Sunderland, England

Friday lunchtime on the platform at Sunderland station. Waiting for the Grand Central train down to York. In a nearby pushchair, a little boy of no more than two years old is chanting 'f**k off, f**k off, f**k off' at me, while his two fake-tanned teenage girl minders stare vacantly into the distance...

So I go outside to get a sandwich from Milligan's. A scrawny, sunken-eyed junkie is having a big shouting match with his missus outside William Hill. Crowds are gathering to watch. She goes into the station and he follows her. Two police officers show up and the junkie is dragged out in handcuffs via the escalator, screaming and kicking out at them as he goes...

Welcome home. (Sanitarium).

Anyway, that's the end of my travel blog for 2013. The next Odyssey of Edd - an 'Edyssey', if you will - is due in the summer of 2014. I haven't yet decided where I'm going and all suggestions are welcome. In the meantime, thanks for reading.

New York City

New York, New York. It's a bit too crowded and dirty and humid for my tastes, but there's no denying the thrill of it all. This is where my travelling days began, and it's nice to be back, not that my travelling days are over - at least, not permanently.

I had two highly-rated food recommendations for New York, but they both turned out pretty disappointing. Yesterday my pizza from Caprizzi, on 9th Avenue, was cooked too much round the edges and not enough in the middle, with pieces of onion that were far too big - no matter what you're eating, onions should always be chopped finely. Today my kofta kebab from Mamoun's Falafel, in Greenwich Village, was pretty generic and the meat was a little too dry.

At least the cream cheese bagels in the hostel are done properly. And the one culinary triumph I've experienced when out and about in NYC is a tiny Haitian restaurant in the Upper West Side, near the corner of Amsterdam Avenue & 101st, called Krik Krak. That chicken was grilled so perfectly that I think even the chicken itself would have appreciated the technique. Sadly I didn't have my camera with me at the time, so the Edd vs Food series is no more.

On a still more positive note, my journey through the world of American craft beers reached a tremendously satisfying conclusion - and zenith - yesterday with a tour of the Brooklyn Brewery, whose wares I've been enjoying back home for some time now. During the tour and afterwards, I was able to try some of their less well-known beers which aren't generally available in the UK. Hopefully they will be, soon. For my money they're the best American beers you can buy.

(The Brooklyn Brewery logo was designed by the same guy who designed the famous 'I Heart NY' T-shirt. At the time the brewery couldn't afford his fees, so he settled for a share in the company and free beer for life. Now that's foresight.)

Anyway, there's not much else I can tell you about New York that you don't all already know. So perhaps it's best if I sign off with a few summary remarks about my trip as a whole.

This has technically been a round-the-world trip, but really it's better described as a road trip across America with a few stops in Asia and Australia tagged on beforehand. My total journey from Los Angeles to New York comprised 10 train rides, costing $477, and three bus rides, costing $111. That's $588 in total, or £387 at current exchange rates. Not bad value. 

I forgot to mention it at the time, but there was one black gentleman on the Los Angeles-Tucson train who addressed me as 'Heathrow' for the whole of the journey; and I was reminded of a Dickens character (from 'Dombey & Son') called Miss Tox, who labelled a dark-skinned servant as the Native, 'without connecting him with any geographical idea whatever.'

Some miscellania:

HIGHLIGHT OF THE TRIP:
A close call, but really it has to be NUFC 0 SAFC 3, and being able to watch it with friends in Melbourne. (Sorry Libby. This time you didn't come first.)

LOWLIGHT OF THE TRIP:
Accidentally spraying ultra-sting deodorant all over some pretty severe thigh chafing.

BAD GUESSES FROM AMERICANS AT WHERE I'M FROM, BASED ON MY ACCENT:
1. Australia
2. Ireland
3. Germany
4. Wisconsin

WEIRDEST PLACE I'VE HAD A HAIRCUT:
Walmart

'PULP FICTION' BURGER COMPARISON:
Wendy's scores points for serving 'real' fries - you can see the unpeeled potato skin on some of them. But Jack In The Box takes the honours with a nicer bread bun, irresistible curly fries, and the option of two tacos on the side for $0.99.

NARROWLY-AVOIDED PUNS ON TRAVEL DESTINATIONS & FOOTBALL FIXTURES
Torontenham Hotspur
Saints Louis
Stoklahoma

MOST VALUABLE KEBABS:
1. Kebabalicious, Congress & 7th, Austin, TX
2. Soulard Gyro & Deli, 2022 South 12th St, St Louis, MO
3. Bucharest Grill, 2040 Park Ave, Detroit, MI

I've now spent roughly three months of my life in North America. I was a fan on day one and nothing's changed since. But no matter how friendly the people are, or how magnificent the National Parks, or how cheap the Subway footlongs, the fact remains that home is home and this isn't. In short, there's nothing to keep me here other than the cool, crisp, refreshing Brooklyn Lager sitting before me right now; and I can think of more than one place where I can get a pint of that.

Downtown Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge

One World Trade Center, aka the Freedom Tower, nearing completion.

City Hall

A case of aces, done up loose for dealing
A piece of island, cooling in the sea
The whole of time we gain or lose, and power enough to choose:
Brooklyn owes the charmer under me.
(Walter Becker)

Boston, MA

I'm very glad to be in Boston, mainly because my last two blogs have been a bit dull and now I actually have something to write about. In fairness neither Toronto nor Niagara Falls were all that dull in themselves; it's just that I didn't stick around long enough for anything interesting to happen.

I found downtown Toronto a bit too trendy for my taste (weird designer haircuts, vulgar designer clothes, stupid little yappy designer dogs) but I dare say next time I'm there I'll get out and explore properly. Niagara Falls was very nice, although I didn't stay at the Falls themselves - I'm way too cheap for that - I stayed in Buffalo instead. There I sank a few beers with an Australian chap called Owen. He was a cynical, sexist, self-centred lager lout...but apart from that, we had nothing in common, so I didn't stay out too late. The hostel was full of junior high kids on a trip from New York and after midnight some of the young lads had sneaked out of their dorms and back into the common room. Owen and I gave them valuable life advice, mainly quoting Grandpa in the film 'Little Miss Sunshine'.

So anyway...Boston. This was probably my top priority of all the US cities which were new to me on this trip. In the event, though, things got off to a very slow start due to it p*ssing down with rain non-stop throughout the first two of my four full days here. Fortunately things have brightened since, with sunshine and interesting architecture and nice green spaces all over the city. It's been Memorial Day weekend, and naturally the various events and services across Boston have an especial significance this year.

I've visited the university campuses of Harvard (rich, picturesque) and MIT (functional, ugly). I've also walked the whole of the Freedom Trail route, which leads tourists around various historical sites throughout the city centre, commemorating the struggle for independence against the dastardly totalitarianism of the evil British imperialists, etc etc, and the final triumph of American liberty. 'Liberty' in this case applying only to white male landowners, of course. One mustn't get too cynical, however, because it's all fairly tasteful and not too jingoistic.

On Monday night I had the best burrito of my trip to date - and that's really saying something, because I've had a lot of burritos - from El Pelón Taquería, on Peterborough St. El Pelón is Spanish for 'baldy', so I guess it was meant to be! And it's been a while since I provided any new craft beer recommendations, so here are a couple that I drank to wash down my burrito: Rapscallion Honey and Lagunitas IPA. Some American IPAs emphasise hoppy flavours at the expense of everything else, but the Lagunitas was a fine blend of hoppiness, sweetness and drinkability.

On the way to El Pelón, I walked past Fenway Park, with the floodlights on for the Boston Red Sox versus the Philadelphia Phillies. But having tried baseball in Chicago in 2008, and hated it, I had no desire to try it again.

Boston is an expensive place - seek for a city centre hotel room under $200, and ye shall not find - but it's worth it. I think I'd probably have to come back and spend some more time here before I could put Boston up there with Chicago and San Francisco. It might happen yet.

Looking south from the Longfellow Bridge, just east of MIT

The hallowed halls of Harvard

The Old State House.
One of the birthplaces of the Revolution, still standing amidst more recent developments.

Edd vs Food #11
Homemade chipotle meatloaf on country white toast
with applewood smoked bacon, Romaine lettuce, tomatoes, and a chipotle aioli.
Served with garlic mashed potatoes and gravy.
At the Parish Café on Boylston St.

I had a pint here.
Despite what the advert said, not everybody knew my name.

33,000 US flags - one for every Massachusetts serviceman killed in action since the Civil War - on Boston Common.

Boston Common

?!

Niagara Falls

This time I'm giving you all a break from my waffling, as I really don't have anything interesting to report, other than the humble photographic efforts below.

Horseshoe Falls.
The boat is called the 'Maid Of The Mist'
and the blue things on it are tourists in waterproofs.

American Falls, seen from Prospect Point

American Falls / Bridal Veil Falls (L) and Horseshoe Falls (R)
seen from the Canadian end of the border bridge

American Falls / Bridal Veil Falls
seen from the Canadian side of Horseshoe Falls

The view from halfway across the border bridge.
Much nicer than the bridge to Mexico.

Toronto, Canada

I've taken a unilateral decision that my detour into Canada does not affect the integrity of this being a proper USA coast-to-coast road trip.

In the past I've entered countries by land and air, and also by motorboat (Laos) and by bridge (Mexico), but this was my first time arriving somewhere new via a tunnel. After the bus leaves Detroit, straight away you go through Canadian border controls on either side of the tunnel under the Detroit River. 

Some Greyhound buses have wi-fi, but this one didn't, and so I was completely ignorant of the score during the whole of the Sunderland match, for only the second time in my adult life. (The previous occasion was a League Cup game a few years ago which I had forgotten about.) But it's not like I didn't know we were going to get beat.

Unfortunately Toronto has been a bit of a wash-out for me, simply because Chicago and Detroit were so splendid that I prolonged my stays there and so I've ended up with only one full day here. (My flight home is fixed, so something had to give.) The justification for this is that I intend to do a coast-to-coast across the whole of Canada at some point in the future, and I'll explore Toronto properly then.

Anyway, I spent most of my one day here having a very long, leisurely and sun-drenched stroll around the Toronto Islands. See photos below.

Toronto skyline

Another view of the CN Tower. And that passing plane - pure coincidence!
I deny any suggestion that I had nothing better to do than stand waiting for 20 minutes to get this shot.

This is a small sculpture called 'Immigrant Family' at the bottom of Yonge St.
I've seen lots of expensive arty-farty abstract sculptures on my travels,
but I prefer this to all of them.

Detroit, MI

Why Detroit? you may ask. The simple answer is that I met someone in Tucson who told me that Detroit was definitely worth a visit, and I just thought, well, why not. 

Besides which, it was worth coming here ten times over just to visit the Motown Museum. This house, 2648 West Grand Boulevard, was purchased by Berry Gordy Jnr in 1959 and served as Motown's main recording studio until 1972. During those years the output from this house included - among countless others - the Supremes, the Jackson 5, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Gladys Knight & The Pips, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder...I honestly can't imagine that there's any single building in the whole of the Western world that has made a greater total contribution to 20th century popular culture. The list of classic songs recorded here is just overwhelming.

Nowadays the house still contains its original fixtures and fittings, including an ancient telephone switchboard and a 35-cent cigarette machine, and it's open to the public. Guided tours are given by charming young chaps who talk ten to the dozen and sing, rather than speak, the song titles as they come up in the monologue. Of course, the anecdotes are endless. Apparently Motown used to have weekly meetings about which records were worthy of release and which ones weren't. Berry Gordy's litmus test was: if you were down to your last dollar and you had to choose between this record and a hot dog, would you buy the record? Any doubt about the answer, and the record was shelved.

The tour ends in the converted garage known as 'Studio A'. You can trace, within these very walls, the great creative arc that began with songs like 'My Guy' and 'Where Did Our Love Go', and then soared up into still-unsurpassed heights as artists were given unprecedented creative freedom to come up with records like Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On' and Stevie Wonder's great album sequence of the early 70s. There was also a considerable output of spoken-word vinyl, including one record by Martin Luther King Jr which included an early version of his 'I have a dream' speech before it was delivered in Washington DC.

Halfway through the tour, the guide told a story about a particular candy machine right next to where I was standing. Back in the 1960s, the restocking guy was under instructions always to put the Baby Ruth candy bars in the fourth slot from the right, so that Stevie Wonder would know which button to press for his favourite snack when popping out of the studio between takes. At this point I became sentimental, and had to face the wall for a few moments in order to compose myself.

I liked the tour so much that I spent another $10 doing it all again the next day. This time our tour guide was Stevie's 22-year-old godson, Glen.

The common perception of Detroit as a whole is of a formerly thriving industrial powerhouse, reduced to dereliction and decay, and admittedly that's not entirely untrue. On the incoming Amtrak, and during my wanderings on foot, I saw any number of houses and often whole blocks which were abandoned and boarded up. Not just houses, but also great commercial buildings and factories lie empty; and huge tufts of weeds grow unchecked between the paving stones of the suburban sidewalks. 

But it's not as scary as people sometimes make out. Just because you're the only white person on the block, doesn't mean you're in danger. And the phrase 'no-go area' is merely a self-fulfilling prophecy if used carelessly. My hostel is in a black neighbourhood - it's near the intersection of Rosa Parks Boulevard and Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard, just to emphasise the point - but I've walked everywhere without a sniff of a problem. 

Moreover, there is a real community spirit in Detroit that you don't often find in other large cities, in America or elsewhere. I suppose you could call it unity in adversity. There are hardly any tourists around but the locals you meet are endlessly helpful. In particular I'm indebted to Keith, from the Department of Public Works, who not only gave me directions but also dashed indoors to get me bespoke colour printed maps for various restaurants, markets and shops. I'm also indebted to the Coach Insignia bar, on the 72nd floor of the General Motors Renaissance Center, for serving $5 cocktails between 5pm and 7pm on a Thursday. The final special mention goes to Gary the singing taxi driver and his enchanting falsetto.

My hostel is of fairly recent date and its stated purpose is to attract people from all around the world to Detroit, as part of a wider programme of fostering civic pride and community engagement. I'm quite chuffed to have played my own tiny little part in that.

The Motown Museum.
It doesn't look like all that much from the outside,
but then Berry Gordy Jr didn't have a whole lot of money back in 1959.

The home of the Detroit Tigers baseball team.
These sculptures are way more impressive than the 'Black Cat' cardboard cut-out things
which we have at the Stadium Of Narrowly Avoided Relegation.

The GM Renaissance Center

The 'Gateway to Freedom' sculpture on the Riverwalk.
That's Canada just visible at the right hand side of the picture, to the south (yes, south)

Edd vs Food #9
Shawarma with 'homestyle vegetables' at the Bucharest Grill.
Shawarma is basically Arabic for kebab, which is a Turkish word.
Gyro (as per what I had in St Louis) is the same thing in Greek.

Edd vs Food #10
Chicken, beef brisket and pulled pork (ooer) at Slow's BBQ, 2138 Michigan Avenue, Detroit.
Waffle fries and coleslaw and various sauces on the side.

Chicago, IL (continued)

It's amazing, the amount of female attention one ginger-haired Englishman can get just by turning up in the USA. Sadly I'm not Prince Harry and so the only attention I'm getting is from the beggars on the sidewalk. 

In my last blog I said that Chicago was my 2nd favourite city in the US after San Francisco. After a few days in Chicago, I think that's still true, but San Fran really needs to not get too complacent. Chicago is just marvellous in every way and I recommend it to everyone.

Having enjoyed my trip to the theatre (see previous blog), I've continued in the cultural vein. On Friday night there was a hostel outing to a jazz club called the Green Mill, which opened in 1907 and has a colourful history to say the least. Indeed I ended up sitting in what used to be Al Capone's favourite booth, facing away from the stage so that you can see if anyone comes in the front door and tries to shoot you. The music was really marvellous: song-based jazz, rather than pointless instrumental showing-off, from a masterful four-piece of singer/piano, guitar, upright bass and drums. The singer/pianist was called Karrin Allyson and she has four Grammy nominations to her name.

On Sunday night I went to a blues club, Buddy Guy's Legends, and indeed the man himself was holding court at the bar. He didn't play, though. I wish he had, because the chap on stage was only about as good a guitarist as I am, and that really isn't saying much. He had the right voice for the blues - he sounded like the Honey Monster doing a Louis Armstrong impression. But musically I got more out of watching the drummer.

Earlier on Sunday, at the Chicago Cultural Centre, I saw a display of Japanese culture: taiko drumming and kabuki theatre. The kabuki was interesting, if strangely sinister, but I can't say that the taiko drumming did much for me. It was monotonous, in the literal sense of the word, and on the whole it struck me as rather like the Japanese equivalent of morris dancing: interesting to historians and anthropologists, and perhaps an absorbing pastime for those taking part, but fairly dull as a spectacle and more or less empty as a work of art. That, of course, is only my personal opinion.

Apart from all this cultural stuff, I've done plenty of eating and drinking and general wandering around as well. Honourable food mentions, not quite photogenic enough to make it into Edd vs Food, go to Hot Doug's (guess what they sell?) and Flaco's Tacos and the Polo Café. 

The crowd at the hostel is different to last time, chiefly in that there aren't any English gap year kids - there's a better range of ages and nationalities. In fact I don't think I've met any English gap year kids at all on this trip. Presumably that's a result of tuition fees going up? From my own narrow personal perspective, as someone who pays lots of tax and didn't go to university and has been annoyed by posh English gap year kids all over the globe, I'm inclined to say, Hallelujah.

Downtown Chicago from about 3 miles to the south

Edd vs Food #7
The Chivito: steak, ham, bacon, fried egg, mozzarella, lettuce, tomato, onion, citrus mayo.
Not your average toasted sandwich. From Cafecito, in the same building as the hostel :-)

Big shiny sculpture thing, symbolising...something.
Compelling us to challenge our preconceptions about...something else.

Inside the hostel: the 'Peace Pole'.
I'm not sure if it does anything for global solidarity,
but it certainly gives me some good ideas for chat-up lines.

  

Edd vs Food #8
Random pile of Greek muck at the Greek Islands restaurant, on Halsted St.
This was the third course of four.

Chicago, IL

This is a lot more like it. Chicago is my personal second favourite US city, after San Francisco. It's like someone took New York, cleaned it up, put most of the criminals in jail, and generally got rid of about 10 million surplus people. The sun shines brightly but it's still cool enough to walk or cycle around all day, with fresh breezes coming in over Lake Michigan, and of course the occasional heavy downpour to remind me of home.

Also this place holds happy personal memories for me. The first time I went travelling, in May 2008, my initial destinations were New York and Washington DC: the New York hostel was full of dodgy tramps, and the DC hostel was full of preppy political interns, and in neither case was there anything happening socially. So by the end of my first week I was feeling a bit isolated; and perhaps not entirely sure, with at least three months still to go, that this travelling lark was really my cup of tea. But then I got to the HI Hostel in Chicago, and suddenly found myself out on the drink with interesting people from all over the world, and I've never looked back since. Now I'm back at the very same hostel, almost exactly five years later.

My time here got off to a great start with a trip to the theatre to see a musical called The Book of Mormon. Most of you will have heard of it, but click the link if you haven't. As you might expect from the creators of 'South Park', it's not for the faint-hearted or the easily-offended. It gets going early on with a song called 'F*** You, God' and then it really starts to cut loose. Not so much 'close to the bone' as 'swimming in the bone marrow'. Overall it's a masterpiece from beginning to end, pant-wettingly funny, and I'd go so far as to say that it's funnier than 'Spamalot', which I saw in Glasgow a few years ago. My individual MVP prize goes to an actor called Ben Platt (he played Benji in the recent movie 'Pitch Perfect', if anyone's seen that): if he's not winning Oscars and earning $20m a picture within the next year, then there is no justice in the world.

The show is also an good example of something we Brits often forget: nobody satirises the Americans, or the various forms of American Christianity, with even half the wit and insight of Americans themselves. For all the crassness and ignorance you occasionally encounter in the USA - and having just taken the Greyhound through the Midwest, I'm not under any illusions about that - there is, at least in educated urban circles and throughout the counterculture, a genuine collective self-awareness next to which the cheap anti-American sarcasm of your average Guardian columnist or BBC rent-a-comedian looks really quite lame.

Enough ranting. For once I'm going to issue a spoiler about the next blog: it'll be from Chicago. I'm not going anywhere for a while. There's lots of food and beer I need to check out and then tell you all about. I do all this for my audience really, you know.

Just remember in the meantime: Salt Lake City isn't a place. It's an idea.

Downtown Chicago, from Grant Park.

Looking west up the Chicago River, from North Lake Shore Drive

Navy Pier. A reprise of a photo from my original 2008 blog.

5 years later on and I can STILL get a meatball footlong for $5!
Admittedly that's now £3.24, whereas it was more like £2.54 back then.
But one mustn't grumble.

Edd vs Food #6
A restaurant called Yolk. As you might expect, they specialise in omelettes, crepes, etc...
This is the Big Texas Fajita Omelette, containing fried chicken,
with cheese and guacamole and sour cream and diced red potatoes and salsa dip. 

Something to brighten up even the rainiest of days

St Louis, MO

(Montana? Minnesota? Missouri. I had to look it up.)

Every single page in this blog is intended to describe either an interesting place I've visited, or an interesting thing that's happened to me, or both. Therefore my journey from Austin to St Louis - Amtrak ride, lunch in Fort Worth, another Amtrak ride, motel in Oklahoma City, Greyhound ride, quick stop in Tulsa, Greyhound ride, motel in Springfield, and another Greyhound ride - will be passed over entirely without comment, other than to say that I shan't be returning to any of those places.

(I was tempted to say a word about Oklahoma City's most famous contemporary resident, but...ain't nobody got time for that!)

St Louis is definitely not on the standard backpacker itinerary. There's only one hostel, and I'm in it. I have a dilapidated 14-bed dorm to myself; the toilet has a 'Knock Before Entering' sign in place of a lock; the bookshelf includes 'Europe On $10 A Day 1978/79'; and when I asked for the wi-fi password I was given the name of a bar across the street, whose wireless network is unsecured and can be accessed near the windows on that side of the hostel. This area, called Soulard, is a shabby-genteel collection of churches and tall red-brick houses which was probably once quite desirable but now seems to be in slow decline, under the irresistible pressure of what we might delicately describe as 'demographic changes'.

The St Louis Arch, for which see pictures below, is the tallest man-made monument (as opposed to building) in the world. I didn't know that until I got here, nor did I know that you can actually go up to the top inside it. The view from the top is probably not for vertigo sufferers, whereas the journey to the top is most definitely not for claustrophobes: five people sit hunched in an enclosed spherical capsule no more than five feet in diameter, and I estimate that at least 10-15% of Americans would not be able to get through the door at all. No doubt the staff have specific guidelines of tact and discretion for dealing with such misfortunes, hopefully involving quiet words at the ticket-buying stage rather than post-humiliation refunds.

After Texas it might perhaps have been expected that I would continue east to New Orleans, and on through the Deep South. I'm definitely going there one day, but I don't really have enough time left to do it properly in this trip, and anyway I'm already getting a bit worn down by heat and humidity. Hence the detour up north through the Midwest, to get a different perspective on the Mississippi river. I've had some more marvellous food (see below) and also I have a smattering of new beer recommendations: Shock Top Belgian White, Odell 5 Barrel Pale Ale, Bell's Oberon, Ska Modus Hoperandi and Civil Life Brown Ale. More to follow next time, as you might expect.

The St Louis Arch, seen from the north west

Looking out west over St Louis, from the top of the Arch.
That's the St Louis Cardinals baseball stadium to the left of the picture.

The hostel.
I don't think that drinks machine has worked since Nixon.

How idiots park (note yellow disabled markings)

Edd vs Food #3
French toast, with soft cheese and syrup, plus eggs & bacon and coffee.
The breakfast of champions. At the Cracker Barrel Café in Springfield, Missouri.

Edd vs Food #4
From the Over/Under Sports Bar on Washington & 9th:
the best burger I've ever had, complete with waffle fries.
The world definitely needs more waffle fries.

Edd vs Food #5
Kebab from the Soulard Gyro & Deli, 2022 South 12th St, St Louis.
Not quite in the same league as Kebabalicious in Austin,
but still good enough for me to have one for breakfast two days in a row.
Yes, kebabs for breakfast. I am what I am.

Austin, TX

It seems my presence is being missed back home (click here for evidence).

The railroad I've been riding since Los Angeles is called the Sunset Limited. It goes all the way to New Orleans, taking about 48 hours to do so, but of course I've been hopping on and off at shorter intervals. New Orleans is hosting the Jazz Fest and the trains are full of ancient black musicians making the trip east, often providing vocal accompaniment to the (instrumental) piped muzak in the lounge car, and occasionally even offering up a few close harmonies a cappella. Sometimes you don't mind it when the train goes slowly.

I've now taken a little detour away from the Sunset Limited, with the Texas Eagle train taking me up to Austin. It's the fourth most populous city in Texas, after Dallas and San Antonio and Houston, but it's the state capital and undoubtedly it's the cultural capital too. Austin was always one of my main priorities for this trip and has certainly lived up to expectations. It's friendly, sunny, full of open green spaces; the traffic is light, the food is great, and the chief leisure pastime for the local womenfolk seems to be jogging round the lake wearing next to nothing. (Before the Sexism Police get on my case, let me assure you there's even more male flesh on display.)

My hostel has a piano with all of its keys functioning and in tune, which is rare indeed. After listening to a couple of my fellow guests take turns to bash out 'Chopsticks', or whatever, I felt obliged to raise the tone a bit with a few Bach preludes and the slow movement from the 'Moonlight' sonata. As you do.

On the whole Texas is a place where all of your preconceptions and prejudices can be confirmed or confounded with equal ease, depending on where you look. Yes, everyone drives pointlessly big pick-up trucks (although if the wife needs a little runabout then they may have a Range Rover too); but on the other hand there are feminist bookshops and plenty of vegetarian restaurants. Also, I've been in this state well over a week, and I haven't seen a single firearm other than in a police holster.

My main tip to anyone visiting in the future is Kebabalicious, a little stall on the corner of Congress and 7th, serving utterly divine Turkish kebabs. The queue was halfway down the street, and deservedly so.

Incidentally, the squirrels here are very tame. I saw one actually being fed by hand, but I didn't quite manage to get it on camera.

Austin, from the south side of the river

The Texas State Capitol.
As any Texan will tell you, it's actually taller than the federal version in Washington DC. 

Another view of the Capitol, from a few blocks down Congress Avenue.
Kebabalicious is on the right, a few blocks further up.

6th Street, where it all happens.
A few too many souvenir shops, but the interesting stuff is still there too.

Have I left the gas on...?

Big Bend National Park, TX

Big Bend is named after the, er, big bend in the Rio Grande river separating southern Texas from northern Mexico. Don't worry if you've never heard of it, because I hadn't either until I started planning this trip. But I'm definitely a fan now. I have searched, in vain, for souvenir T-shirts declaring 'I'm a Big Bender'.

In order to visit the park I got a train from El Paso, Texas (pop. 800,000) to Alpine, Texas (pop. 5,786). Alpine is what they used to call a 'one-horse town', and on the night I arrived it was a zero-taxi town, which meant I had to walk a couple of miles from the station to my motel, complete with backpack. It was a proper old-school American motel like you see in the movies, basically a small car park with a single level of adjoining lodges all around it.

Alpine is a nice place, but I can't help observing that I have entered the Realm of the Banjo. In one shop I actually overheard someone referring to an absent friend as 'Cleetus'...

I did at least manage to hire a car, my third in the USA (this one's a Chevy Cobalt, a bit smaller than the Impala) and spend a day driving all the way round the park, followed by a day doing a couple of moderate hikes. I wanted to do one big hike, but my feet hadn't quite recovered from Guadalupe and then the walk from the station to the motel only made my blisters even worse.

Also I got quite badly chapped lips from the sun and the wind while out hiking. The swelling made it look like I was wearing lipstick. By the time I'd finished a very hot plate of tacos, I was beginning to resemble Pete Burns.

Nice tacos though (see picture), and nice locally-brewed beer to wash them down. This was the High Sierra Bar and Grill, part of the same establishment as the El Dorado motel, in Study Butte-Terlingua (pop. 267), where I spent my second night. Shortly after I finished eating there was a fight in the bar, and I couldn't figure out why the barman was just standing there until I realised that the chief aggressor in the fight was the guy who actually owned the place. Fortunately no guns were pulled.

Later on I went upstairs onto the roof terrace, and that was a bit of a special moment: the mountain skylines clearly visible by moonlight alone, the bats flitting around the neon signs, unspoilt nature stretching to the horizon in every direction, and no sound but the chirping of the cicadas. Really, it's a shame to be travelling by myself at times like that. But seeing it alone is better than never seeing it at all.

Santa Elena Canyon

View from the top of the Lost Mine Trail

Tuff Canyon.
It's rock.

Edd vs Food, #2.
Tacos de alhambre at the High Sierra Bar and Grill.

When I woke up in my Alpine motel, I discovered that I hadn't been sleeping alone.
Credit-card size room key included for size comparison.