckily I remembered all by myself that like with prawns, you have to take out the black veiny poopy bit, but I'm trying to convince myself that I didn't just remember that after I'd eaten my first one, and that I didn't really eat a little bit of crawfish kack...

Potential fish-shit consumption aside, it was great! But I have an anecdote from my journey home afterwards too; as I walked down the road, there were these adorable little girls selling cookies in the street (yes, that really happens here!) for 50 cents each, but I gave them a dollar, partly because I would have felt like a bit of a dick asking them for change, but mainly because I have no idea if seven-year-olds can count. For a brief millisecond, the whole "not taking taking sweets from strangers" thing did cross my mind, and I did bizarrely think "what if this cookie's been roofied?" But then as I walked down the road after my purchase and turned the corner, I came across a homeless man taking a dump in the street in broad daylight, and I realised there are much more concerning things in the world than little girls and their (probably) non-roofied cookies.

Week 45

Week 45 - Bat Watching

It turns out Austin (Texas) is famous for mainly two things; bars and bats. Which was I more interested in? The motherfreakin' bats of course! Apparently a load of bats just decided to hang out under the Congress Avenue Bridge when it was built in the 80's and since then every night in the spring/summer at around sunset, they come out in swarms in search of food. Well, probably not those exact bats from the 80's, they're probably in bat heaven by now, but their kids are still around.

As it's pretty much Austin's only attraction that dosn't involve boozing, I stopped on the pier to watch this happen on Friday night. When I said earlier "a load of bats", I meant like nearly a million. A MILLION! So you wait around the river and all of a sudden, clouds of bats come out from under the bridge and go soaring into the sky and off into the distance in a crazily regimented formation for about 20 minutes. It's just so overwhelmingly stunning that I don't really know how else to describe it. I tried to take a photo but they move too damn fast to get a really good one, so here's an average one:

I've also added a picture of other people waiting on the bridge for the bats to come out. I've included it mainly just to prove that this is an actual thing people do, and that I haven't just turned into some bat-watching nutter as I travel the US alone.

As spectacular as it was, there were two other brilliant aspects to the whole thing; there was a woman standing next to me trying to explain the whole bat thing to her out-of-town friend but getting most of her facts wrong (I would know, I swotted up on the information boards nearby beforehand - if you need some useless bat facts, I'm your girl). The best thing she said was that "bats use echonography or something to communicate with each other". Echonography's not even a word, I think she meant sonar... and they don't. Also, the other great thing is that there's a phone number you can call to check roughly what time the bats will come out that night and it's actually called the Bat Hotline. Yes, the Bat Hotline. I love that we live in a world where a Bat Hotline exists.

Week 44

Week 44 - Pub Quiz, US Style

...which means, not quite as good as back home really. Firstly, they call it "bar trivia night" or something stupid like that, and the questions are really boring. All this negativity is of course stemming solely from the fact that my friend Kam and I did horrifically badly. 

Our downfall happened in Lulu's Bar in Brooklyn where we seem to have become regulars, mainly for the free pizza with every $4 drink, an offer we're still struggling to get our heads around but are more than happy to take full advantage of. But yes, the quiz... In our defence, we were a team of only two and there were six questions out of a total of 24 just on New York parks, and another six on obscure American music (like U2!) And I was completely robbed of a quick-fire-shout-your-answer-out free drink question to do with the Bridget Jones sequal (quality film, I can only wish I was being sarcastic), because I'm not loud and obnoxious enough for this country. Once again, I'm pretty bitter about the whole situation if you couldn't tell! 

But despite coming last, it wasn't all so bad; for the first and probably last time in my life, I correctly answered a sports question! Plus the quizmaster did say we had the funniest "I don't know" answers, and I'm pretty sure he was talking about my mildly racist response to a question about an Irish writer. And that's something I can be proud of.

As promised from the last post, I've uploaded some pictures of my dish thingy which I collected from the pottery place today... and whaddyaknow it looks the exact same as it did last week. But LOOK IT'S SHINY! Which you probably can't see in the photos but I can assure you it is. I put my name and the year on the back in case I should forget who I am, and/or what year it is... between now and January...

Week 43

Week 43 - Pottery Painting

What do you do when you have $34 to last you the rest of the weekend? Why, spend $27 of it on painting pottery of course! Like the majority of the places I discover in New York, I came across the Painted Pot whilst in search of either wi-fi or frozen yoghurt (or both - thank you Pinkberry!) The Painted Pot is located in the Park Slope neighbourhood of Brooklyn, which is the kind of place where hipsters move to when they get married, have kids and stop wearing prescriptionless glasses.

My friend Kam is visiting from London, and after three straight nights out together (which I'm sure I couldn't even handle back when I was a student), I decided I needed to do something where I could just sit still for a while. So on Sunday afternoon we walked into the shop, were relieved to see other adults in there, picked out an item to decorate (Kam chose a mug, I went for a useless star-shaped thing), and painted to our heart's content. 

When I say this was too much fun, I still think that would be an understatement. I just had a deranged grin fixed on my face as I painted away with the excitement (and artistic ability) of a seven-year-old. But then the bad news; for someone with zero patience, I was disappointed to find out that my star-shaped thing needed to be fired in a kiln and glazed, and so won't be available for collection for another week. I know, I know, I'm sure you're also dying to know what it looks like - but don't you worry, I'll be sure to put up another photo of the final product next week!

Speaking of photos, apparently the colours look completely different once it's finished, so don't go by what you see here, because I will admit that it does look a bit shit. But as Kam told me nicely; "It's not shit, it's character!"

Week 42

Week 42 - Man Vs Food Challenge!!
  
So we saw the Liberty Bell, the Rocky steps, tick, tick, done, whatever, where's the food at? Lauren and I mentioned a long time ago that we should try doing a Man Vs Food challenge when we travelled the US because it would be plain awesome, but it nearly didn't happen for us. Essentially, I chickened out of the meat-based challenges upon arrival at the restaurants (pun very much intended). But then I decided to rethink my outlook. I don't eat that much meat anyway, so what was I thinking? Where I really excel is desserts (eating, not making), so I found the Franklin Fountain in Philadelphia, which in 2009 was host to an episode of Man Vs Food. Result! 

The Franklin Fountain is an amazing old timey ice cream parlour which is so extreme in it's recreation of the era that I think the mental (but brilliant) owner geniunely believes it's 1923. On the show, Adam Richman ate the Mount Vesuvius, so I didn't feel that I really had any choice in the matter and ordered exactly that. Now make no mistake, it doesn't look all that large in the photo, but I can't describe exactly how incredibly dense and rich every component of this dish was, which included vanilla ice cream, hot chocolate fudge sauce, chocolate brownies and whipped cream. 
 

The first two-thirds was pretty straightforward - I just ate it quickly without thinking about it too much which seemed to be a good tactic, but then I hit my wall and it was a definite uphill battle from then until, well, pretty much right now because it's nearly 12 hours later and I still feel fucking terrible! After a series of breaks, including a bathroom break purely so I didn't have to look at the ice cream for a few minutes, I finished the last nauseating bit bringing my completion time to 32 minutes and 21 seconds. If shared between 2 or 3 people, I'm sure it would be an enjoyable experience, but doing it alone was borderline traumatic. Don't let the last photo fool you - I may be smiling on the outside, but I'm pretty sure my organs were failing internally.  

The aftermath has been unpleasant to say the least. For about half an hour after leaving the Franklin Fountain, I could barely lift my head up for some reason and I couldn't handle bright lights. That's right, I had developed most of the symptoms of meningitis. And luckily for me, I had a bumpy two-hour coach journey to endure later in the afternoon too and I really enjoyed trying to not be violently sick everywhere, which by some miracle I wasn't. But I'm still glad I completed the challenge, and I'm definitely counting it as an achievement. What exactly I've achieved, I'm not too sure. Probably just type 2 diabetes and some cellulite. 

Week 41

Week 41 - Go to an Ice Hockey Match

Aside from the film, I know nothing about St Louis so it's a good thing my friend Lauren planned something for us to do here. Like she has for the rest of our travels which has so far consisted of New York, Boston and Chicago, St Louis and Memphis - thanks Lauren! Promise I'll (try to) be helpful for the rest of our trip!

We spent Friday night at an ice hockey match watching the... erm... St Louis... Blues? Versus the someone else? What I don't know about ice hockey... is pretty much everything so it's a good thing we were sat next to a woman who was happy to answer our questions, despite protests from her four-year-old son that she "shouldn't be talking to strangers." But it's a pretty straighforward game to understand, even for me: puck, net, goal.

We'd seen a baseball match a few days earlier which was incredibly enjoyable due to the exciting food options available (an ice cream sundae! In a hat!), but this was really fun for the sport itself. And by sport, I mean violence. And my, was there violence. Not quite blood-on-the-ice violence like I was hoping for, but they do like a good ruckus. Which isn't suprising when it looks like your job is to throw your opponents as hard as you possibly can against the barriers, the impact noises of which could even be heard in our vertiginous seats up in Block 327.

So rather than focus on boring stuff like team names and goals scored, I decided to take a photo of all the scrapping (see right), which happened at 12 minutes, 19m, 31m, 33m, 37m and 38m in - it was great!

Violence aside, there were some other good points. Attendance at sporting events in America seems to be more family and female-oriented than back in the UK, which often seems to be the domain of the laddish wanker community. Also, the warm-up stretches the goalies do on the ice on all-fours before and inbetween the rounds is pretty hilarious and a little bit pornographic.

There were some downsides too though - I'm sure it was completely necessary for the female half-time assistants to wear tiny crop-tops while the male ones wore baggy hoodies, but I'm still trying to figure out the reason why. Plus there was an insane amount of time given over to advertising, including during the actual match which would pause during play to squeeze in another advert. So despite the actual hockey time being just 60 minutes, the entire thing lasted 150 minutes. However, the time sped by in the dramatic atmosphere of the evening and was a great way to spend our very short time in St Louis.

Anyway, stop wasting my time, I need to YouTube some ice hockey goalie warm-up videos...

Week 40

Week 40 - Sofar Sounds

I had a slightly irksome end to last week when I realised that so far on this trip I've been spending a little more money than I should've (or as I like to call it, "supporting the economy")... and then a cat pissed on my pillow. So it was welcomed news from Sofar Sounds who emailed me to let me know that I had a ticket for one of their events in New York! But what the eff is Sofar Sounds you ask? I will tell you. Essentially, it's a free gig in someone's living room. And it is amazing.

You sign up on their website, fill in a form about the type of music you like (I think you're supposed to be all cool and obscure and not admit to having several 5ive songs on your iTunes), then they send you emails about event dates. Which of course you're unlikely to ever get onto because it's becoming insanely popular. But after no luck with the London dates for about 5 months, I managed to get into a New York date with relative ease.

The gig was held in the living room of a group of really nice guys living in Brooklyn who insisted they were not frat boys, despite living in bodega (aka a shop), which they used to stylise as the "Brodega", until they realised it was a bit lame so just shortened it to the obviously much less lame "Dega". But credit to the frat boy Brodega which, having been converted from a shop to a house, made a really great open space for the event.

I saw some incredibly talented local bands over the course of the night with about 50 other people, while leaning against a kitchen counter, which was odd but great. 

The highlights of the evening were two really fun bands called Plume Giant and Superhuman Happiness, and if the frontman of the latter (in the picture) isn't the hairy guy from The Hangover, then I'll eat my cat piss-soaked pillow. He also made me massively regret thinking I was too cool to continue playing the clarinet aged 12, because this guy is clearly much cooler than I could ever be. Overall, a brilliant night, so sign up and wait for them to never offer you a London date! 

Now where's that pillow...