USA

United States

Day 28 - Sat 6 May 06

Albany

Up at 06:30, ready to get off the train at 07:00, a quick breakfast, and a bus to Niagara falls - well that was the plan, but the train is running three hours late. So not into Buffalo 'til 10:00, the bus takes an hour to the falls, and then I'd have to get from the falls to the Amtrak station for 12:45. In short it's a no hoper. So I'm going to stay on this train which is going to Albany. I'm going to get there about seven hours early, but hey. I might be able to do another State Capitol Building.

We're running down the side of one of the Great Lakes now, and it's big. It's pretty rough out there, and there are waves breaking over the "sea" wall. What surprised me the most was to see big container ships out there. The train passes through Rochester and the derelict industrial buildings remind me of Russia, there's even a Russian Orthodox church complete with onion domes in the distance!

Excitement! The Boarder Patrol have been aboard the train and arrested a couple of people - yet more of a delay, but I'm in no real hurry now.

We got to Albany four hours late, and I took a taxi to the B&B, it's miles out of the centre of town, anyway I got an Indian meal for the restaurant around the corner and then retired to my room to read my book. The guy in the room next door has a cough that is bordering on TB, I think he's trying to bring up a lung.

My B&B

The B&B is very quaint, and is based in an 'old' wooden house, there are notes everywhere explaining how to get in and out of the place, how breakfast works, what the WiFi key is. It's a bit too much if you ask me. The one bit of technology that I wished did work was the TV, it's broken and even the batteries from the remote control are missing. If it worked I could check what the weather is going to be like tomorrow.

Is it too early to sum up this trip? Nope. I've only seen a bit of what America has to offer, a few of those are spectacular (Devils Tower, Badlands, Monument Valley to name a few. Others, like Dallas are historic, but some just didn't like up to the hype. The Bellagio, the Grand Canyon. I guess this trip was very easy in comparison to others I've taken. No language or real cultural barriers to get over, and only one country in four weeks (how poor!)

I fear that my pipe dream of driving my car coast to coast is dead. The interesting places like Old Sacramento are few and far between with to many homogenised Roswell's in the way. Will I come back to the States? Of course I will, it's to big not to, but where? That's the tricky question.

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View my route through the USA here