This blog should really be called "Edd's Holidays". This isn't travelling, it's tourism. In the past I have tried what you might call 'proper travelling': being the only white guy on the bus, checking into hotels where the receptionists don't speak English, ordering food by doing chicken impressions with my arms, etc etc. (In Seattle last month I met a young chap who had just visited North Korea, which is a pretty unbeatable card when it comes to Travellers' Top Trumps). But those days are behind me now. Here I'm just cruising from city to city, meeting people, having fun, taking photos, eating food, drinking beer. In the USA this is all very easy to do.
Having said that, doing it for months at a time entails certain sacrifices, chief among which is staying in hostels rather than hotels. In San Francisco last week I stayed at the Green Tortoise hostel - a big fat dose of nostalgia, because that's where I stayed in 2008 - and they give out unlimited eggs & bagels at breakfast, but the rooms are small and stuffy and in my 8-bunk co-ed dorm room there was one guy bringing my nights to life by hoovering up the air noisily through his nose and expelling it even more noisily elsewhere (I don't mean his mouth). Bathrooms are similarly shared with strangers, and privacy is but a dream. Once, in Chicago in 2008, I was in a bottom bunk where the top bunk contained two people getting jiggy with it; and in New Orleans last year I'm fairly sure I awoke to a vaguely similar situation, but with one guy in the top bunk playing the dialogue as a monologue. Too much information? Is anybody out there still jealous of me?
Continuing in the vein of perhaps excessive honesty, I must confess that most of the people I've mixed with so far have been English. Lots of limey backpackers are doing the same West Coast itinerary as me. It's interesting to meet people from different cultures, but at the same time it's much easier to get on with people from the home countries, in which I include not just Britain and Ireland but also Australia and New Zealand. (Much as I like Americans, somehow it always takes time to get on the same wavelength as them.) Conversations and nights out go much more smoothly when you don't need to stop and explain the precise import of key English phrases such as 'Let's all go out on the lash', 'Don't fancy yours much' and 'I'd give it ten minutes if I were you'.
San Diego is spacious, sleepy, clean, pretty, and intensely hot. I like it hugely but I just can't cope with the climate. I'm sweating like a whore in church and things keep sticking to me as a result. But I can give an honourable mention to the Belching Beaver brewery, in particular their Peanut Butter Milk Stout and Me So Honey (a honey wheat ale). More to follow soon.
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| Tuna Harbor Park, San Diego |
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| San Diego Chargers |
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| San Diego harbour from further north |
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| The USS Midway was built shortly after WW2 and was the largest ship in the world until 1955. It saw active service from Vietnam to the first Gulf War. It's now moored permanently at San Diego as a floating museum. |
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| La Jolla beach |
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| Flight deck on the USS Midway |
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| Edd vs Food #24 Double bacon & cheese burger at Hodad's, 945 Broadway, San Diego. Not all that great, to be honest, but it certainly looks the part, The photo doesn't quite capture the sheer size of it. Those wedges are from a pretty big potato. Knife & fork were not provided and so things got messy. |
