Going back home...

We'd already finished packing our bags yesterday, so it was pretty quick to check out of the hotel this morning. Picking up the car from valet parking, finding the way to SFO, delivering the car, finding the gate... everything went smooth. Well, almost. Guro'd lost her car key, so we didn't say we got two, and the stupid lady in the check-in would let us loose our flight in Amsterdam, so we checked in at someone elses desk instead, and when we got to Amsterdam, Guro lost her expensive California wine in the customs. But everything else than that went smooth, I guess :) Now we've made our way back to Oslo. It's a long flight back here, so we're pretty dizzy right now.

We will continue to update our blog as we come up with more pictures and funny stories. We'll also add a few facts for those of you thinking of doing a trip like this and want to know a few tips on the way.

Please comment on our posts if you'd like to leave a comment for us :)

Why do I feel so weird?

I woke up with a strange feeling today. My stummach has got butterflies, and my legs are all shaky. And Guro's got the same feeling! I guess it's got something to do with our upcoming flight back to Europe tomorrow, even though we can't really figure out why. We're just not sure if we want to leave USA yet. A good thing is that the rain finally stopped here in SF, which gives us just another impression of the city. We made our way to SFMOMA today (San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art, 3rd Street @ Howard), after stopping by the Sunflower Café for breakfast. We spent a few hours with Jeff Wall and Olafur Eliesson's work there, which was fun, before going to Berkeley. We were a little late out there, so the time with our friends Siri and Håvard was limited, but still very nice. The rather busy place Naan'n'Curry had really cheap Indian food for dinner when we got back, but the place wasn't very nice. The planned meetup with Justin failed today, but we had a beer in town, rode the trolley (funny ride, that one, we hung on the outside!) and headed back to the hotel for a few slow hours with packing our bags. Tomorrow's gonna be a long day, so I guess we need some sleep.

The Haights, Twin Peaks, - and it still rains.

We certainly would hope the rain should stop today, but it did not. We've had a rather wet day, exploring the Lower- and Upper Haight (the Haights). The Haight Street is worth a visit. A lot of coffeeshops, shoe-, clothes-, fashion-, and tons of second hand stores is to be found here. Around this area you'll also find the houses (or the same addresses) to famous people as Janis Joplin (122 Lyon), the Grateful Dead (710 Ashbury), Jefferson Airplane (2400 Fulton), Charles Manson (635 Cole) or sid Vicious (32 Del Mar). The clothing store Villain and record store Amoeba are famous shops along Haight, but with a weather like today, we quickly got tired of windowshopping. After lunch we went down to North Beach to look for a Tattoo Museum, but we could not find this place. When asking for directions, we were told the place was closed in 2000, so I guess we're a little late for that. "Ebisa" is a great sushi place on 9th Ave if you're into sushi as much as we are (thank you for that one, Tracey). If you're looking for free wi-fi, "Coffee to the people" at 1206 Masonic @ Haights is a good shot. Even though the bright light and the cheap furniture make it looks like a backpacker waiting room in southern Asia, the coffee was superb here. Today has been the first day we've not used our GPS while driving, and even without the map we make our way to different addresses, which, I believe, means that San Fransisco is one of the more easy citys to navigate. When that's said, after a turn in the wrong direction, we suddenly found ourselves on the way up to Twin Peaks, so we just drove all the way up, took a few turns around the summits, stopped shortly to enjoy the view over Market Street, and then headed back home. Traffic is way slower here than in LA because of all the ups and downs, so it's pretty easy to drive here, too, even though you don't know where to go. If you have an automatic, that is. I wonder what these roads would be like with snow and ice. We're just now starting to feel the flight back home rushing on, as Guro has began the struggle to fit everything in her bags. Tomorrow we'll meet up with a few friends of us, go to SF Museum of modern art, and hang out the rest of our last Saturday in the US of A.

Big fire at the Monte Carlo Casino, Las Vegas

Sad to see: http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2008/01/25/524995.html

We hope everyone's OK down there.

Rainy weather in San Fransisco

San Fransisco reminds me of Europe, as the only city in the US with its density, with hills, narrower streets; This could be Paris! Only.. everyone speaks fluent English. I like San Fransisco already, but the weather's making it difficult to enjoy it all. After a nice breakfast and coffee in the tiny place Hurgada we walked along Market Street up to Apple Store. Magnus bought an iPhone for a friend back in Norway, and then we headed back to pick up our car. First we went down the famous Lombard Street, the "crookedest street in the world". Then up to the tower on the other side of the valley. Further to Baker beach where Tracey used to live (nice view to the Golden Gate Bridge from here), across the GGB, drove up to Richmond Brigde, over to Berkeley, and then back across Bay Brigde back into Chinatown. After a short pit stop back at the hotel, we went out to a club called Slim's, to pick our tickets for a four-band hardcore concert with Gallows (UK) as the headliner. We met up with Justin and his friends across the street on a place called Butter before the concert. Hardcore is something else, people running in a circle throwing things at each other. Softies like myself stay way back not to get injured, and I guess I liked Cancerbats from Canada best. So, that's it for today, I guess. We're calling it a day after laughing the whole way back to the hotel from Justin's sticky stunt back at Slim's dancefloor. Hehehe...

Big Sur, Monterey and San Fransisco

The view was definitely something else in Rigged Point Inn this morning. Although the rain does not seem to stop. Guro's not feeling to well today, so we'll mostly experience these winding roads through the car windows. We stopped many places to take photos, and we had a clear view, so the trip was really nice up there. Carmel-by-the-sea and Monterey, Big Sur and the last mountains before entering the San Fransisco peninsula was an exiting drive. We spent a while finding hotel in San Fransisco, but finally we checked in on Carlton Hotel at 1075 Sutter St. It's getting pretty late now, so we'll just go down to Pearl's Deluxe Burgers (708 Post St., a place highly recommended from friends back in Trondheim), after Guro's taken a hot bath and an overdose of vitamin C.

We're on Highway 1

It's strange to realize that we only have a few days left of our trip. A quick count show that we so far have been driving about 4500 miles (about 7200 km) only on the big roads, that means not including the shorter distances, city driving and detours along the historic route 66 and other sights. That's far.

Still we're not sick of driving. Due to busy Los Angeles traffic we were late out of town today. First heading south to Santa Monica, then along Highway 1 to Malibu, we started the day with rainshowers and heavy clouds over our heads. Further up we passed Ventura, Santa Barbara (small stop here) and Santa Maria (lunch at Pappy's) on Highway 101, before we went back out on the coastal highway 1. The landscape is very changing here, from open fields to winding roads, and way different from anything we've seen so far on this trip. Traffic goes slower, but we've still gone by 60mph the most of the trip today. After sunset it went dark pretty fast because of all the clouds, so we checked in on Rigged Point Inn, a small place just south of where the road gets most exciting. We're saving the narrowest curves and the best view for tomorrow, and expect roads with speed limits down to 15-20mph just north of us here. From the room we have view over the Pacific Ocean from high up in the cliffs, and we're looking forward to enjoy this panorama tomorrow.

Appetite for Destruction

As Magnus wrote in the last blog, we think a lot about food (Guro in special). But, sometimes hunger lead you to unexpected, good things. To make the history long:

Tonight Magnus hangs out with Laurel and I have been to a concert at a small venue on Fairfax; Genghis Cohen (740 N Fairfax Ave.). I saw the last two songs of a band (name is totally uninteresting) playing what I would call boring collegerock. Then Abbot Kinney played an acoustic set. To my and, I think, A.K.´s frustration, that other band where sitting in the back with their friends talking as loud as only americans can. For those of you who read this blog and are in LA on Wednesday, go see Abbot Kinney with full band @ The Derby!!

THEN, after the concert, I realized how hungry (oh yes, hungry) I was and went south on Fairfax, down to a place called Canter´s. Waiting for my pasta I discovered this Guns´N´Roses biography for sale, written/photographed by Slash´s good friend from junior High, Marc Canter (see? Canter´s - Marc Canter?!). As the old GnR fan I am I had to buy the book and learned that Slash actually went to Fairfax High School, right across the street for our "LA home" Banana Bungalow!

The penne pesto at Canter´s was great btw. Nice diner with nice people behind the counter, and a lot of old, strange stuff to look at, most of all the cash register. Strongly recommended. Approx 400-something N Fairfax Ave.

We are also preparing for San Francisco beside packing our bags, and have bought tickets to a concert in San Fran: Gallows (UK) @ Slim´s on Thursday. Rawk.

Now Im considering whether I should go to sleep or go out... TBC...

Johnny Ramone and too much coffee

We was pretty shocked when we looked out the window this morning. It was raining! Didn't last very long, though, and after just a few minutes the streets were dry and sunny again. This is a day without plans, the laundry has been done and the bags are almost ready to leave, so we've just been driving around randomly looking for places of interest. The GPS and guidebooks are helpful companions in this case; just find a cool place in the guidebook, pinpoint the address on the GPS, and hey, we're off.

We've visited Johnny Ramone's grave, went as close as possible to the Hollywood sign up in the hills, had too much coffee and ate a whole lot of pancakes for breakfast. IHOP, or Int. House of Pancakes, is definitely worth a visit. Yeah OK, we know we're writing too much about food in this blog, but still - take a look at this!!

It's Hollywoodday, baby

Imagine a place called "Banana Bungalow" in Hollywood, LA. You should think this was overwhelmed by blinking bananas. Well, it's not. That's the difference between LA and Las Vegas. Our room is OK, and I believe Guro's wish of staying close to Hollywood was a good shot. Saturday we spent so many hours walking around our feet hurt. We went in and out of small shops and jumped from star to star at Hollywood Ave. Melrose Ave was a nice street with cool shops. Here you don't find poshy, fancy stuff - instead a bunch of funky second hand and shoe stores etc.

The evening started out nice and calm. We had sushi at "Wa", located on 1106 N La Cienega blvd. Although our waitress seemed pretty distracted, the food and sake was all great. From Wa there is walking distance to all the famous clubs up in West Hollywood. First we checked out a pretty bad triple concert on the venue Viper Room, Sunset Blvd, and then went across the street to Rainbow Room after noticing Ungdomskolen was gonna play here February 4th. And what's the deal with JR Ewing in this country? Rainbow is something else. In here, we found Lemmy from Motörhead sitting next to the bar playing Pacman, the band Him next to ..err...him, and we started talking to a few (obviously) Swedish guys dressed up like Mötley Crue. Those guys were our gate to a crazy afterparty up in Brentwood including drunk driving, coke, wine, music from the eighties, the taxi getting pulled over by the police for driving on red light, microwave hotdogs... well, you get it. (This part might have been censored).

The song Drinking in LA has been playing over and over again in my head all day long. WhatthehellamIdoingdrinkinginLAat26? I don't even know when we were back on the hostel room this morning, but we're both safe, sound, happy and hungover, so yesterday was definitely a great day.

Today - Sunday - Laurel joined us for a trip to famous places around LA. We've been to Venice Beach, Santa Monica Beach, Mulholland Drive, Rodeo Drive and ended up in Carney's Restaurant (a train!), in which the burger had a pretty overrated reputation. It's nice to see the ocean again, and the weather is still amazingly good with us.

They're going fast here in Los Angeles

Driving from Las Vegas to Los Angeles takes about 4,5 hours when traffic is quick. The landscape on this trip aren't very exciting. But when you round the mountains and start the downgrade through the pass, things seem to speed up. The closer you get to LA, the faster the traffic goes on. When driving around in this city, you really have to concentrate. But it's fun! We stopped in Claremont to visit Laurel, and was kindly offered to stay here for the night. She took us out for sightseeing in Pasadena, a nice town outside LA where we had some great italian food and a beer before sleeping in at her... ehm... garage. Not much else to say about this day, really, we're tired of Las Vegas and need some sleep. Tomorrow is Hollywood-day for us. Awesome, dude! Totally. OMG. You know.

Get up, go to California

You can say much about Las Vegas. As our taxi driver: "Isn't it amazing what we can do with lightbulbs here in Vegas?!". We totally agreed. Vegas is crazy, there's no doubt about that. Fireworks is daily business around here, and the hotels are not only hotels, they are small fictive worlds minding their own and their customers business only. Everything is expensive here compared to the rest of the country, and you cannot come here without spending too much money. We had a great time here, meeting people from all over the continent, but it just doesn't seem to be other things to do than party around here. The Stratosphere Tower, italian icecream in Venezia, Treasure Island, Hamada sushi restaurant and Sam's Town Hotel and Casino are all places we would recommend anyone to visit.

We've been two nights in Vegas now, and are just about to leave it for Los Angeles, California, which is the 12th state we'll go to on this trip. Take a look at our map, as the road from San Antonio to Los Angeles are put in, too.

Grand Canyon & VEGAS! God damn!

Wednesday 16th. Flagstaff, Arizona. Snow. Cold.

Today we headed for Grand Canyon. All the pictures you have seen of red mountains, sunset and heat, not there. It was about 20 F at the top (-6C), so we drove to the points where you have good view of the canyon(s) and took some pictures, but didn´t go hiking as we might have done if the temperature had been a little bit higher... We stopped at the points Desert View, Navajo, Moran and Grandview. We didn´t stop at Mather point but one should probably do that. Next time! We definitely want to come back here in summer and hike to the ranch down in the canyon.

To get to the canyon we drove straight up from Flagstaff and then Road 64 down again. Then Interstate 40 west! We took off the interstate in Seligman to drive on the old Route 66. Guro bought some really great Route 66 souvenirs at the gas station in Seligman. We also stopped at Hackberry General Store in Hackberry, but it was of course closed, so we took some pictures and headed for the 40 again, then Highway 93 to VEGAS!

After passing the Hoover Dam and the last mountains, the road goes down, down, down and it was so cool to drive down to Vegas in the dark, see the big city in front of you, with all the lights, neons and everything you think of when you think of Vegas. We are staying at the Planet Hollywood at the Central Strip. Big hotel with casino and shopping mall. Doesn´t matter that it is cold outside when you don´t have to go outside! We did anyway, and went to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower, to New York New York, saw the fountain show outside Bellagio etc etc. Then we needed some drinks, and some more and some more....

The only thing you will find in this city is your tombstone

We left the motel in Lordsburg pretty early, and drove a couple of miles on a dusty road to see the Shakespeare Ghost Town, or "ghost town". It was closed, and "it" means 3-4 houses that didn´t look old at all. Right after we entered the interstate though, there was a small village on the right hand side looking really old: Stones Ghost Town I think the exit sign said.

After some hours driving through a dry and, well, kind of boring, landscape we stopped for lunch in Benson, a typical small town, with one main street. We found an "independent" place, and had lunch together with the town´s bureaucrats and old, retired people. I saw a place called Horse Shoe Cafe, try that and tell me about it! ;-)

Benson is probably existing only because it is right at the exit to Tombstone: "The only thing you will find in this city is your tombstone". Hell yeah! Tombstone is the old town of the wild wild west where Doc Holliday and the three Earp brothers decided to put an end to the Carlton gang´s robberies and violence - three bad guys shot dead. We had coffee at Big Nose Kate´s Saloon, Kate was Doc´s girlfriend... Not so many tourists now in January, but I guess this place is packed during the summer. Some old buildings, a lot of buildings that may be old (...) and a lot of people dressed up as saloon girls, sheriff, cowboys... And in the saloon you can take your picture in a coffin(!)

We passed Tucson with the speed of a lightning, but got stucked in rush traffic in Phoenix for a while till we realized that we are (read with a movieteller´s voice) -two people, one car- and therefore can drive in the diamond lane. Pretty hot down in Phoenix, and a lot of palm trees (but no Keith) along the interstate. Out of town, the interstate started to climb higher and higher, our ears were totally confused of all the up´s and down´s there for a while. 40 minutes from Flagstaff, where we are now, we saw snow! Funny. So, here we are, back in winter wonderland, but this time in Arizona.

Del Rio, El Paso, Lordsburg

Driving day, from Del Rio in the morning, to El Paso around 7pm. Through dry desert land with cactus. Went through a passport checkpoint. In El paso we could look over to Mexico. Drove to Lordsburg in New Mexico.

Austin, San Antonio, Del Rio

Today we drove from Austin to San Antonio, spent the day there, and drove west to Del Rio in the evening.

Stayed in Western Inn.

Our road trip so far

"Austin er jo heeelt Texas"

We've heard a lot of good things about Austin, but we didn't see much difference from other cities during daytime. The Capitol Hill was nice (it's the biggest in US) and the Hickory Street (a restaurant) had a nice outdoor seating area where we had lunch. In the evening we went out looking for shops. But where are they? Where do people buy their Vans shoes? We could not find out about that. But we did find a really cool costume shop, though. The only time I saw this much costumes was at Norsk Filmsenter at Jar in Oslo. You could actually go into this shop and buy your own Darth Vader suit, with a helmet and everything. Or Tom and Jerry. Or Snowhite. Or a rennaissanse man's suit. Everything! Well, we did not. Imagine going onto the plane with a huge Darth Vader helmet in your hand! Texas.

Austin is Texas. But we didn't see that until late on this Saturday evening. Suddenly the streets were filled by people partying! The police closed the streets, so all of Downtown really felt like a big outdoor festival. Crazy. It's the middle of January! And what's more crazy: It's January, and we got 70 degrees. This is summer for us.

We went into a couple of bars that did not play rap music (they're kind of hard to find), and had a few drinks. OK, maybe more than a few. Anyways, we met very much nice people, and had a good time here. Today we're heading for San Antonio. Look at the map under to see where that is, yep, it's just where the red line ends.

Dallas and Fort Worth, then Waco

Downtown Dallas is strange. It's like being in... err... Drammen. Only it's bigger. A lot bigger. We parked our car at a central parking lot this morning and went around for a while. We saw the Kennedy memorial and then headed for the JKF museum. It's nice having a history lesson like this when you're actually on site, beeing able so see the road, having the view from the window where Lee Harvey Oswald (apparently) fired his rifle, and a lot of videos and pictures from the actual happening, the investigation and to see how Oswald was killed and so on. After a nice and long walk downtown Dallas we headed for a city called Fort Worth. Or is it a city? It really looks like an amusement park, all made like a cowboy town in the middle of... another town. This must be funny in the summer with lots of tourists around. We had a really good dinner in the H3 Ranch, a somewhat strange, but good restaurant with great spare ribs, served with corn and beans. Just after sunset, we headed further south and camped outside Waco at another Super 8 motel. This motel got a swimming pool and a jacuzzi, so we'll try that out, and tomorrow we'll head for Austin. Goodnight ya'll.

From Little Rock to Dallas

On our way from Memphis to Dallas, we had to stop for the night. We didn't leave Memphis before 7pm, so we took in on a Super8 Motel along the Interstate around 9.30pm. One double room was $60, including free internet. That's not too bad. You feel kind of shitty after having a McDonald meal right before getting to bed, but we had not much of a choice around here.

Today we stopped for breakfast in Little Rock, and found a nice cafe in the business area. There was not much highlights on the rest of the trip down to Dallas, exept a beautiful sunset with a clear blue, purple, yellow and orange sky right in front of us driving southwest.

When arriving in Dallas we met Justin, a friend of Guro. He offered lodging for the night. We accepted, of course, so here we are, in Dallas, in a living room filled with rubber ducks, a collection of sunglasses and a red velour sofa. We had dinner with Justin and his friend Lauren at a noisy restaurant called Capitol this evening, and now we're off to bed, which in my case happens to be in the middle of the living room. Tomorrow we plan to check out Downtown, and maybe go to Fort W.

Memphis

Downtown Memphis wasn't all too good. Although the city has got a lot of restaurants and bars, they all are spread around. And with a lot of open spaces in between the impression of the city was a slight disappointment after beeing in the way more progressive and dense Nashville. We didn't find very much to do in Memphis. Exept Graceland. What a lovely trip out there! Weather's still awesome, and to visit Graceland the day after Elvis' birthday was a funny experience. We did the Platinum Tour through the Mansion house, the backyards, the gravesite, the airplanes, the car museum and even the sincerely Elvis costume gallery. What a great tour. We shot a lot of pictures here. The funniest part about places like this is to see all the other visitors. Here comes really old women dressed in Elvis t-shirts and leather jackets. Pretty awesome costumes for some of them here.

After visiting Graceland Guro had lunch with Tim from Beaver productions while Tracey and Magnus went to a place called Cafe 66. Here we had some excellent southern food, jambalaya and cobbalt, and later in the afternoon, we left Tracey on the Greyhound bus station for her to go back to St. Louis, while we're heading for Little Rock, Arkansas. Goodbye Tracey, it's been great having you with us on this trip. Have a nice ride back with the Greyhound, I hope it's gonna be an exciting but safe first tour with it.

Happy birthday, Elvis! (Woow, is that Jack White over there?)

Yesterday we were on the road again, this time with Tracey joining us on tour for Nashville and Memphis. On our way to Nashville we stopped for lunch in the small town Paducah where everything seemed to be closed for holidays, even though it's a regular Monday. I guess they took an extra week off here. We did find an Italian place, after all, and the lunch wasn't too bad either.
We had dinner at the Merchants, Broadway Ave in Nashville and then we hung out at Legends Corner, one of the many famous joints here. Not too much people out on this Monday, but it was live music at almost all the places down the street. Today we went out and checked the many boots-, hats- and guitar stores of Nashville. Unfortunately the Hall of Fame museum was closed, but we managed to spend the day here anyway. On our way to Memphis we stopped right outside Nashville to have dinner at a place called Baja Burrito. Really good food here, although we had a hard time finding the place. Sometimes the GPS go nuts, but sometimes we just realize we wouldn't manage to get around without it. We were slightly surprised to find Jack White (White Stripes) and the rest of his band Raconteurs sitting at the table next to us in Baja. And guess what we've found out! We're actually going to Memphis on Elvis´ birthday, right on time there! We're heading west right now, and on our way we're heading through a terrible thunderstorm. Trucks are out of the road some places, and we hear on the news that tornadoes has damaged pretty big areas of both Wisconsin and Missouri.

St. Louis and the arch (it's HOT here!)

We've now stayed at Tracey's parents house for two nights. Very nice! Guro learned some more about american football and entertained mum and dad, while Magnus and Tracey updated each other of what's been going on the last year. Sunday we went to an exhibition called Body Worlds 3 at the Science center. These bodies are for real!! And you can stydy the organs, muscles, skin, the nerval system, blood veins etc. After that we had lunch in nice sunny summer weather, and drove down to see the famous STL Arch that´s become the landmark for St. Louis. We went up to the top in some tiny egg shaped wagons. The whole arch moved in the wind, so we stayed there for only 20 minutes, not to be too dizzy. The sunset was nice from up here.

Later this sunday evening we celebrated Tracey's 30th birthday with dinner and wine. Her whole family was gathered for this meal. Tomorrow we'll be leaving St. Louis for Nashville, and Tracey will be joining us down to Memphis. Thank you so much, Haynes family, for having us in your house these days, and for beeing so great hosts to us travellers.

Last days in Chicago (Jan 4th and 5th)

Our last days in Chicago were great. Yes, we got tickets for the Buddy Guy show. The show was sold out, but the venue sold us tickets anyway. I guess the Norwegian accent and the "stupidity" worked out just fine :-)

Friday 4th we took a taxi up to the part of town called Wicker Park. For you Norwegians, it´s the chicagoan Grünerløkka. We had some great burgers at Ear Wax Café, popped by Restless Records, and took a couple of beers at the Blue Line (a typical after work/business place, but nice. We get really confused of all these TV screens they put up in all the bars here, though). On our way to The Ukranian Village and the club Empty Bottle where we saw a few concerts, we stopped by the Rainbo Club, a really nice pub where we met some people from Madison, Wisconsin.

On Saturday Guro had a coffee with Donna Sue from Jam Productions, a big company in the music business, before we left Chciago and headed for St. Louis. On the way out of Chicago we tried to find as much as possible of the historic Route 66. These old roads let us through places called Romeoville and Joliet, and we stopped a few times at places like Polk-a-dot diner, a retro-like café with jukeboxes on every table.

We’ve now made our way down to St. Louis, Missouri. Here we find ourselves with in a summerlike weather, with a new record for highest temperature ever in January on this day! 72 Fahrenheit! That´s about 26 degrees celcius! Perfect for sightseeing. We’re here mostly to visit Magnus´ friend Tracey.

Museum of Contemporary Art, sushi & blues

Today we walked out the door 12.30 pm for breakfast. The weather is still freezing. Guro did some shopping before we headed for the Museum of Contemporary Art. There is an exhibition there these days called "Sympathy for the Devil. Art and rock and roll since 1967", which features some popart work of artists like Andy Warhol (the short films of all the members of Velvet Underground and the collage with Jackie (there is only one Jackie!) on silk print), and other artists that have used for example old record covers to make pictures. Perfect for us! Afterwards we finally found Ginza, a sushi place we've had recommended. A little bit in doubt since we were the only guests, but the sushi was great. And what's the deal with Japanese beer? It always tastes great! Later tonight we are going back to Buddy Guy´s Legends (for those who have not been reading the earlier posts here, we went there on New Year´s eve) because Buddy Guy himself is playing! The show tonight (and tomorrow, and the day after that) is sold out, but Guro has an appointment with a stranger at 9pm to buy two tickets from him. Famous last words: "We´ll meet here at 9. Don´t sell the tickets!"

Skyscrapers and the Magnificent Mile

Sears Towers used to be the tallest building in the world. You just have to get on top of that when you're in Chicago. So we did. The elevator spent 60 seconds to bring us up to 103rd floor, and luckily the weather had changed into sunshine with no clouds during the night. The view was great. Also from the Observatory deck in the John Hancock Building (at 94th floor) we could see rather much of the city. We've been wandering along the "Magnificent Mile" today, looking around in a few shops for January sales. The bad thing about shopping in Chicago these days is that you put on so much clothes not to freeze to death outside, and that makes it almost impossible to try on clothes when you're in shops. It just does not work. I didn't even want to try regular Levi's jeans on 50% off sale just because I was wearing long underwear! I guess we'll save most of the shopping until we get further south. This evening we had dinner at a concert venue called Empty Bottle. We also joined a three-band gig there afterwards with some crazy stuff called called experimental house-indie-dance-rock...whatever. The bands were rather funny, but really nothing to shout out loud for. Taxi's here are pretty cheap, so we've finally made ourselves less Norwegian-like, beeing able to take a cab instead of walking long distances in these gustly winter winds.

Cold, cold, cold, cold!!!

Today we just stayed in bed forever. It seems. First at 2pm we went out, just to find the weather terrible cold and snowy. Breakfast was at Corner Bakery near the hotel, before we went down to Shedd Aquarium south of Grate Park. The aquarium was pretty OK with a lot of different species, all from frogs to huge snakes, dolphins and clownfish. It's a very old building and museum, and one of the fishes still alive there was from 1933! Gee that's an old fish. After struggling back to the hotel in what seemed to be a winter storm, we had a donut, relaxed, put on more clothes, and went out again a little later for dinner. Most of the shops were closed today, so we just went back around 9pm. Hopefully the weather will change to the better soon. By the way we've got a new room today, with two double beds instead of one, so now we have a lot of space.

New Years Eve in the Windy City

Today is New Years Eve. Everywhere you go people say Happy New Years to you, which is nice. We started our day with a late and way too big breakfast at the Emerald Loop bar and café. After this we went out to Navy Pier, what was told to be a great place at New Years Eve. We' were trying to find out where to spend our evening, but Navy Pier seemed definitely not like an option for us. After walking around in cold, gustly winds with light snow showers for some hours, we bought a bottle of sparkling wine and some donuts and went back to our hotel. We made a reservation for dinner, took a bath and drank up the wine. 8pm we had a great dinner at the restaurant, with oysters, mushroom tarte, salmon, scallops and a three-way chocolate dessert with coffee. After such a meal we had to relax on the bed for an hour just to be able to move! 11pm we went out to a blues club, only to find ourselves without ID. Then we went back to pick up the IDs (by taxi), and went out to a place called Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park. From here we had a nice view over the fireworks and the skyline. Half an hour into 2008 we went to a blues club called Buddy Guy's Legends to have a few beer and to see the last part of a blues concert with a big guy (with band) called Magic Slim. Happy New Year to all of you! :)

Going to Chicago

We tried to start as early as possible from St. Paul today, but it was almost 12am before we took off towards Chicago. The total trip is about 650 km, mostly through the flat, forest- and countryside landscape of Wisconsin, along big roads as Interstate 94 and 90 with speed limits at 60mph. At 3pm we took off from I-94 and went down to Madison for dinner. We really liked that city, with not too big buildings and somehow an Europe kind of atmosphere. Dinner was cheap and good at the Noodle House (we didn't have noodles, but pasta), and the people we met here seemed slightly different from the Minnesota people in Minneapolis, although they all were nice and friendly at both places. We arrived in Chicago at 7.30pm. The last part of the road from the Illinois state border into Chicago was a toll road, with 4 or 5 toll plazas with a $.80, $1 or $1.60 charge. Traffic went really fast around Chicago, so we got to be highly concentrated when changing lanes, and some of the exits came really fast on us. We also learned that you should never rely on your GPS in citys like Chicago because the satelite reseption is poor between all the tall buildings. Luckily for us it was rather easy to find the way to Palmer House Hilton Hotel in the Loop, and we made our check-in without too much trouble. Later in the evening we had pizza at Giordano's, experiencing that one piece of a Chicago-style stuffed pizza is enough food for the rest of the day. Or week.

Winter Wonderland

Det var veldig fint og spesielt å våkne til en lett snøbyge i dag. Å se ut av vinduet i dette nabolaget var akkurat som å være en del av filmen Home Alone. Guro har brukt litt tid på å finne ut hvordan amerikanske innedører åpnes, og baconfrokosten med egg og "french toast" var perfekt! Familien her er utrolig gjestfri, og vi føler oss veldig velkomne her i huset. Vi har fått en flott sightseeing i Minneapolis og gått gjennom "the Skyway", det vil si en innendørs gangvei gjennom andre etasje av stort sett hele bykjernen, i tillegg til å spise lunsj med Dave (far i huset) og et par av hans bekjente. Det er kaldt ute, overskyet og ca 7-8 minusgrader. Gatene er snøfylte, og klimaet føles veldig norsk. I kveld har vi spist ute på tapasrestauranten "Solera" med David og Darby, og guttene Dylan (6) og Devyn (4) har fått et par sjokoladeplater fra Norge å kose seg med. I morgen skal vi starte mot Chicago, så vi skal ta en forholdsvis tidlig kveld for å være opplagt til den første lange kjøre-etappen på denne roadtrip'en.

Travelling to Minneapolis

Så, her er vi, helt plutselig, i Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. Turen gikk veldig greit over dammen, - helt uten forsinkelser! Faktisk landa vi en halv time tidligere enn planlagt. Å passere immigrasjon- og tollskranken gikk heldigvis helt greit. Det ble ingen amerikansk leiebil på oss som vi helst ønsket, men måtte derimot velge mellom en KIA og en Toyota Rav4. Det ble den sølvgrå Toyotaen (lett valg), og den ser foreløpig ut til å fungere bra til vårt bruk, selv om den bare har sommerdekk, og føret her er både isete og glatt. Veiforklaringene var gode, så nå, etter en god middag og et par øl hos en utrolig gjestfri familie her i St. Paul (som er tvillingbyen til Minneapolis), skal ta vi kveld og hvile ut etter en lang tur på flyet.

So here we are, just landed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. The trip went all well. We had no delays from either Oslo Airport or Amsterdam, and touchdown in Minneapolis was almost half an hour before schedule. Passing the immigration and custom desks went all right. Picking out the rental car was a question of choosing between a KIA or a Toyota (and not an american car that we wanted), so we picked the Toyota Rav4 and took off for St.Paul. Our directions was great, so we found our way pretty easy. After a nice dinner and a few beers with our wonderful hosts, we're just off to bed and we'll try to get some rest after the long travel.