US Roadtrip

[taximan007]

Have a Great Trip

[dino1980]

Hey Longy,

Damn jealous sounds like a great trip. I lived in Massachusetts for a year and visited Boston a few times. I would reccomend doing the Freedom Trail as it's a cool walk around Boston and will help you with your bearings. You should visit Faneuil Hall/Quicny Market and get Clam Chowder in a bread bowl. They also have cool live entertainment going on there, i guess it's Boston's equiv of Covent Garden. Also for someone who probably grew up with Cheers there's two Cheers bars in Boston. Boston Common is good and there's an area (i think Beacon Hill) where all the roads are cobbled and they've still got the old gas streetlamps. Kennedy museum worth a look if you've got any interest in the American 'Royal' family at all.

On the subject of baseball as well as The Sox/Cubs they'll be plenty of Divison 1AA and 1AAA games going on in random towns i'm sure. Have a good trip.

[booder]

have a great trip Longy,and enjoy this weekend
" I shall walk, through the town, sporting my yellow crown. any scum i should meet, will fall neatly beneath my feet...I speak the truth,you know i'm right, always shit on the old blue and white...OTBC! "

[Longy]

Hey Longy,

Damn jealous sounds like a great trip. I lived in Massachusetts for a year and visited Boston a few times. I would reccomend doing the Freedom Trail as it's a cool walk around Boston and will help you with your bearings. You should visit Faneuil Hall/Quicny Market and get Clam Chowder in a bread bowl. They also have cool live entertainment going on there, i guess it's Boston's equiv of Covent Garden. Also for someone who probably grew up with Cheers there's two Cheers bars in Boston. Boston Common is good and there's an area (i think Beacon Hill) where all the roads are cobbled and they've still got the old gas streetlamps. Kennedy museum worth a look if you've got any interest in the American 'Royal' family at all.

On the subject of baseball as well as The Sox/Cubs they'll be plenty of Divison 1AA and 1AAA games going on in random towns i'm sure. Have a good trip.

Dino your read is right, I did indeed grow up with Cheers. Thanks for the info on Boston.

have a great trip Longy,and enjoy this weekend
" I shall walk, through the town, sporting my yellow crown. any scum i should meet, will fall neatly beneath my feet...I speak the truth,you know i'm right, always shit on the old blue and white...OTBC! "

Lol Booder, i am really nervous about Sunday. The biggest East Anglian derby for years from a Norwich point of view, I will take a point now tbh.

[booder]

tbh i don't think a point is any good,i think it's 3 or goodbye to Championship

[Longy]

2 weeks down, 3 to go. Having a brilliant time, current in Ann Arbor, Michigan as we are too chicken to go to Detroit as we have been warned the whole place is a ghetto (sigh).

So far have done NYC, Philly, DC, Pittsburgh, Colombus (Ohio), Indianapolis and Chicago. I could bore you with a detailed TR but

1. I haven't got the time.
2. I can't be arsed.
3. My writing skills, wouldn't do it justice.

I had a few requests for some baseball blurb and i went to my first game at Wrigley Field yesterday and it was awesome. The whole place has stuck to the tradition of Baseball being americas oldest and most tradational sport. A lot of the ground is as it was 50+ years ago (but not in a bad way), the only music played is of the Organ variety and tonnes of baseball tradations like the singing of "Take me out to the ballgame" (lyrics in signature) is sung in the middle of the 7th.

The Cubs lost 6-2 which seemed right for some reason, being the loveable losers that they are. Here are some pics I took with my iphone, hence the crappy quality.

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

There are more photos on my facebook (Mark Long, Nottingham) from the whole trip. Not particularly a facebook person, but hey who doesn't like to pretend they have friends.

[cdw1111]

Look like good seats down the 3rd base line,can i ask how much tou paid/where you got them from?
Favourite place so far?

Enjoy the rest of your trip.

[scottm]

Nice pics Longy,

Really like Wrigley Field  ( even though i'm a Mariners fan ) with its ivy covered wall and the seats on top of the buildings across the street.

Where are you off to next and are you planning to visit anymore stadiums/ catch anymore games ?

[Longy]

Look like good seats down the 3rd base line,can i ask how much tou paid/where you got them from?
Favourite place so far?

Enjoy the rest of your trip.

I paid $25 for that seat but I went to a Tuesday afternoon game which is the easiest (and cheapest) to get tickets for, the cubs still sold 40000 tickets for the game which is pretty impressive on a working day. I just rolled up at the ticket office and asked for a ticket in that area, i have been told you can't do this normally, but they get loads of returns for midweek afternoon games.

Favourite place so far is a real toughie, off the top of my head, drinking in bars down South Street in Philadelphia and Chicago is just an amazing town all the way round.

Nice pics Longy,

Really like Wrigley Field  ( even though i'm a Mariners fan ) with its ivy covered wall and the seats on top of the buildings across the street.

Where are you off to next and are you planning to visit anymore stadiums/ catch anymore games ?

Ty Scott, yeah the Wrigley rooftops are a unique site, pity I didn't get a decent photo of them. The ivy has not come into bloom yet so it is kind of brown at the moment.

As for other ballparks, other possibles left on the trip are Toronto, Boston (the other one i really want to do), Mets and Yankees. All depends on Schedules of myself and the teams.

[lazaroonie]

did you spend much time in pittsburgh ?

i need to go there soon for a few days, and I am not really looking forward to it.

[Longy]

did you spend much time in pittsburgh ?

i need to go there soon for a few days, and I am not really looking forward to it.

No spent 1 night there, we were pretty much told the best (and only??) thing to do in Pitt was go out drinking, we did find a really good bar that did cheap drinks and 20c chicken wings though.

[lazaroonie]

did you spend much time in pittsburgh ?

i need to go there soon for a few days, and I am not really looking forward to it.

No spent 1 night there, we were pretty much told the best (and only??) thing to do in Pitt was go out drinking, we did find a really good bar that did cheap drinks and 20c chicken wings though.

sounds pretty much perfect for me....

[Longy]

Weee just got back today, absoutley awesome holiday. The UK almost seems foreign now, everything is so small compared to the big cities over there.

My favourite 3 places were New York, Chicago and Boston all for slightly different reasons but awesome cities in their own right. I couldn't live in New York such a mad city but awesome to visit, I could quite happily live in the latter 2. Nowhere was a let down really,even the small places like Rutland, Vermont had simply stunning countryside.

In general I think I have a more positive view on America than before, saw no crime (though we did dodge Detroit) and with very few exceptions, everyone  we met was very friendly. I did eat far too much crap and virtually no veg or fruit. I developed a taste for Iced Coffee preferably with a Donut, Tim Hortons (the Canadian version of Dunkin Donuts) might just be the best value fast food place on earth and IHOP (international house of pancakes), hmmm pancakes and a fry up.

I barely have a complaint the whole trip apart from the road surfaces, I mean seriously wtf! Do they ever resurface the roads, how the hell our rental car lasted a month I will never know.

Managed to do the 5 weeks for somewhere between 2 and 3 grand, which satisfied my nit extincts. If you are ever looking to book good hotels (we didn't stay in anywhere below 3*), a mix match of www.priceline.com and www.hotwire.com is the way to go. Priceline is slightly confusing as it works on a bidding system and if anyone wants tips on using it optimally, send me a pm. It is well worth it though, for example we got the Hyatt in Chicago for $45/night.

[relaedgc]

I am in New York for a week at the end of June before I head on to Vegas. Anything to recommend?

[thetank]

The whole thing sounds awesome, chuffed for you that it was everything you expected it to be.