Boy I must surely have eaten my way through about 4m calories today. This Southern hospitality is legendary.
Right where to start! At the beginning would be the best bet.
Cape Fear - it is real, I have been, and it is nice...
One thing you notice, on your travels through America as you do, is that you come across signs in the road saying Slow - Inmates Working. What a very brilliant idea! Get those slow prisoners doing works at the road side - mowing the lawns, tidying up, that sort of thing. Get them earning their £30k per year it costs to keep them! (Though, I would have thought in this litigious country there were laws against calling people 'slow'... Go figure).
I heard on the radio (the second source of this information, following the USA Today newspaper) that America's largest car reliability survey rates Lexus as #1, Porsche as #2 (nothing unusual there) and guess what was at #3....??? No go on, guess?? CADILLAC! Yes Col, a Caddy is the 3rd most reliable car in America! What did I tell you?! They are the future! (and present for you).
Still travelling the 17 South today (its a long road), and had an option of visiting Bolivia - decided to take the bypass instead...
Visited Myrtle Beach on the way down to Savannah - which was another Blackpool style place, pretty grotty really - but the beach looked amazing. Rolling breakers on a soft sandy beach...
After Myrtle was Charleston, the first place I've visited and thought "yeah this is really nice" on this trip. The other places have been nice enough, but Charleston was really nice. Its where Hootie and the Blowfish are from! But apart from that, the architecture was traditional American, sort of mixture of red-brick buildings and wooden fronted cowboy-town style. In amongst all of the churches of course, and well looked after (for the most part). I have never seen so many churches though! They are like mosques in Bradford! (You can never have enough...) Charleston itself is a few streets of shops, and interesting little places. It had a kind of honesty about it - there was no pretentiousness or trying hard to be something, like so many places in L.A. or Orlando. The people seemed a lot more genuine and normal as well, and very hospitable.
It has been warm today though touching 91F in places (33C) and fairly humid... just walking around Charleston, and I was sweating buckets and needed a shower and a change of clothes... I think its going to get worse though, the Southern states are experiencing a heat wave at the moment, and high humidity making the temperatures seem about 115F (46C) in places, according to the news.
McDonalds for lunch with a Big Mac and large fries! (Oh no!). Must have put on another few pounds. Need to go for another run! Lets see what the morning brings.
At the Travelodge in Savannah, Georgia, for the next two nights. Its a bit off the main drag (about 6 miles actually) but CHEAP. And pretty nice, certainly much nicer than Howard Johnson (hojo), Wilmington, and Ramada Virginia Beach anyway! Having said that, the hojo manager did open the breakfast facilities this morning specifically for me, as I was a little late...
Had dinner this evening at Spankys. (Yes Spankys, no jokes please). It was really nice - can't half tell I'm in the South though, y'all). The waiter recommended their southern fried 'spuds' and hot (southern fried) chicken fingers. Delicious! (Just another 5,000, southern fried, calories). The waiter was fine - southern hospitality is legendary, although if he called me boss just one more time, he was likely to receive the contents of my bud light glass on his head. (To be fair, there wasn't much left in the bottom), but calling me boss - or bo-w-s, did get old quite quickly...
It is very plain to see though, that there has been a total phase shift in terms of customer service / hospitality down here. So far, I haven't had a bad experience in this department, in fact, everything has been great - Americans do know how to do service and hospitality very well - but the South is legendary, and it is plain to see why...
This Blog was brought to you by ROCK107 "The Only Station That REALLY ROCKS!"
(No rocks were harmed during the making of this advertisement. Finance available on request. Only $599 down, subject to credit score).
6 comments:
How ya'll doin Boss.....
I bet you were in your element i mean your idols (Hootie and the dogfish??)....i bet you had the banjo and your straw hat out ;)
Like to see that your not shying away from offending both cultures and religions in one blog post EPIC WIN!!
PS hope youve got loads of pics!!
LOL. Hootie and the BLOWFISH. I wanted to get tickets (sorry ticket) for a gig, but they are having a break from touring right now :-(
I'm not a fan of religion in any form. I'd like to know where the big fellow was when my wife was struggling against her disease? Some would say that he was there helping her through, I guess. On the other hand, I didn't see much evidence of that.
I do find it very interesting though, that the human mind set seems to require something to "worship", or dedicate our thoughts to. In England its football (which I'm not a fan of either, probably for that reason) and in other countries its religion.
No offence is intended at a specific group of people one religon or another; merely observation.
Oh and the other thing to say, in favour of religion (sort of) is that the Churches look really nice! Wooden painted ones, really well kept, tall spires.
I didn't take my camera with me in Charleston, so didn't take any photos there :-(
What are the radio stations like? I expect they're much better than the UK bog-standard radio 1 wannabees, because one thing the Americans can do is ROCK!
Are you missing the Porsche??
The Americans can certainly ROCK but finding a radio station that you like is tricky for a number of reasons.
1. There are SOOOO MANY. I mean literally every point in the FM band along is another station in some places.
2. The radio stations are pretty local. Move out of a town / City, and its gone; along come the next set when you approach a different place.
3. The adverts make you want to switch it off immediately, remove the radio from the dash, throw in on the tarmac, and attack it with a baseball bat until it bleeds.
Having said all that, I found Rock107 yesterday which was good, and although it had adverts they didn't last too long, and actually it breaks up the music somehow (they did a 15 track run between adverts, something that won't happen on British commercial radio) - I find listening to the Ipod or a continuous set of music boring? Perhaps because I'm on my own and don't have any other sort of vocal stimulus, I need to hear people talking? Not sure on that, but I liked it anyway. Don't think I can get Rock107 in Savannah though.
Post a Comment