Random observations ( USA related)

Well we are back from our holiday road trip ( Atlanta to Houston in 2 weeks).We had a very relaxing time, eating too much, drinking slightly less, though I may have had one too many Hurricane cocktails in Pat O'Briens in New Orleans ,while watching the duelling pianos.

 We also managed a little retail therapy ( it was Black Friday whilst we were there).It was unexpectedly cold, so we both had to buy a fleece and a jacket ( quelle dommage!). I won't bore you with any more  details. We visited a number of tourist destinations: Mister Hare developed a passion for Civil War History and made me go round an Oil Rig museum ( definitely the low point of the holiday).Some of the other touristy things like Graceland and the Nasa Space Centre, Houston were more interesting.



NASA Space Centre , Houston

 

 



Anyway, just a few random minor observations

1)When driving in the USA, as well as driving on the right hand side of the road( always disconcerting) drivers on dual/multi lane roads can overtake on both the outside and inside lanes. This leads to some Kamikaze moments when cars are weaving in and out of slower cars. Plus, there are the same number of middle/ and outside lane hoggers, who manage to drive in such a way that they are not quite overtaking the car in the inside lane so both lanes are blocked by slow moving cars.

2) In the UK the ground floor is counted as zero, the next floor up the first floor etc. Not so in the USA- the ground floor is floor one and what we would call the first floor is the second floor. Weird!

3) In the UK we write the date as day , month , year. For some inexplicable reason in USA they write the date as month, day , year. Why?

4) We don't celebrate Thanksgiving, so we totally underestimated the effects this would have. We did a lot of driving that day but couldn't find anywhere open to have lunch. Even the Macdonald's were closed, I suppose like Christmas here. In the evening nearly all the restaurants were closed, and those that were open were all fully booked . So Thanksgiving was a starvation day for us!

5) The Peabody Hotel in Memphis has a tradition dating back to the 1930's where real live ducks are led into the fountain in the middle of the hotel at 11.00, where they swim until 17.00 when they are escorted out again  to their residence on the roof of the hotel.

 

I have a video to share but can't work out how to place it in this post, so it will just have to stand alone in the next post