travelled on Amtrak, the only way to fly

Amtrak trains are awesome – in both senses. These two-storey sleek silver monsters that ship the thrifty or plane-phobic across the vast distances of the States are rarely seen on the Hollywood screen, and yet to anyone who's spent time on the paltry, single-decker, narrow-seated, overcrowded excuses for trains we put up with in the UK, they are a complete revelation, and (IMO) much preferable as a mode of transport to small-plane domestic flights.

This is why they call it a Superliner.

Riding Amtrak has a lot in common with flying, except that there's plenty more to see and less security to get through. You're haunted throughout the journey by the mournful lowing of the train's horn, which sounds like it's warning ships off rocks in the fog, but is in fact making sure the locals clear the tracks – no level crossings here, just road, rail and where the two meet. Here's what it's like:

been to Graceland

Despite this part of the trip having been marked as “Memphis” on Bex’s super-organised Excel spreadsheet, I can't honestly claim to have been to Memphis itself: we passed through the pretty standard-looking downtown area on the bus, it's true, but where we were really headed was several miles out of town: Elvis Presley's mansion, now a museum to the King, Graceland. Bex was erring on the side of taking a cab until we discovered that the bus right in front of us (the 43, fact fans) stopped there. A 40-minute journey and it cost $1.75/£1.20 (see what I mean about cheap travel)?

This also turned out to be one of the friendliest bus journeys I've been on. As usual, being blatant tourists in a strange place, we were initially slightly afraid of being robbed and killed, but everyone seemed in a good mood, perhaps because it was Friday night, and random strangers were chatting to each other all the way until we got off at Heartbreak Hotel.  

... been to Lynchburg, Tennessee

NB: If anyone's confused by the apparent sudden return to the States, a couple of weeks after I got home, don't be: over the next few days/weeks I will be posting the blogs I wrote but didn't upload on the trip, when Hurricane Isaac got rather t(r)opical and I posted about that instead.

23 August, 2012

So I'm typing this in the back of a hire car driven by a woman I met a couple of hours ago called Cecily, who is on an impromptu holiday around the south. The reason Bex isn't driving the car is that the car hire company at the airport refused to accept her debit card as security for our (prepaid) car. So we got a ride …

Cecily is a feisty fortysomething redhead with something of the younger Susan Sarandon about her – she's down from Rhode Island on an Elvis-themed fly-drive, and works as a speech pathologist. I had visions of  a CSI-style job, analysing the speech patterns of killers' telephone threats – but it turns out she's what we'd call a speech therapist. Still, she and Bex bond over their respective vocations, helping the young with their stutters (Cecily) and their ASBOs (Bex).

Our chauffeur for the day

... been to San Francisco

All set for summer in SF ...

The first thing you notice about San Francisco – especially if you're arriving from simmering post-hurricane NewOrleans – is that it's waaay colder than the rest of the States (Alaska possibly excepted) in August. The breeze and mist from the famous bay are the reason for the sudden drop in temperature: Bex and I arrived in our shorts and t-shirts and were shivering by the time we got to our hostel. It really is like going to a different country, climate-wise, and the wide range of cheap hoodies in the Union Square Walgreen's is testament to the foolish assumption of many tourists that America's always warm in summer.

We're staying at the oldish and quirky Dakota Hostel on the corner of Taylor and Post, in a third-floor room with an amazing view (and soundtrack, especially at night) of some of SF's busiest streets. The room is largish, comfortable and old-fashioned, with a big cupboard and an ensuite containing a claw-foot bath (yes, really!). These advantages are compensated for by a massive old 80s cabinet TV which only has two channels – football and FX. Bex reckons it's a bit like somewhere Bukowski might have stayed: I think it's too nice for that, and am imagining a Boho Breakfast at Tiffany's-era Audrey Hepburn.

... experienced a hurricane (Video links)

DISCLAIMER: This is a record of my personal experiences of Hurricane Isaac; I haven't had access to radio or TV news for a couple of days so cannot say whether it hit other areas of the city or other states much worse, but in our northern part of the French Quarter this is how it was on the ground, as it happened. Generally, the mood here now is relieved and cheerful that it wasn't a lot worse, and the clean-up's already well underway. Go NOLA :)

Tuesday, 28^th August 2012

CLICK HERE for video taken of the storm at 6.30pm on Tuesday

Tuesday was something of a washout: the storm was still playing hard to get (even though it had been predicted to hit around 4pm) and despite the fact that nothing much was going on, weather-wise, everything was still shut. It was dirty weather all day – heavy rain on and off and blustery winds; not the sort you'd want to be out in, admittedly – but the temperature outside was balmy, and the wind and rain were no worse than an English November (and a good deal warmer). Nonetheless, Bex and I were stuck at the hotel and pretty damn fed up. Little did we know how fed up and stuck we were yet to become …

... been to a hurricane party

Monday, 27^th August 2012

The night before Isaac was due to hit, Bex and I were invited for drinks and dinner at the house of my friend Lander (whom I know through my very excellent ex Paul Eros – they studied together at Corpus Christi, when I was going out with Paul). Lander's family seat is in the Garden District, on Prytania Street – a good couple of miles west of our new billet at the Melrose Mansion, which is on the corner of Burgundy and Esplanade.

We weren't sure how easy it would be to get a taxi, but we had a mission to fulfil (we'd asked if we could bring anything to the party and Lander suggested gin) so we decided to walk west to Canal and look out for an off-licence on the way. We found a small general store with a wide range of booze, but no gin (it's not big in the South, which is odd, considering how refreshing a gin & tonic is – not to mention the medicinal properties of quinine).

... been to New Orleans

... and admittedly, the middle of hurricane season wasn't the brightest choice of a time to go. But NOLA was on our way, we wanted to see it, we had a friend there for goodness' sake - what could possibly go wrong?

Enter Hurricane Isaac ...

On Sunday, August 26^th, at around 3.30pm, Bex and I arrived in New Orleans on the Amtrak train from Memphis (see separate blog post for the details of the nine-hour journey and the folk we met on it). The weather was fine; steaming hot, as is usual for the South in August, but not unbearable. There was not a breath of wind – the proverbial calm before the storm, in fact. There was no wi-fi and very little mobile phone reception on the journey, so we were effectively incommunicado for most of the day, having boarded the train just before 7am.

We heard scraps and rumours of a tropical storm heading through the Gulf on the journey but didn't pay much attention to it, concentrating on getting our stuff to the Hotel Royal (a lovely bijou boutique place on Royal Street, in the French Quarter) and planning our visit to the Big Easy. Oh, the swamp tours we would go on, the cemeteries we would visit! We wandered around the quarter taking pictures of all the gorgeous ramshackle Spanish Colonial houses – of which there are many – and doing a bit of souvenir shopping. We made it halfway down Bourbon Street, which is reminiscent of some of the nastier alleys in Soho, with its sex shows and drinking dives, before the smell of stale beer, sick and fermenting garbage drove us back.