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Blue Moon is technically no longer a craft beer, they are now owned by MillerCoors. Sam Adams is the largest "craft" brewer in the country.
Yes, "sunny side up" is what is said to order fried eggs that are not turned over and are served with the yolk unbroken and sitting on top. If you want it turned and still runny, you order "over easy". If you don't want it runny, you order "over medium" or "over hard". You can also specify to "break the yolk" if you prefer it that way.
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Excellent.
I'm loving the report, witty and informative. I also don't feel 'over easy' when ordering the fried eggs!
Dave.
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Memoories.
I too am loving your report. So many memories coming back. In Boston you stayed just up from where my son lives. A very nice (and expensive) area.
Many years ago I stood at the top of the Empire State Building, and like you, had the feeling I had seen it all before. Still a great experience to have seen it for yourself.
Keep it coming.
Lifey
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Thanks guys, it's bringing back memories for me too, and I've only been back 3 weeks!
Day 5 - Brooklyn
Today was supposed to be spent in Brooklyn and heading down to Coney Island, but we ran out of time in Manhattan so decided to go back, mainly to cycle around Central Park, then walk across Brooklyn Bridge. We started out by having bagels from a place in Brooklyn; mine had just about everything I had the day before, but in a bagel, and it was good! I wanted to see the Chrysler Building, but it was hard to get a clear view of it, and when we got near to it, it started to look like every other building. We also went into Grand Central Station, which puts Glasgow Central Station to shame. We wanted to go to the New York Public Library, but as it was the 3rd July it was closed. Apparently there's some sort of holiday on the 4th, but there wasn't really much publicity about it.
We headed over to Central Park and rented a tandem bike for a few hours; it took a bit of getting used to, but wasn't too bad in the end. Rach insisted she was pedalling as hard as me, but I remain sceptical. Central park is a strange place; it's a lovely big park that is completely surrounded by huge buildings, but the trees obscured the view of these most of the time, so it was easy to forget we were still in New York. There's a cycle path all around the park which even has bike traffic lights that everyone seemed to ignore, but it was a great way of seeing the whole park. Every few minutes we'd see something we recognised (mostly from Home Alone 2), and we'd stop and take a break, or walk around for a while every so often. Overall it was fairly cheap and definitely worth doing. It also helped burn off the pizza we had for lunch... maybe the first couple of bites anyway, the pizzas have a lot of cheese!
http://i.imgur.com/KMBNMlEm.jpg http://i.imgur.com/aCzbQ7km.jpg
After the cycling we got the subway down to the Brooklyn Bridge and walked across. It was quite long, but as we reached around half way and turned around we got a great sight of Manhattan. It was very busy, and there were a lot of inconsiderate people holding everyone up because they wanted to get the perfect picture that involved taking up the whole path. Once we got to the end we walked along to Brooklyn Bridge Park, which also had some great views. Rach was pretty tired so I took some photos and headed back to the apartment. I went back to Brooklyn Bridge Park later that evening to get some more pictures, and I think I managed to get some of the best photos I've ever taken.
http://i.imgur.com/6RYOloC.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/9d4ZHcC.jpg
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Manhattan memories.
Beautiful photos. I recall well - back in 2001 - taking the Staten Island Ferry at 11pm just to see the Lady and the Brooklyn bridge all lit up. Bonus was seeing all of Manhattan lit up, three days before the World Trade Centre was taken down.
You get an unforgettable view of the Chrysler Buillding from the top of the Empire State Building.
[BTW - I learned very quickly to tell waiters that I like my bacon soft.]
Lifey
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Day 6
Today's plan was to get a train to BWI airport, pick up a convertible Mustang, and drive to Pittsburgh to see the 4th July fireworks. Getting to Penn Station was easy enough, and the train journey wasn't bad. We'd booked through USRentacar.co.uk so just had to present the voucher at the Dollar desk; it meant that it was easy to say no to all the extras they try and sell because we'd already paid for everything. The guy at the desk said it looks like we'd got a really good deal so I was happy enough. We went down to pick up the car to discover that there were no convertibles left. They said that there were two due in, but as it was the holiday weekend people tend to just keep the cars longer than they're supposed to. This was a big blow as we were really set on getting a convertible Mustang.
We eventually settled for a Mercedes C250 (this was petrol, unlike the Diesel UK version). The guy said that he'd be very happy with that as they don't get many in, but I made sure that we could swap it further down the line. They were pretty good about it because they actually got the car from Hertz (their sister company) because they didn't have anything that good.
http://i.imgur.com/vtzcGtVl.jpg
This was my first time driving an automatic, driving on the wrong side of the road, and driving something with that much power; so it took a bit of getting used to. All my instincts were telling me to drive on the left, and although I ignored them for the most part, if there was nobody around on small streets, I sometimes found myself turning corners to the left. There was a fair bit of turbo lag, but it was still pretty quick. We stopped off at a Chick-Fil-A which I thought was called Chick filla, but you apparently pronounce the A separately.
After lunch we had our first experience of the E-Z pass toll road. The salesman at the rental place tried to sell us an unlimited one for $99 which was supposed to be an amazing offer, so obviously he tried to scare us into getting one, saying there's toll roads everywhere and we'll probably spend all of our holiday money paying for them. So when we got to the end of the toll I was expecting to have to max out the credit card; but in reality it was $13, and that was travelling quite a long distance on it.
We eventually made it to Pittsburgh, and to our third AirBnB booking. It was a pretty large apartment with its own lounge, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. We unpacked our things, then headed into downtown Pittsburgh. We got a bus, as it seems like the only real public transport around Pittsburgh. The impression I got from TV is that everyone on the bus is either an alcoholic, homeless, or both; but this turned out not to be the case, which was nice. Downtown was very busy, so we worked our way through the crowd to Point State Park, as we heard that's where the main fireworks display is. Pittsburgh doesn't allow the private sale of fireworks, so it was a lot quieter than the 5th November here where there's fireworks going off all over the place all night. We had funnel cake and lemonade whilst waiting for the fireworks to start; both were huge!
I was not prepared for the over the top patriotism that everyone was displaying. People standing up and singing about how much they love America; it was too dark to see, but I imagine they all had a tear in their eye. I also found out how much Americans like saying WOOOO loudly. I found it all very entertaining!
After waiting for quite a while, we eventually got the bus back to the apartment. The last week had been pretty hectic so we intended to take things a bit easier whilst we were here.
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Baseball and mountains
Day 7
Today's plan is to go and see the baseball, and just generally take it easy. We've never actually watched baseball before, or really had much interest in it, but seeing as it seems quite popular in the US we thought we'd give it a go. We started by trying to blend in with the fans. This backfired slightly, as people were talking to us about how the Pirates were getting on, and we had no idea what they were talking about.
http://i.imgur.com/6YY32TDl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/nFgErY6l.jpg
The baseball was a mixed bag. The stadium has a great view, and it was very busy so was a good atmosphere. We had seats fairly near the back but still got a good view of what was going on, even if we didn't know what that was. The downside was the price of everything; the hot dogs and nachos were mediocre and very expensive, but the beers were huge. After watching for a while we eventually got the hang of what was going on, and even saw a home run. There was lots of other weird stuff going on, like the taco race, and the parrot firing tshirts into the crowd, so on the whole we enjoyed the experience.
Afterwards we got the bus back to the apartment and decided to try a couple of bars before heading back. The first was a random dive bar which I can't remember the name of. It was a bizarre place to an outsider; smoky and very dark with neon signs everywhere, and very cheap beer. I thought it was great; there seems to be a lot of places try to recreate the same kind of thing, but with a bit more upmarket clientèle, so it was nice to finally go to one that actually felt genuine. We then headed to The Church Brew Works which was a large church converted into a brewery. It was very busy so we sat at the bar which gave me a chance to look at all the beers and ask a bit about them. And they were very nice! After a few beers, Rach's sobriety became very apparent, so we went home, ordered a Chinese, and watched a bit of TV; we hadn't had time to watch much so far so it was a nice novelty seeing all the strange medical adverts listing all the crazy side affects, and endless reruns of Family Feud.
Day 8
We started off the day with bit of shopping round the outlet malls, and a strange half abandoned mall.
http://i.imgur.com/MuTFzaEl.jpg
After buying lots of stuff, we took a ride on the Duquesne Incline; an old tram that goes up the side of Mount Washington. It was a lovely old tram with some amazing views at the top.
http://i.imgur.com/p55JaJ4m.jpg http://i.imgur.com/o8SqWsnm.jpg
The weather turned nasty with extremely heavy rain, so we decided to call it a day, as we had a long journey the next day so wanted to make sure we were well rested.
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Our first long trip
Day 9
We'd taken it easy in Pittsburgh to recover from the hectic schedule so far, but now it was time to get back on the road. We planned to make it to Gatlinburg at the Great Smoky Mountains by the end of the day, but wanted to try and stop at a few places on the way. It was a 500 mile journey so we left pretty early. The first stop was the Coal Country Miniature Golf, a quirky miniature golf course made from old mining equipment, with the giant spinning miner who is visible from the interstate as the final obstacle. It fun and quite interesting, as all of the equipment had a plaque describing what it was used for. It was very hot, so we were glad of the air conditioning in the car once we left.
http://i.imgur.com/PG2gqrim.jpg http://i.imgur.com/ytaZWgAm.jpg
We carried on the journey, heading off the Interstate where possible, passing through small towns. We eventually made it to our next stop, The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia.
http://i.imgur.com/qNsqzSLl.jpg
This Lunatic Asylum was open from the late 1800's until the late 1900's, and went through many different transformations. It's an amazing building in varying conditions, from fully restored, to completely decayed. We had a tour from a very knowledgeable tour guide who took us around all of the different parts of the asylum.
http://i.imgur.com/JV1YDzCm.jpg http://i.imgur.com/ycsiiL3m.jpg
The next stop was Summersville Lake, where we had planned to rent a canoe, but we had fallen behind schedule. The drive through West Virginia was nice with miles and miles of forest, although it did become a bit repetitive at times. We eventually arrived at Summersville lake and managed to find somewhere to rent a canoe, only to find that the place was just closing. I managed to find a beach at one point and so went for a quick swim before a huge storm passed by, and I thought we should probably move on.
http://i.imgur.com/7bCict8m.jpg http://i.imgur.com/J1GCDpGm.jpg
After a few more hours of driving, with a quick stop to see a giant pencil, we eventually made it to Gatlinburg and settled down ready for some hiking.
http://i.imgur.com/R0fmNZhl.jpg
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Hi Luke,
Gotta love that pencil!
This is a great Trip Report and I'm greatly enjoying reading it. I hope that you find the time and energy to finish it - I'm sure it would interest and benefit others.
I'll hopefully be starting my own report quite soon (from a trip way back in May). It's hard with work, family and what-have-you, but one of the greatest features of this site are, apart from the great advise, the Reports, so I will try to find the time to do it.
Would love to read more.
Cheers
Subman
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Thanks Subman, yeah it's difficult finding the time, but I'm determined to keep going all the way up to day 31.
Day 10
This was the first time we saw Gatlinburg in the light, and it was an interesting place! Definitely set up for tourists, with lots of interesting attractions and restaurants everywhere. We found a nice little place that was half "grocery store", half restaurant to have breakfast. The people there were friendly and seemed genuinely interested in where we were from and how we were finding the whole experience.
After breakfast we headed into the Great Smoky Mountains, which as far as I know is the only free NP in the US. We started at the visitor centre to get some info about where to go and what to do. We started out on a trail that leads you to the only waterfall that you can walk behind. It was a fairly easy climb, where we saw plenty of wildlife (sadly no bears) and finally made it to the falls.
http://i.imgur.com/AAORWX2m.jpg http://i.imgur.com/mlo2NdHm.jpg
As we expected, it was pretty busy at the end of the trail, but not so bad that it ruined it in any way. After taking a few photos and having a paddle in the small stream (which was freezing!) we headed back down the trail. Rach was feeling particularly pregnant that day so unfortunately that was the end of the hiking. It was a really nice drive through the forest, and we randomly came across an old cabin. It had a bit of info about it and who lived there, and was preserved pretty well. There had been a lot of people living in such a small cabin, and they must have been tiny because the doors and ceilings were very low. The only downside was that it seemed that everyone that had visited had scratched their name into the inside of it. People are morons ("Hey there's something old and well preserved, I'm going to scratch my name into it so it isn't as nice any more, and people will know that "Chad Hogan woz here""). Anyway, we looked around and imagined what it would be like to live somewhere so remote, but so beautiful; and then decided that wouldn't be the life for us, so we headed back into Gatlinburg.
http://i.imgur.com/jpyawv4l.jpg
On the way into Gatlinburg we could smell an amazing bbq smell, so we followed the smoke to this place. I think this was my first taste of proper pulled pork, and it was amazing! Very filling too.
http://i.imgur.com/HC4qwRwl.jpg
We headed into Gatlinburg and had a look around; it was very busy with tourists everywhere, and lots of touristy things to do. We decided to go for the chair lift, and what a sight we got from the top!
http://i.imgur.com/3c6iScfl.jpg
It was extremely hot, so we decided to move on to Knoxville, where we were staying for the night.