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.