USA
- History, Independent travel, New Orleans, North America, Photography, Travel Blog, USA, Wildlife, World food
New Orleans Is Unique, Y’All
Unique is an adjective regularly used to describe New Orleans, with guide books and websites consistently referring to the city as “unique in the whole of the USA”, a description based largely on the amalgam of cultures which have clashed, fused and evolved into the persona which The Big Easy enjoys today. To us, it feels like this fusion and integration has created a single style: a Nawliner is one particular type of person, regardless of historical cultural background. No barriers, no segregation, joyous inclusivity. You are more from this city than from any one particular background. A big guy is playing Barry White and Bill Withers on his keyboard…
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New Orleans And All That Jazz
“Hey y’all. Y’all havin’ a good time?” Everyone responds. “O’ course y’all havin’ a good time. You is in Nawlins and in Nawlins everyone has a good time. If you ain’t havin’ a good time, den you is in da wrong place” And so the scene is set for our time in New Orleans….. We’ve given ourselves some changes of scene which have bordered on culture shock in the past, but we’re not sure we’ve ever made quite such a leap as this one. One minute we’re in the Amazon rainforest listening to the gentle lapping of the waters of the Rio Negro, the next we’re taking a stroll down…
- Africa, Asia, Independent travel, North America, Photography, South America, Travel Blog, USA, Vietnam
Crossing The Line
We’ll be crossing the equator on Monday night this week as we head out for our first ever visit to South America, arriving in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday morning. Perhaps surprisingly this will be only our second ever foray across the equator, our one previous destination south of the line was our honeymoon trip to Tanzania and Zanzibar back in 2013. Given that Rio will be the furthest point south we have so far visited, our thoughts have turned inevitably to the extremities of our previous adventures. The furthest point north so far is St Petersburg, a beautiful and majestic city which we visited in the depths of its…
- Brazil, Central America, Europe, Greece, Independent travel, North America, Photography, South America, Thailand, Travel Blog, USA, Wildlife
Countdown To Rio
It’s that time again. Never mind counting the days, we’re just arriving at the stage where we’ll be counting the hours until we lock the doors behind us and head to Heathrow to start our next great adventure. The exotic, vibrant city of Rio de Janeiro awaits, one of the world’s greatest carnivals about to begin, romantic sounding locations like Copacabana, Ipanema and Corcovado soon to be on our doorstep. It’s a little over a week until the journey begins. After waking up on New Year’s Day many thousands of miles from home in each of the last two years, this feels like a late start for us and the…
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We Have To Mention The War
“Everybody has heard of the Vietnam War, right?” asks Mickie the tour guide as the minibus heads towards the tunnels. “Well”, he continues, “let me tell you there is no such thing. My country has a history of a thousand years of war. After World War 2 we have the Indochina War, the French War, and then, the one you call the Vietnam War”, he pauses for effect, “we call the American War, not the Vietnam War. I hope before you leave Vietnam, you will understand more about the American War”. Mickie is impassioned, proud of his country, and – like every single Vietnamese – from a family devastated by…
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More Tales From American Bars
In our short stay in the well heeled wine country town of Napa we were to fall in love with Downtown Joe’s, one of many bars around the World which have etched themselves into our travel memories. Our first call there though was ahead of the fun of nighttime and was instead in the bright afternoon sunshine, outdoors rather than in its welcoming interior. As ever, it doesn’t take long to get into conversation, the guy in the Santana T-shirt at the next table was soon in conversation, welcoming us to the state he loves and interested to know who we are, where we come from. Not long into our…
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Tales From American Bars: Barstow CA
We could have guessed that Barstow was going to be an experience. Just approaching the town down the wide, sloping highway gives a sense of being somewhere different, as the sun baked town creeps outwards to fill the shallow basin in the otherwise barren desert. From Barstow it’s many miles to anywhere, its nearest neighbours being a long drive away across the unforgiving desert which stretches to the horizon in every direction. Heat hazes shimmer above the asphalt and the early evening sun, still blistering and intense, creates dazzling reflections in windows and windshields. The broad main highway sprouts giant signs – McDonalds, Starbucks, Home Depot, Chevrolet and no win…
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Looking Back And Planning Forward
Our garden looks strange as we take our first look at it after 12 weeks away. So much has died in the unusually hot and dry summer, but the heavy rain which has now fallen in the last few days has turned all the dead stuff into an untidy grey. Green patches try their best, but there is precious little colour and the whole garden looks a kind of damp monochrome with splashes of green paint. Within minutes of our arrival home, we are alerted to the drama unfolding at Balmoral and, around four hours later, the Queen’s death is confirmed. As the BBC plays the national anthem Michaela and…
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Rocks, Trees & Fault Lines: Back Into California
When you imagine temperatures of over 110F (43C), you picture blistering sunshine and the need to find shade, yet for a good part of our drive across the desert from the Grand Canyon to Joshua Tree, the temperature gauge is up there above that number yet the skies are consistently overcast. It even rains a couple of times. When we step out of the car for a break, we are hit by a wall of heat incompatible with the cloudy skies above. Leaving the Interstate 140, we drive south west through some extraordinarily barren country, miles of dead straight road through open land. Once past the salt flats at Amboy…
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The Grandest Of Canyons
It’s only ten days since we crossed off a bucket list item with the seaplane flight over San Francisco, and now here we are boarding our first ever helicopter with pen metaphorically poised to cross off another. Is there conceivably a better place to do this than here at the Grand Canyon? A brief walk to the Bright Angel trailhead on the day of our arrival has given us our first glimpses of this wonder of the world, so our excitement levels as we receive our safety briefings are absolutely off the scale. There’s a short delay to check the craft – a bird has hit the windshield on its…
