OT: Back

Since 12/01/09

To New England, I used to work in Boston, so it wasn't much of a journey.

And the above, clam chowder starts from a low base it's good, but not great IMO.

Exactly heh. Not only can they not find out, if they do, they've violated your human rights and you can sue them :-) I read a news article about this about a week ago, but can I find it now? No. I was on my PC then, d'oh. I shall get it tmrw!

Ah, just wondered as my brother came to New York with us earlier in the year and he's got a few on his licence hehe.

New York was a great place to go for a long weekend, if you can stomach the cost for a short break. Brilliant hotel we stayed in, the Radisson on the corner of Lexington and East 49th, really nice inside, amazing beds (better than the one I have here with has best the mattress the NHS offer hehe!) and the staff were friendly, but not in that fake Florida way (I enjoyed Florida, but I had just spent 9 months in hospital and was only 13 :-) ) but in a like, New Yorker way. Hard to explain but if you just people watch for a bit, they're all really friendly to each other as well.

I wouldn't have wanted to stay much longer as we'd done all the main tourist bits, the statue, Time Square, the Empire State- on top, the view is pretty mental and is something I reckon that should be on everyones 'just once in my life' list. We kind've got extra time as we arrived quite early on the Friday, and left quite late (early evening) on the Monday so we had 2 half days just to mull about and shop etc. The Apple Store on 5th is awesome. We did the more touristy bits on the main days, and even hit the Red Lobster just because I thought we should cos it was famous. The food was alright, nothing special though especially for the inflated price caused by people like me hehe. The place just next-door/part of the hotel was very, very nice but eye-wateringly expensive. Thankfully, I sprung for that as an anonymous person my mum an dad's friends know (well, my friends too but you know what I mean) gave me $300 and said "Have fun and waste it on something excessive" apparently heh, that was the message passed along. Still dunno who that was, we have theories though, I'd really like to be able to thank them without passing a message on!

Anyway, that was the right amount of time I thought. If you were a big shopper, which none of us are really, you could spend 2 weeks there and not get everywhere there were that many shops. My dad said it was probably the most exciting place he'd ever been to, and I know what he means, the hussle and bussle, and the 24hour opening of almost everywhere totally justifies "The city that never sleeps" tag line. Everything just seemed so big, fast and usually neon and if not neon, chrome! That's why I think a long weekend is fine, plan not to rest, do the tourist bits, walk around Time Square at night (it's virtually as light as day light, except in neon colours...), get shattered and come home, thanking god that someone on BA pitied me and gave us a free upgrade (no shit - those flat business class seats are AWESOME) - it was so comfy and I drank so much tea/coke with lime and ice that I must've peed 30 times :-)

I just wish though, I'd got to a few more places before this damn chair . The hassle of taking a chair with you, if you can walk, is huge. If you're a permanent user, the idea just terrifies me. I would've liked to see Niagra Falls and that place, I think in South America is it, where there is just like a huge canyon/random hole in the ground surrounded by green lands and has like loads of seperate, big waterfalls dropping down into it. I wish I could remember the name, but I'd liked to have go there. Also, swim with sharks in the wild, anywhere, don't care as long as they're real and naturally free. Can't win 'em all though :-)

Agreed with that, US customs may be a chore, but they're at least friendly - and we are the foreigners entering, I hear if you're a non-EU person, or even non-UK, the customs stuff and people here are shocking for a country known for politeness (foreigners have old ideas, that are unfortunately getting less accurate by the day :-( ). And those photos that they take, you couldn't identify a mega star with a photo that crap heh!

Let's not even start on UK baggage handlers...

Ah I forgot you knew a lot more about this these days :-) I personally feel the shocking UK baggage handling rep comes solely from the London airports...

Please don;t start the whole chav thing again in here, last time it basically got to we're all chavs, and it's more about how much of a chav we are heh. I don't think you were a frequent visitor then, ICBW though. Everyone was a chav for something, and the most ridiculous things were declared to be 'chav'.

It is a bit of a bollock Dan, that all of us will never find the time to do everything we want/hope to do. I wanted to sail around the world, and put a f*ck of a lot of time into learning how to sail in order to start. Then marriage happened and Mrs F. is terrified of the sea, so I don't even sail as much as I would like. I've started to learn to fly, but I work long hours so I don't have the time to put in the effort that I should. And I doubt that I'll ever see the places in the world that I planned to when I was 18. Or if I do, I'll be too infirm to make much out of it, because I'll be a doddering old fart[1]. I envy the buggers who have the energy, money, time to do the damned things I'd love to do. But when I think about it, time could never ever be long enough to do everything. So perhaps it's better that I, and you, will always have a lsit of things we'll do if we can have the chance. It makes life fun.

[1] OK, more of a doddering old fart.

I don't know of such places in the UK personally, but I've been told many times they exist, Keithgly (?sp?) and Bradford being examples - this was just idle chat though, dunno how true it is. However, there are places in the UK where if you live in certain post codes, and are seen in the post code area next door you may well be shot/stabbed/beaten to death... Well, I say it like that, I've not personally even nearly experienced it (hell, we didn't even have like local school rivalry fights round here heh) and only saw it on the Beeb News, but it didn't seem at all in doubt and they had witness types.

I wasn't 100% sure what you meant here - clam chowder is ok but you're not a huge fan yea?

I wasn't sure if you meant you'd been to Alaska or not heh. Doesn't matter if you haven't of course. I'd wager my nuts that the chowder there is better than the places you mention - and I hadn't even *heard* of them till tonight hehe! The Alaskan stuff was just that good... Maybe that's why you're not a huge fan hehe - you need the Alaskan chowder! (pretty sure there's a s**en joke there...)

Absolutely, and if you genuinely had done everything you wanted, life would be very, veeeery dull and completely without goals.

Just would've been nice to be born a millionaire and then at 16, instead of college, start living the dream hehe. Again though, if everything was doable and easy - it would be boring, half of the excitment is the desire that's being halted for whatever reason.

Precisely. Far too many people have never left their region. I have yet to see all of the UK; there are a few counties that I have not been into.

The process is *no* different the other way around. It took Charlie and I eight years to get her passport. It took two years for the simplified marriage permanent stay visa. All thanks to the British system.

What did you do?

...a simplified perspective. Disappointing.

Can't win either way. Arriving in America, you have to know your onions and have everything in order before you reach the desk. Arriving back into the UK, you're greeted by unfriendly staff who grunt at you.

Likewise, luggage handling in the USA is so much better. They lift your bags for you. They take care of them. In the UK our luggage handlers refuse to carry bags over 32 kg presumably because they can't drop kick them off the aircraft.

And yet you enjoy Europe so much. France, where they still expect people to squat over a hole in the ground. Nice. Italy, where the crash rate is four times that of California, where roundabouts are highly competitive. Britain, where we have an illiterate, couldn't-care-less approach to anything and everything, where the population doesn't know jack squat about national history.

Hmm. Location specific. I've been to a couple of football games with over

20,000 people, from highly competitive teams, with plenty of alcohol on sale; despite this, everything was remarkably good natured. From parking, to the quarters, half time snacks, even leaving. No problems whatsoever. Like the rugby.

Soccer, however, does not share the same benefits.

Yes indeed it is. But to judge an entire country based on one news article... what if you arrived in the UK and had to judge the UK by a few episodes of Big Brother?

LOL! I know Chicago. My favourite route to Los Angeles is Manchester -> Chicago -> Los Angeles. Charlie prefers the direct connection; London -> Los Angeles.

Now, have you tried internal flights in the UK? Then in North America? I know what I prefer...

You have absolutely no clue. Worse, you've put your blinkers on; you don't want to know the truth. Shame.

Grim/grotty though they may be, Keighley and Bradford aren't actually that bad. Ok, there are bits where you would be the only white person in sight, but that's not the same as being a no-go area - possibly unless you've carrying a BNP sandwichboard...