Back in Hampton Bays

9th November, 2011

Today was another beautiful day. I'll miss the constant blue skies when I return to Cork. I went for a walk to Hampton Bays town. It's the first time that I actually walked through the whole town. I'm used to flying past on my bike. There are a number of things that I didn't notice before. Almost every bar is an Irish bar. There is a little Latino district. There is a little walking trail. There are lots of restaurants, mostly either Italian or Asian.

I ate in a local diner and had a chai in Dunkin Donuts afterwards. Dunkin Donuts is somewhere I didn't utilise enough while I was here. They have decent enough tea and coffee and they are very cheap. Nothing much else to speak of today. Only two days before I fly home.

Back in East Quogue

8th November, 2011

Today I woke up in the familiar basement in Concepta's house. I slept until 11am after my previous day's travel. It was a lovely day so I walked into Citibank. I had to close my bank account. Closing the bank account was almost as difficult as opening it. I rang them a few weeks ago but they said I had to close the account in person. To close the account, the teller had to add a penny to the account for some reason. After signing a few documents I had cancelled the account. I went next door to Panera Bread and had my favorite hazelnut coffee and a muffin. It was nice to have a day where I had little to do for the first time in 2 weeks.

Planes, trains and automobiles

7th November, 2011

Today was a long day of travelling. I woke up at 4.30am. John kindly drove me to Wichita airport at 5am. I was slightly worried about delays as the forecast was for storms at my departure time. I left on time though and flew to Atlanta, Georgia. Atlanta is the busiest airport in the world and a Delta hub (see photo above of Delta planes). After a 3 hour layover, I boarded the flight to JFK. I had my own screen with loads of movies to watch. I watched "The Tree of Life", though couldn't finish it before the flight finished. I had to wait a few hours for the 6pm train to Hampton Bays. At 8pm, I arrived back in Hampton Bays, where not much had changed. It was almost like been back home.

Bison on the prairie

6th November, 2011

Today we went to the Cathedral for Mass. Unfortunately the Mass was in the Parish Hall as the Cathedral was under construction so we couldn't see the inside of the Cathedral. We then went to the National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. Kansas has the largest ammount of prairie grass lands left in the US. It was nice to see this unique landscape. We went on a 7 mile walk. While most of kansas is completely flat and farming land, the preserve reminded me a little of Tuscany with rolling grassy hills. It looked a little like Connemara boglands at times (with brown grass) and the burren at other times (with limestone rock).

Bison have been introduced to the park over the last few years. We got quite close to them. I assumed that they were harmless enough, though John was a little cautious. Some of the bulls looked fairly tough alright though. After we crossed a fence a little later, we noticed a sign that warned us not to get too close as they can charge. So we were fairly lucky that they didn't do that as we did get quite close.

That evening we went to a Vietnamese restaurant. My guide book said that there were a number of Vietnamese restaurants in Wichita so I thought it would be worth going. I don't think I'll be going to a Vietnamese restaurant any time soon after the meal however. We then went for a milk shake in Sonic, which is a drive-in restaurant. It's a strange idea. Unlike a drive-through, where you get food from your car and eat it at home, a drive-in is for people who want to eat in their car. There are about 25 spaces where you can park and order a meal and it is delivered to your car. I don't know who would want to eat in their car though. A milkshake is fine but I wouldn't fancy eating a burger in the car.

Beneath the earth and above the sky in the same day

5th November, 2011

Today me and John went to Hutchinson, Kansas. It is about 45 mins north of Wichita and they have two cool-looking museums there. The Salt Mine is the only mine you can visit in the Western Hemisphere. You can visit one in Wieliczka, Poland (which I visited) and one in Salzburg. So I had something to compare it to. Being over 600 feet below the earth's surface is cool but, unlike the mine in Poland, they didn't have any salt sculptures to impress visitors. There was a train and a dark ride which were nice but they didn't really have much to show us, except how the miners worked, which wasn't that interesting. It was cool to find out that there is a vault that stores documents for people and organisations in the mine. Underground is the safest place to store important documents. Hollywood stores movie reels and other things in the vault.

After this, we went to Yoder to eat in an Amish restaurant. I don't know if the restaurant was actually run by Amish but they all wore Amish-style outfits. We got a huge 3 course lunch, which we couldn't finish. It was a really hearty meal.

Museum 2 was the Cosmosphere. This is a museum about air and space. It has a huge collection, second only to the Air and Space Museum in DC. Above is some plane whose name I forget. It is John's favorite plane, which says something as John is an aeronautical engineer. The museum was very well laid out and traces the evolution of space travel, from Hitler's WW2 rockets to the present day. We also watched a film about tornadoes in the Imax theatre - appropriate for Kansas. We booked tickets for the planetarium but were sold seats to a private screening for a scout group. So we actually got all our money back, which was nice.

It's really strange that these two museums are in a small town in the middle of Kansas as they are both pretty significant. They are two of the 8 wonders of Kansas.

Flying into Wichita

4th November, 2011

Today I flew into Wichita to visit my cousin, John who just moved to the city a month ago. I didn't know much about the city. From some reading, I discovered that half of the world's planes are made in Wichita. After discovering that, I was surprised how small and quiet the airport is. I met up with John and we went straight to an ice hockey game. Wichita Thunder are in a lower league. The game was okay and there was more fighting that at the Minnesota game. Afterwards we went out with 2 of John's colleagues. We went to a cigar bar (though none of us got a cigar). I had a black and tan, which was a half ale, half Guinness pint. It wasn't as bad as it sounds, though was a little strange.

Hiking in the Rockies

3rd November, 2011

Today started with a Polish breakfast. The cafe in the hotel is run by Polish guys. They have pierogi (Polish dumplings). I had them for breakfast, though they were not the best pierogi I have ever had. It was filling enough though for the day ahead of me. Today I planned to climb a mountain.

I went to Chautaqua Park, which has a number of trails up the mountains. According to Trip Advisor, it is #1 on things to do in Boulder. I went on the Royal Arch path. My guide book said that it takes 45 mins each way but I was walking for about 4 hours. The first part was fine. There was a lot of snow but it wasn't too steep. The second part of the trail was a bit more challenging. I realised quite soon that I wasn't dressed for hiking. I had a 3/4 length coat and summer runners (which are not waterproof). A man passed me with snow boots, a ski jacket and hiking sticks. It was a beautiful walk though through snowy woods. When I got to a clearing, the path continued but it continued down. I don't know where it lead but it was quite steep. After a while a man passed me who had chains on his runners. I thought that if this man needs chains on his runners to walk on the path, I should probably turn back.

I could see a little through the clearing, though there were rocks and trees in the way. It was a very clear day so I could see far over the plains. It was very slippery on the way down. I basically slid all the way down. When I reached the bottom, my feet were soaked. I went for an early bird dinner in a tavern. It was great value. I got French onion soup and a buffalo burger for $10 and I tried their milk stout. I didn't feel like wandering anywhere else since my feet were soaked and the temperature had dropped below zero so I went back to the hotel early and had a hot bath.

Hot tea on a cold day

2nd November, 2011

Today I woke up to a snow-covered city. It was beautiful. Luckily all of the footpaths were cleared of snow so I was able to get around. I took the bus to the Celestial Seasonings Tea factory outside of the town (see photo above). It was lovely out there. There were snow-covered fields and hills around. I had a little bit of trouble getting into the factory as I had to walk through some snow and soaked my feet. It was worth it though as when I went in for the tour, they said that I could try as many of the 75 teas for free while I waited for the factory tour. I worked my way through some of them, including ginger, peppermint, rooibos, green tea. Perfect for a cold day. The sampling was actually the best part. The tour of the factory floor was pretty boring although it didn't cost anything. It was cool being in the mint room though, which completely cleared my sinuses. My tour ticket was a bag of tea, which I am now enjoying in my hotel room.

I took the bus back to the city centre and walked down the pedestrian Pearl St. (pedestrian streets are very rare in the US). Boulder doesn't really feel like an American city. I felt like I was in some town in Europe. I had mussels and chips in a pub with a local amber ale for dinner. Afterwards I went for a walk towards the foot of the mountains. I came across a trail so decided to hike for a bit. The path was a little slippy but not too bad. It was a beautiful area for a walk, especially covered in snow.

From Missouri to Colorado

 1st November, 2011

Today I went to 8am Mass for All Saint's Day before I packed for the next stage of my journey. When Amelia returned from work, we went for a very nice brunch. We split rasberry and mascarpone pancakes and French toast (the best brunch I've had in the US). It was perfect to keep me going for the day. Amelia gave me a ride to the airport where I had a Frontier Airlines flight to Denver. I paid a bit extra to be a classic customer (first time in my life I was not economy) because it was cheaper if you had two bags to check in (which I did). It meant that I could watch TV for free on the plane so the journey went by fairly quickly. 1 got to Denver (one hour behind Central US) and took a bus to Boulder. There was a storm when I arrived and the city is expecting snow tonight and tomorrow. Dinner was in the Subway across the street which is the only place to eat near my hotel.

Downtown St. Louis

31st October, 2011

Today was a very productive day. Amelia and myself went to the Botanical Gardens in the morning. It was #2 on the list of St. Louis' top sites on Trip Advisor and some people said that it might be the best botanical gardens in the world. It was very nice and it was a beautiful day to be there with not a cloud in the sky (though it was a little chilly). There were Japanese and Victorian gardens and a very warm and humid climatron with exotic plants. We had nice sweet potato, apple and pumpkin soup for lunch.

Next we made our way to the Citygarden downtown. To my surprise, I had actually been there before. Last year as I was waiting for my bus from St. Louis to Kansas City, I walked around the garden. There are a number of art installations in the garden. Since St. Louis Cardinals won the baseball World Series last week, there was a bit of a Cardinal theme to the park. One sculpture had a Cardinal scarf around his neck and they dyed the fountain in front of the old courthouse red (see photo above).

We then went to the famous St. Louis arch (you can see it behind the courthouse in the photo above). I saw it last year but didn't go inside. You can take a little capsule to the top of the arch. There is not much room and very narrow windows so you have to lie down to see anything. There are nice views of the city and across the Mississippi to Illinois. When we came down, we went to the Westward Expansion Museum beneath the arch. They had these life size mechanical figures speaking about various things. They were hilarious as they moved in such a strange way (almost looked like they were dancing the robot).

We popped into the Old Courthouse which is a very nice building. There are some nice paintings, lots of red, white and blue and I learned a little about St. Louis history. We then went to a nice cafe where I had a cappuccino (the best coffee I've had since I've come to the US). I also tried gooey butter cake, which was very rich but very tasty. Amelia had a sign language class in the evening in a community college. I decided to go along for the ride and wander around the campus for a few hours.

It was halloween night but Amelia has to work tomorrow at 5.30am and my flight is also tomorrow so we just stayed in and watched 'The Village', which I hadn't seen before.