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.