Tag Archives: USA

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Asheville

Our next destination was one of our longer drives – east to Asheville NC, via Lexington so we could have some BBQ (worth the side track). Asheville was another of those foody choice destinations. We spoke to someone earlier (someone in the Steel String bar in Corrboro – good beer) and they described Asheville as a place known for food, beer and music – and that’s a pretty good trio.

It kind of reminded us of an inner Melbourne suburb with the hipsters and arty folk with the country feel of say a Daylesford or Katoomba in the blue mountains. It was really a surprise and we enjoyed all our time here, even if we we were out of town on a bit of a hotel strip (and it must have been a hotel strip for a while as there were some classic hotels out there). I did some driving downtown but another we caught Uber – we have found this great in America – fast, cheap, friendly, clean and they know where they are going. Big thumbs up Uber.

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Research Triangle

So, after a change into dry clothes, we headed north/east towards Chapel Hill through rain that at times was so heavy all we could see was rain and hopefully the tail lights of the car in front. But it didn’t last forever and after about 2.5 hours we reached our next destination Carrboro, which neighbours Chapel Hill.

We stayed at another almost new hotel in Carrboro which is kind of a bit of a trendy (??) neighbourhood adjoining Chapel Hill, which is the home of University of North Carolina – the Tarheels. UNC is most known for its basketball – Michael Jordan its most famous basket balling student (I’ll get to that later). This was a two night stay so we could have a look around, try some good food (North Carolina BBQ and anything else) and enjoy.

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Charleston – mmmmmm

Left Savannah and headed north towards Charleston. Things I remember, not too much apart from fireworks – fireworks super stores, oh the memories. Anyways, we had four nights booked in downtown Charleston, right amongst the action. And while there was some good eating in Savannah, Charleston is known for good eating. There used to be a culinary school and when that closed the local chefs got together and created an identity aside from a culinary school identity.

Because the food needs its own blog, this is it – if you want to know more about Charleston (well, not really because that’s what Wikipedia is for) but maybe see some photos and my short thoughts, then that will arrive when I get around to it. We were in Charleston a week ago as I write this so my memory fades quite quickly.

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UGA

Driving south east from Atlanta we headed through Walking Dead territory to our next stop, Athens Georgia. Most of Walking Dead is filmed around Atlanta and as we were taking quite a few back-roads (highways but they were like back-roads) it felt and looked just like Walking Dead territory – the trees, roads, railway lines, dumped cars and walkers (well, not quite the last two). But I think Ms TomTom was concerned as for about the first ten minutes or more leaving Atlanta all we heard from her was “keep left, keep left” – okay, okay.

This was an interesting drive away from the main freeways and through some interesting towns, none more so than one place where we had to slow as the car in front was herding a cow running alongside – not sure if this is how they always take their cow for a walk or whatever, but it was effective. And Athens was a real interesting place, in fact for an overnighter we enjoyed the little time we had. Continue reading →

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Things go better with …

After another complimentary bowl of fruit loops at our hotel in Birmingham, it was time to hit the roads, travelling East to another State – Georgia. Destination – Atlanta, the home of coca-cola. Nothing of note for this drive, apart from the quite heavy traffic and close your eyes and hope you’re in the correct lane driving.

Atlanta is big, Atlanta has roads like a bowl of spilt spag-bog, Atlanta has traffic like Melbourne (doesn’t go anywhere) and it amazes me how they managed to get people to and from their Olympic Games. Luckily our hotel was not far from where we entered and in a pretty good street for restaurants, etc. Right across the road from the famous Fox theatre where a lot of top musicians play or have played. We never got to have a look inside but it was very nice looking and booked out for a wedding the weekend we there. Would no doubt be a good spot for a wedding, pity some of the guests were staying at out hotel – The Hotel Indigo, because they were a pain.

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Nashville in October

An early morning trip from our downtown Dallas Hotel to the airport. Dallas airport is big – you gotta know which terminal to get dropped at. We wanted terminal E, unfortunately an Australian E sounds too much like an American A – or an American A means a few more dollars when all along it was American E. Learning experience, taxis and airports = money. This extra few minutes also added to what we thought would be ample time at the airport to “why don’t you have more people checking bags”. Our we would have time to grab some breakfast at the airport ended up being no time for nothing. The flight out of Dallas was fine with AA, except as we are not their frequent flyers we get whatever seat allocation is left which means I was close to the front and Caroline was in the last row. Not too much of a problem except we again had no time for nothing at our interchange at Charlotte and our terminal being nowhere near the one we landed at. Again a very nice flight this time on American Eagle.

Landed at the very peaceful, laid back, relaxed Nashville and yes, went for the taxi + airport, which was actually very good. We were staying in the Vanderbilt area, which is about half an hour walk from what Nashville is renown for – honky tonk bars and country music. We’d done Nashville before so didn’t need to hit the bars – we could stay up our end of town, which is the university end of town so plenty of bars of its own. Our hotel was the Aloft which is a hipster kind of place and very nice – that nice the maid did not even take our tip. But the barmaid did add a couple of beers to our tab which I’d already paid cash for – she was very apologetic and the jack daniels pour made up for it.

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Goodbye Fort Worth – Hello Austin

About a week back as I type this we left Fort Worth and picked up a rental to take us down the highway to Austin. No surprises there really as we have ventured to Austin previously and really enjoy it. But before we got to Austin we had to drive on by to visit a bucket list – the Salt Lick BBQ. This place always rates highly as far as Texas BBQ goes and this visit we made it a priority (well, it was quite easy with a car as we could cruise on past Austin, visit the Salt Lick for a BBQ feast, then back to Austin.

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Cowboys part 3

Now this was to be the highlight of DFW – Dallas Cowboys v New England Patriots at AT&T Stadium. This is American Football if you don’t know what this is. I know there are many who don’t like the game because it is so stop-start and they don’t understand the rules and they wear too much padding. But me, I reckon it’s a great game that can be won or lost in a blink of the eye (or about the length of the Stockyards parade in my earlier post).

I purchased the tickets quite some time ago through Ticketmaster ticket exchange where ticket holders sell their tickets for a price they set. This stadium is one the best in the world, this game was a highlight game (Patriots are the current champions with some the game’s greatest players and the Cowboys are a bit like Collingwood). Tickets were not cheap so I spent that little bit more and secured some seats in their club level – think Medallion Club at Etihad.

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Cowboys part one

Seems like ages ago but really one … um, three days ago (I think – it’s the dateline, and my damn watch which keeps changing dates just to confuse me). Our first couple of days were spent at the Embassy Suites in downtown Fort Worth. Very nice hotel in a good location with a very good complimentary breakfast a highlight including cook to order omelettes. It was busy with many Patriot fans in town for the football, which is in another post, but also very laid back.

It was also where we signed up with Uber – big thumbs up there. For instance no hassles, clean, polite, came exactly when it said it would, charged exactly what was expected and unlike the taxi from the airport it accepted credit cards without a grumble. Some good eating places here, easy to walk around and Sundance Square is a nice place to sit back and watch the world.

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24 hours in a day – and we saw them all

Day one for USA 2015 and it was a long one. Started well with excellent service from West Taxis, then smooth check-in, through customs – okay not all smooth as they have new baggage scanning systems and we were the guinea pigs. I didn’t mind the system as they allocate you to a spot, only problem the line we were in it was rejecting everyone’s carry-on except for mine 🙂 And then breakfast at the Qantas lounge – lots of free stuff in there. And one young guy was making the most of it packing his bag with stubbies. Lucky there was free stuff as our flight was delayed.

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