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Fast Food Nation - 08/01/04
Well, as most of you know, I have spent the last three week in
the U.S of A. It has been fun, expensive and about as healthy as
falling off a cliff. I am going to try to make this interesting
and concise but I think it could turn out extended and boring.
I flew (American Airlines - more room through Coach) from
Heathrow over Boston. I used to think of transatlantic flights
as being long and arduous but after some of my flights, bus and
train journeys in the past year and a half, the seven and a half
hours now seems like nothing.
Boston is a really nice city, although its urban sprawl spreads
for miles the downtown area is fairly compact and also pretty
attractive, especially in the snow. I spent the first day
wandering along Commonwealth Avenue ( a residential street
leading from the Common to Back Bay) tree-lined and
snow-covered, through the Common and Public Gardens and saw a
little bit of downtown. I spent a day just wandering around
downtown, not really visiting 'sights' just wandering and in the
afternoon crossed the Charles river and visited the Bunker Hill
monument before taking the walk way out to Harvard University.
Harvard was pretty nice to walk around though the students there
don't look any smarter (their heads are the same size and all).
Sleepy Hollow cemetery,
Concord
On my final day in Massachusetts I took to trips on the MBTA
commuter trains. The first was out to Salem where they used to
hold the witch trials. This was a really nice little town, not
really anything to see or do, especially as the Salem Witch
Museum was closed that day, but quite nice to walk around for a
couple of hours. In the afternoon I went to Concord (not to be
confused with the capital of New Hampshire by the same name) and
again just wandered around. This was a really nice town and had
a few different sights to visit. These included Orchard House
(where Alcott set and wrote 'Little Women'), Old manse
(Nathaniel Hawthornes old house where he wrote 'The Scarlet
Letter') and Sleepy Hollow Cemetery where they are both buried
up on Authors Ridge, along with Thoreau and Ralph Emerson. It
was also really nice just to walk around the Cemetary.
The next day I took the Greyhound bus to New York, just a
four-hour journey. My first impressions of New York weren't the
best as I passed through Port Authority bus station onto 9th
Avenue and took the metro up to the Upper West Side where my
hostel was situated. These impressions changed rapidly as I
spent the afternoon wandering in Central Park down to Trump
tower (passing the rather uninspiring Strawberry Fields
monument) and all the way back up Broadway. The allure of the
Big Apple started to take hold.
Manhattan skyline, New York
On my first full day in New York I walked all over downtown
Manhattan (the financial district), nearly freezing in the
process. After buying a bagel and coffee for a dollar I walked
by the City Hall, Woolworth building, site of the World Trade
Centre (now just a building site complete with
"patriotic" plaques on the fencing - when will they
learn?), along Wall Street and out into Battery Park ("See
the great white scar,Over Battery Park,Then a flare glides
over,But I won't look at that scar"). After Battery Park I
caught the Staten Island ferry that passes close to the Statue
of Liberty and took the obligatory photo (the Staten Island
ferry is free, as opposed to paying ten bucks for the
Liberty/Ellis Island tour!). Returning to Manhattan I warmed up
by browsing in a few shops before plucking up the courage to
walk across the Brooklyn bridge in what I found out on the way
back to be -26 degrees conditions. Which was nice. I finished
off the day walking back uptown, through Chinatown and Little
Italy, a bit of the East Village before catching the subway back
up 103rd street.
The next day was a bit more low-key but I had an excuse - it was
Saturday. I spent the morning in the Village wandering around
Washington Square and Bleeker Street ("Voices leaking
from a sad cafe, Smiling faces try to understand, I saw a shadow
touch a shadow's hand, On Bleeker Street"), one of the
highlights was passing CBGB's, the club that made the Ramones,
Blondie, Television, Talking Heads et al famous. After this
relaxing morning I spent the afternoon finishing my New York
City sight-seeing - spotting Macy's, the Empire State Building
(a bit more gloomy than I thought), the Chrysler building
(smaller than I thought), Grand Central station, New York
library and Times Square, whilst chomping on a warm pretzel.
After a hectic two days I had a more leisurely Sunday, visiting
the Guggenheim museum (the only attraction I paid to enter in
NY) in the morning before taking a stroll around the Upper East
side in the afternoon and back to tacky-Times Square (think of
Leicester Squares Yankee cousin).
The next day I headed down to D.C. This nearly didn't happen as
a massive snow-storm hit the eastern seaboard and no buses could
get further south than Philadelphia, eventually one left and I
spent the journey chatting to a guy called Willard (see the
Apocalypse Now connection) who lives in Mexico and does tests on
fruit and plants. I finally got to D.C and realised Union
station is in a less than salubrious area of the town so quickly
walked along to where I thought a hostel was. It wasn't so I
spent another hour walked out of town to Adams-Morgan, a posh
suburb littered with bars and restaurants.
Watergate hotel, Washington D.C
I spent a day wandering around the Washington D.C. sights,
passing the White House (all the trees in the garden have little
name tags, I guess to help Bush jr learn - "thats right
Dubya, that thar is A Oak tree'), the Vietnam veterans memorial,
Lincoln memorial and then walked along the Mall to Capitol Hill.
The only downside here was that whilst the snow added something
to Boston and NY it seemed to take something away from D.C.
somehow. Anyway I finished the day heading past Watergate Hotel.
The next day I just spent wandering around the mammoth
Smithsonian museum institute, specifically the Air and Space
museum (though unfortunately I couldn't get out to the new annex
at Dulles Airport where they have the B29 and the Space Shuttle)
and the U.S. History museum. One thing I will say, remember my
criticism regarding the propaganda in the Vietnam museums? Well,
its not so different here.
I spent my last day in D.C. just hanging around Adams-Morgan
before my day of travel, which involved a subway to Union
station, a train to Newark International airport, a flight to St
Louis and another flight to Denver. Unfortunately both flights
were delayed (the first due to weather, the second went
technical) and by the time I arrived in Denver and got the bus
downtown I had to leg it to the hostel before the office closed!
Denver is really nice, there is loads of space out here. I spent
a couple of days just wandering around. Its just like Kerouac
described in 'On The Road', the beat guys and bums still hang
out on Colfax, the Greyhound station on Curtis and 19th is
exactly as he wrote it. I also went up to Boulder for a couple
of days, just an hour from Denver but its true opposite. Where
Denver is quite conservative, Boulder is the home to the
hippies, punks and those who want an alternative lifestyle in
Colorado. The Rocky Mountains scenery is also amazing and I took
a walk in the Flat-iron hills, which was awesome but pretty
slippery in my trainers (sorry - sneakers!). I also found out on
the way down that someone had slipped off the trail the week
before. Nice.
Flatirons, Boulder
After Boulder I returned to
Denver before going west to Glenwood Springs for a couple of
days. Using the hot springs was amazing. You sit in a pool at
104 degrees whilst the snow falls down on your head. From the
middle of the pool you cannot see the edge and can just see
ghostly heads bobbing through the steam. As the steam clears you
can see the surrounding mountains. Pretty smart.
Anyway, now I am back in Denver waiting for my flight to Mexico
City tomorrow.I have really enjoyed the past three weeks but I
am itching to get into a country where I can relax a little, put
my watch in the bottom of my bag (I would throw it away but I
forgot to swap my 'nice' watch for my travelling watch before I
left) and just drift along some.
1.David Bowie - New Killer Star
2.Simon and Garfunkel - Bleecker Street
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