Capitol idea madam

"Please keep the noise down when on your phone, nobody wants to hear about your Saturday night. Except me."

Ooga booga boo. So, right before I returned to this god-forsaken island, I took full advantage of the continent I was on and took a little trip to somewhere I had wanted to visit the entire year, Washington, DC, in that big old United States of American't. Thanks to some incredibly cheap bus tickets and a gap before D-day, I spent two days in DC and half a day in Philadelphia, with some pretty nasty semi-conscious travel thrown in either side. Here is what I done, a couple of weeks back.

After seeing one of the worst films of this year, Salt, with my mate Dave (it made 24 look sensible), I boarded a Megabus bound for Philadelphia on the Friday night on my todd. Leaving Toronto, I decided that this double decker bus, with air-conditioning, free WiFi and decent leg room was a pretty good deal for 15 bucks or whatever stupid amount of cash I paid for the pleasure. A few hours later at the border, I sort of changed my mind. Firstly, we waited two ruddy hours just to get seen by the border guards, who were surprisingly lax compared to the comparative dressing down I got last time. But then once that was done, one dumbass who was held longer than everyone else decides not to tell the driver he's back on the bus, so we wait around for another half an hour before the driver realises. Once we're through, we stop off at a service station. After that, third fuck-up; the driver decides to get lost. Total jokes. Why the hell he isn't equipped with GPS and has to go back to the same service station three times to ask different taxi drivers, I have no idea. So, a pretty gruelling 10-hour journey turns into a 14-hour journey and the bus arrives in Philly at lunchtime... in possibly the hottest weather I've ever experienced.

The blast of heat that hit me was totally horrific, but not even the worst I'd experience during the journey. Luckily I didn't have to hang around long and jumped onto the next bus to DC, despite not having the right ticket. Hurrah! Another few hours, half-broken air conditioning and I was in the place where shit goes down. Y'know all that stuff with the men and whatnot and those TV shows. Yeah? In conclusion, Megabus are bad shitheads. But I guess you get what you pay for.

Washington, D.C.

Welcome to Washington, where it's 40 degrees Celsius before the humidity kicks in, everything is white and there's a ridiculous amount of museums. That'd be my slogan if I was a PR man for that place, tourism would shoot up mate. Yes, the heat. Oh my fucking god. When I arrived, I fumbled around a little bit trying to look for my hostel despite it being just up the road and by the time I reached the place, I was sweating like a really bad joke. I dumped my stuff in my room and went in the search of liquid, which seems to be a problem in DC, due to a worrying lack of convenience stores. I found a Starbucks, hobbled back to the hostel, contemplated the ridiculousness of the heat for a while, did another trip to a supermarket and came back exhausted. I then had an extreme sit down for a good few hours whilst I waited for it to get a bit cooler in the evening, which it did... by about two degrees.

Lurching out of the door at about seven, I headed in the general direction of all those buildings. About half an hour later, I turned on tourist mode, as I snapped away at a multitude of places I'd seen a billion times before on TV and in movies. The Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Capitol Building.. it was all present and correct and I wandered around the National Mall gawping to the max. That whole area is like one huge outdoor museum, transported straight from Ancient Greece or Rome and to say it's impressive would be an understatement. My enthusiasm was slightly dampened by the amount of American Boyscouts clogging up my monuments (apparently there was some kind of jamboree with every Boyscout ever attending, yapping about fuggin' Starcraft II in their Texan accents), but being down there was cool and it's definitely worth seeing, regardless of how proud of being American you are (and obviously I'm not at all.. cos I'm not.. yagetme..). Seeing Honest Abe on his seat was particularly spesh.

Later, darkness approached and with enough monuments taken in, 28 empty bottles of liquid in my bag and some totally evil blisters forming on my feet, I headed back up to the hostel, with the really quite menacing Washington Monument staring down at me with it's evil red eyes.

The next day I did what I do best and had a quality lie in and then headed back out into the furnace after slapping on six month's worth of sunblock. My plan was to hit as many air-conned museums as I could until it got cooler and then try and see what I missed the previous day. The first one I hit was the Air and Space Museum, which had some cool war stuff, but I didn't think much to the space side. I did however give into drilled-in temptations and watch Hubble 3D on IMAX, because it seemed like the right thing to do and that was pretty impressive. Space is pretty cool after all. After that, I walked through a very strange sculpture park and into the next museum, The Natural History one. Not much to say on this one either, a lot of stuffed animals really. Next, which was The American History museum. This was more like it. Abraham Lincoln's hat! A cool museum, enough said.

It was finally getting cooler after this, so I headed to the Holocaust Museum which I'd heard some good things about, but they had no passes left and were closing soon, so I instead carried on the march. I traipsed around the Easter Basin having a shufty at the Jefferson Memorial (the water purifier place for all you Fallout 3 dorks) and the Roosevelt Memorial and then headed back uptown to the main man's place, The White House. Here I found some Ethiopian blokes shouting at Obama to come out and free a prisoner, some mounted machine guns on the roof and a nice man to take a picture of me whilst I grimaced. Much like seeing the Statue of Liberty in New York, it was kind of surreal seeing the place in real life and another one of those "I've seen it" moments.

I headed back to the hostel as night drew in once again, destroying a burger from an apparently famous joint and headed to bed completely knackered and with my feet literally fucked. There was still things I missed out, like the Pentagon and Arlington Cemetery, but they will have to wait until next time. The next morning, I got up earlier and bought some tacky shit to take back and got on a bus at about lunchtime to Philly. Ultimately, I'm glad I went to DC, I saw a lot of shit and was throughly impressed by the spectacle. Just little things like seeing FBI written on a police car or an actual real life fallout shelter were enough to put a retarded grin on my face. I got the same impression as I do in London, that big boy shit goes down here, which is a world away from where I live now, a village in West Yorkshire where nothing happens. It also made me realise that the States had some pretty impressive historical figures and ideals when it was first found, and monuments to match.. regardless of the monstrosity it may have become in recent times.

Philadelphia, PA.

I got back to Philadelphia mid-afternoon and had about six hours or so to bum around until my bus back to Toronto. With literally a map which showed me where the old city was and a knowledge that there was some old cracked bell, I walked a long way to the old bit. Here, I figured out that the only things worth seeing were the Constitution Hall (where they signed the constitution funnily enough). That was fully booked for the day, so instead I had a look at The Liberty Bell, which is probably the most overrated piece of historical anything ever. I prefer Taco Bell. The Old City was pretty nice and quaint but there wasn't a right lot to look at. The scant remains of Ben Franklin's house wasn't that good Philly, sorry. Everyone has toilets after all.

Eventually, I headed back down the way I came and saw a few pretty cool neighbourhoods on the way. Sadly, I never ate a Philly Cheese Steak (I never really trusted any of the places that did them) or found the steps where Rocky ran up (I was looking at the Town Hall, apparently it was the Courthouse, meh), but eh. I got back to the station, which was a frankly awesome looking really grandiose 1930s-style building, and hung around like a bum for a couple of hours before my bus came. In conclusion, Philly wasn't that interesting and I wouldn't have gone there if it wasn't a stop on the Megabus. Sorry. The journey back was pretty pain-free, especially since it wasn't that busy and the driver knew where he was fucking going this time.

All in all, a very cheap trip and I'm really glad I went to D.C. If I could have changed one thing, I would have definitely brought someone with me, since I didn't have anyone to make lame jokes about the monument looking like a member with. And that's a very sad thing indeed.

Lots of photos on my Facebook gaaahhhhhh!

A stroll around the lake

"Ladies, Ladies, Ladies..."

Firstly may I apologise wholeheartedly for my total lack of blog communications recently, which I partly blame on the fact I spazzed up my netbook, but also partly blame on my (at times) horrific laziness. So, now I have to delve into my memory banks to recall the precise details of what happened on a trip I took over a month ago. Or I would, but luckily I'm just going to slightly plagarise Cam's blog (who came with me and Lev) and I won't even risk getting kicked out of uni (incidentally, I've have a few dreams recently where I have a mound of assignments and revision to do and then I wake up and realise I'll probably never have to do an assignment again). So let's get it on.

Pre-trip, Toronto, Ontario

Early May and I'm free from work for about two weeks, money in the bank, Greyhound pass bought, hostels booked, half-packed and awaiting the arrival of my favourite little man from Carlisle. Luckily, that volcano thing decided not to be a dick and Lev made it over to Toronto as planned, despite nearly missing all of his flights because he's rubbish. That night I took him on a whistle-stop tour of Toronto, which included his first 7-11 slushie, a quick tour around downtown, the annex and the harbour front and demolishing several chicken wings. The next day we popped into the Royal Ontario museum, which was the first time I'd been and wasn't bad, although nothing to write home about, which is ironic, because that's essentially what I'm doing right now. Think dinosaur bones, stuffed animals and a suit of armour and you've essentially got it. The day after that, with Lev just about settling into Toronto, we pulled the carpet under his feet and began our travels, after getting our Benjamins (look it up homeboys) and experiencing another Canadian first for me, smoked meat sandwiches, which are sandwiches with smoked meat in them. Suprise!

We'd all bought a 7-day pass that entitled unlimited travel around the USA on Greyhound coaches for 240ish dollars. None of our tickets were actually booked, you had to present them at each bus station in exchange for a ticket, which I always found slightly nerve-wracking, in case a entire hockey time had booked the coach for a sodding day trip to an aquarium or likewise. But we crossed the first hurdle by boarding our bus to New York on time at around 11pm. The trip itself took close to 12 hours, which involved a slightly scary interrogation by US border guards (who probably "go home and have a wank over how awesome they think they are" - Lev) and the bizarre sight of seeing an Amish family sitting in a service station, right next to a Dunkin' Donuts, somewhere in New York state at 4am in the morning. But I'd finally entered Obama's USA and y'know what? It were reet good like.

New York City, New York

We arrived in New York at around 9-9.30 and were straightaway thrust into a busy, claustrophobic subway station with little idea of where we were or where the hostel was, and just a totally confusing subway map to look at. We walked up the road and headed straight to the first coffee place we found which was run by loud Italian people and shoved food and caffeine down our necks to make up for the piss-poor attempts at sleep we got on the coach. Then we were presented with a sight I've seen many times in movies, on TV and err.. GTA IV - Times Square. After having a mild panic attack at the amount of advertising signs and people and the fact I was actually in scary New York, we took some pictures and then headed up to the hostel on the subway, which wasn't nearly as scary as it sounds.

After dumping our stuff off at the hostel, which was pretty good (and apparently the biggest in one of its kind in North America, which makes sense) we headed straight for the Bronx Zoo, which was free on a Wednesday. The subway journey there was cool as we got to ride on and see the famous overground subway tracks, which again just reminded me of GTA (sorry). The Bronx apparently isn't full of hard bastards like it used to be, which is reflective of a lot of New York nowadays thanks to that Rudolph mayor bloke - it was the same case for Harlem where our hostel was, which seemed safe enough. With the sun already starting to burn the shit out of my face, we wandered around the zoo for most of the day, the highlights probably being a Polar Bear battering a plastic box, a brown bear with a human haircut and some ridiculous sealions.

As the evening approached, we headed back downtown and bought one of those city tour packages which included tours and admission for various attractions for a pretty decent price. Straight away we headed up the big boy himself, the Empire State building, disappointingly just missing the sunset. However, we got the jaw-dropping views of New York at night instead, which blew everyone's faces off, like the wind. Wind makes you hungry, so after fannying about for a bit, we decided to go to Planet Hollywood (Owned by John McClane, Rambo and formerly the Terminator) for a burger, which was packed with movie memorabilia and decent food, which sadly wasn't cooked by Sylvester Stallone. Also, I wasn't sure if the waiter was trying to play a character or not. If he wasn't, he was a prick. After that, we were all totally knackered and retired back to the hostel to reboot for another stupidly busy day.

Up early, stuffed with muffins and ready to go, we found our way to the nearest open-top bus tour stop after a quick look around a big-ass cathedral. We rode all the way from Harlem to the ferry terminal at Battery Park on two separate buses, with two pretty good tour guides. The second guy in particular cracked me up, as he was a crazy old nutter who made jokes straight out of 1975. We then boarded the ferry for the Statue of Liberty, which was kind of smaller than I thought it would be. The views from the ferry were awesome and wandering around on the island was totally surreal. After taking that in, we headed back to the mainland, had a look around the financial district and Wall Street, where oddly there was traders selling knock-off DVDs (they must be hard up; also there was a hell of a lot of African guys selling fake Rolexs from black bin liners in New York, not sure what that shit was).

Waiting for a two-hour night tour of Brooklyn, we had some textbook dinner at sunset at a place called Uno and then hopped back onto another bus which took us back up to Times Square (with a truly awful guide this time), then a fourth of the day which would take us out to David Beckham's son (Brooklyn ya idiot). The tour held ridiculous views of New York, especially from the other side of the river and going across the Brooklyn Bridge was immense - Brooklyn itself wasn't particularly interesting, but we got to eat at a famous ice cream place anyway which you can't really argue with. Sunburnt to hell, we all headed back to the hostel that night, completely destroyed by another stupid-busy day.

The next morning we were a bit late getting down to the bus station for Boston, because (plagirism alert):"It seemed to have slipped our mind, just how big this ruddy apple was."

Boston, Massachusetts

We got to Boston late afternoon after a pretty painless bus ride and after fumbling finding the hostel, wandered around this really quite nice city in the sunshine. We took Boston's subway to and from the hostel and headed back into the centre. The old town and Boston Common in particular were sweet and later on we found the Cheers bar - Lev in particular seemed to have a complete heart attack over this place, I mean, I liked the show, but I think Lev would have stayed in the gift shop for the rest of his life if he could - the douche. We did some more walking around along "The Freedom Trail" which follows a load of the historic sites in the city, and then later in the evening we found a pretty quirky restaurant where we ate clam chowder, stared in amazement at Irish people singing songs around a piano, ignored the hockey, pretended we were from "Baaahston" and generally lived like kings for the evening (except we couldn't get served for booze because Cam was under 21, stupid America).

After another decent sleep in the hostel, me and Lev met a very wet Cam at breakfast, who had gone off exploring at 6am in the sodding rain. We joined in on it and took a look around Harvard University and a bit more of the town, but the rain pissed on our bonfire and sadly later that afternoon we were leaving the place for Montreal. It was a shame we didn't spend more time in Boston and that half of the time it was shitty weather - hopefully I'll get to come back someday. At the bus station, Lev dropped a clanger and lost his bus pass which was a kick in the teeth, and Cam later found out he'd left his jacket, but once we were on the bus we began some intense games of cards and I found out Leeds had been promoted, everyone's spirits quickly lifted (well mine did). For the record, the only thing I lost during the trip was a nine of clubs. So nerr.

The long trip from Boston to Montreal was the best of the bus journeys due to the scenery through Vermont, with it's beautiful rolling hills and a spectacular thunderstorm. This is America at it's finest and it's clear to see why those blokes who landed in New England back in ye olde days wanted to stay here. Once we reached Canada, the difference in border control was hilarious - I've literally had more security checks getting on a rollercoaster. God bless those trusty Canadians.

Montreal, Quebec

We entered French Canada in the evening and were faced with another subway system to get to our third hostel of the trip. The biggest shock at this point was the cold - we'd gone from blazing hot Toronto and New York to rainy Boston and now to a cold Montreal, with the temperatures barely above freezing. That night we checked in late and went to bed, waking up to SNOW in the morning. The first thing we did was to try and get a good view of the city - handily, there's a big fuck off hill called Mont Royal, so we climbed up that, mostly complaining about the cold and looked out at the view. Or at least we would have done, if we could have seen anything past the white fuzz. Nevertheless it was cool being up there. And cold.

We then climbed down from that silliness and had a wander around a dull, grey and pretty much deserted Montreal on a Sunday, a world away from it's "party town" tag. I think we came to Montreal at the wrong time, although through no fault of our own, but we managed to see some nice buildings, get lost in the underground city which was mainly just full of hobos and go to a totally confusing art exhibition - everything else seemed to be closed. Later that day we used my privileges as a Cineplex employee to see Iron Man 2 on the IMAX at "Banque Scotia", a name I find hilarious considering all the films are in English. Montreal is pretty French, but as soon as someone realises you're English (whether you're speaking French or not), they speak it to you, so perhaps I'm taking the wrong attitude, but I don't see the point in speaking French at all. Pardon monsieur. We also visited a few book stores to feed Lev's comic book addiction, which was a long-running theme of the trip. We dropped into a 24-hour arcade on the way back to the hostel, where we gamed the night away for about 20 minutes and ate authentic Montreal poutine... at a burger chain. We did some major league chilling out relaxing at the hostel that night, which would be our last on the road.

The next morning the snow had fucked off and we were leaving, brilliant.

Ottawa, Ontario

So a quick stop off in the nation's capital on the way home and there was only really one place to head for - Parliament Hill. The buildings were impressive and the amount of Canadian flags verged on the insane, but it seemed a nice enough place and we took more than enough photos of buildings, memorials, sculptures and.. flags. We ate in an very strange, empty restaurant and after a few hours of being in Ottawa, got back on the coach to head home to Toronto, where me and Lev spent at least two hours talking utter shite about an idea to introduce snail racing on coaches.

And that was it. The next day we saw another movie at my cinema (look out soon for another movie review blog post, oh man, how excited you must be right now), we had another Toronto walk and then left Lev at Cam's as his house is nearer the subway and he had an early flight to get the next morning.

All in all, the trip was bloody marvellous. My first trip to the States proved to be a memorable one, but most definitely won't be my last and the fact the trip went so smoothly was truly impressive. The travel times were long but didn't ever hinder us, but if I could have changed anything, it would have been nice to spend some more time everywhere. Sadly the restrains of work and Lev's schedule made this not an option - however, I believe we made the most of our time and I'm really glad I did it. And a-thank you for reading. The pictures are all over my facebook mate. Night.

Survival of the Fattest

"Savage pile-up out there, holy hell!"

As I sit here, in shorts, with the window open and the temperature outside apparently 17 degrees celsius, I am led to believe that I survived the Canadian winter. Ok, so maybe it was a mild one (and you got more snow at home, nerr), but I never had to buy that huge big winter coat or winter boots and somehow pulled through minus twenty-ridiculous temperatures with layers of clothing. Just. That kind of weather is not fun, especially when you're downtown and the horrible icy wind from the tall buildings and the lake is blowing in your face, you just think: "I'D TAKE A RAINY AFTERNOON IN GUISELEY OVER THIS!". Then you look at the CN Tower and come to your senses. But yeah, apologies about not doing a proper blog for about two and a half months (this is me pretending you really care), but look, you're reading this one, so shut up. So what's happened in 2010?

I'm now into the second half of my working visa programme, and the "working" part is still happening. Yeah, I'm still getting paid minimum wage for serving people who seem to lose their common sense as soon as they walk into a movie theatre. And this has become all the more apparent since I was trained on Box Office, which now means I can sell tickets, or alternatively, take abuse and phone calls at Guest Services. I don't mind this role sometimes, it's pretty easy and a bit more dignified than some of the other jobs and you're actually helping people make the biggest decisions they'll make.. in a cinema.. that day. Although at times, it's skull-crushingly dull, especially since our theatre's box office is separated from the level with all the screens and stuff on, so your only company are guests compared to a wealth of lovely co-workers when you work on floor, cleaning theatres and the like (which I actually miss).

Still, work is very regular at the moment and I'm managing to hit 40 hours a week pretty much every week now, which means I can live alright and save (more on that later) - a big difference from the "pay day poverty crawls " of last year...although if I have extra money, it goes on practically nothing because I'm an idiot. The ridiculous late night shifts seem to have disappeared since I was trained on Box as well, as I now work very respectable day shifts - good for some, but this is the first time since probably Year 11 that I've had to get up early everyday for five or six days in a row. And I fucking hate early mornings. What kind of lowlife goes to watch a film at 10.30am? Sub-human scum, that's who.

Aside from work, there's been a few rad happenings, some of which I missed because of work. Shitbags. The ones I did attend included my birthday last week, which was a right mess, running into Mr James Moore of UK Thrash metallers Seregon fame downtown for some chicken n' booze in February and a couple of leaving parties, one for Min at work and another for my housemate Arnaud. My house is still a revolving door of nationalities, two French guys left and an 18-year old Californian model moved in (steady, she's with her brother..not like that.. I don't.. think), but I've really grown to appreciate the place, especially when you come downstairs and there's food on the table, and Carey is like:"Have some food and wine!" and you're like: "No, I'm good man, I've got my own" and he's like "I WON'T REST UNTIL YOU'VE EATEN IT", so you have to eat it, and it's good. There's been heavy doses of cinema watching, drinking non-warm beer and hanging out, maxin', relaxin' etc on my days off in the past couple of months, including a very strange day on a chillier Toronto island recently, which involved a nutter attacking trees and proclaiming he was Satan. That's Toronto for ya. I've also watched quite a lot of (real) football this month, unlike hockey... which brings me onto my next point.

That's right, the Olympic Games happened. Ok, it was at the other side of the country, but everyone went nuts for it over here, especially the hockey. I didn't really pay much interest in it, I watched a few of the events on TV and some of them were pretty interesting, but I was generally very apathetic to it. The Canadians of course, went into patriotic overdrive, which was obvious from the TV coverage which proclaimed that they were going to win everything and everyone else in the world was shit. Turns out they weren't far wrong and I witnessed first-hand patriotism after the gold medal hockey final - me and a mate went to a pub after work on that day whilst the hockey was playing, purposefully going somewhere that didn't have a TV so it'd be a bit quieter -turns out they did have a TV, and upon leaving the place, Toronto seemed to turn into a drunken flag-waving zoo, which was nice to see, I guess. But ultimately, it just made me think: "The World Cup is going to shit all over this". And now, with a little bit of milder weather, I'm looking forward to it even more, roll on June (and please Leeds, don't fuck promotion up..)! Canada is a great country, but hockey is rubbish. Sorry.

The worst thing that has happened in 2010 so far is the fact that I lost my February Metropass in the middle of February, meaning I wasted about sixty bucks of my hard-earned money and lost the freedom to go wherever I wanted for a couple of weeks. Truely heartbreaking. However, I also discovered the wonders of Skype recently, so now I can call home for pennies whenever I want. Add me (lazydog03) if you want to hear how much my accent hasn't changed since I've been away.

My good friend Lev finally booked his flights over for May 3rd the other day, and along with my fellow English Torontonian Cam, we shall finally be escaping T.O for a week! A trip has been planned and estimated for Toronto > New York > Boston > Montreal and then back to reality, so I'm well looking forward to that and getting out of this (lovely) city for a bit. I'll have more about that trip next time, or maybe just pictures from it if I don't pull my finger out and only write a blog when I come back. It seems very odd that I'm using money I've saved up whilst over here to pay for this trip considering I was scraping by to even survive back in November. I'm so glad I got more regular hours at work or I don't think I'd be going anywhere until I went home, which would have been a bit of a waste of an opportunity.

As for my plans after this, currently, all I know is I have a flight booked home for August 12th. I'll be back at the cinema straight after I come back from this trip in May and probably work like a prisoner of war horse until July, when I'll do the second round of travelling. At the moment, I'm contemplating getting a Greyhound North American pass thing, which is usually 200 dollars for seven days, but apparently, if you're a HI-hostel member which I am, you can upgrade it to 15 days for free , which seems so liberating to me - you could literally go anywhere in Canada or the US for dirt cheap. This is still a foetus of an idea and I still fancy exploring Eastern Canada more, so there could even be three trips in the works - stay tuned for useless information you don't care about! Hooray!

That's it for now. Thanks for reading and a special thank you for anyone who's complimented my blog in real life or on Facebook, you're my heroes. Toronto is still being good to me. Now excuse me, I must drink some of this Canada Dry and beat up a raccoon. Good evening.