The Greyhound Experience

proud and glory of St.Louis: Budweiser beer and the Cardinals baseball team


clean?


THE Arch, St. Louis


Mississipi River in St.Louis, Missouri


Memphis, Tennessee


Sun Studio, Memphis, Tennessee


Lucky dogs, Ignatius used to eat them!




French Quarter, New Orleans


French Quarter, New Orleans


St. Louis cemetery, New Orleans


so many gigs


New Orleans


New Orleans


New Orleans


Road signs in Flagstaff, Arizona

It sounds like a scary movie, doesn't it? Actually, for some poor bloke in Canada it was real (check the news from two weeks ago). Anyway, I am not going to relate my bus experiences here because that would take enough space to fill a totally new blog. I am only going to try to summarize what I have been doing for the last weeks. I must say, although I said it before, it is not easy to find an Internet cafe in the States (and I don't mean a cafe with wi-fi, I mean a place with computers!).
Well, after the 15 days adventure with the Japanese who couldn't speak English but who didn't complain about driving 4.000 miles, I ended up back in Flagstaff, Arizona. Took the fast dog (Greyhound) to Austin (Texas) , can't remember how many hours, but many. Obviously, the bus was delayed a few times and lucky enough in one occasion it got delayed in Dallas, so I went to explore the city. A short walk from the bus station in downtown I found the place where Kennedy was shot. And that is about all I saw in Dallas. Ah, lots of skyscrapers and it was very hot.
In Austin I couchsurfed with two really nice guys, Alejandro and Benjamin. They showed me the city, which is very interesting because it is the capital of Texas but it is very liberal, they say it's like an oasis in the middle of the dessert. It's got a huge university and the capitol, which is bigger than the one in Washington DC (and they are very proud of that, of course, in Texas everything is BIGGER). In Austin I also got to see a very cool blues performance in an old shack, very hot and humid, lots of people drinking beer and dancing in a very tiny space, very genuine, I loved it!
From Austin I took the bus to New Orleans, la Belle. Well, I don't know if it's called The Beautiful, but it should. It's got so much character, it's so special, even though you can still see the damages from the Katrina hurricane (3 years later!!!) it's just stunning. Specially the French Quarter. Lots of music, lots of American tourists, tons of charm, the buildings are so cute, and it's easy to move around, on foot or by tram. I loved the food down there too: the jambalaya, the gumbo, the mint julep, yummy! all this Cajun influences. I visited a few cemeteries too, because they have sad intriguing statues and obviously they are quiet and a bit mysterious.
New Orleans is with Santa Fe one of my favourite cities in the US, so glad I went.
From there yet another bus ride to Memphis, where I did couchsurfing too and I stayed with a group of college students that were hilarious and we had a great time together, we even played pool, ate popcorn and listened to Elvis songs, but we didn't go to Graceland. We past through though and I could see it was a big mansion. Memphis is very run down, it looks like nothing happens there but all around there are plenty of these incredibly big mansions that look like the one in Gone with the wind.
From Memphis, Tennessee to St. Louis, Missouri. The people's accents start to change... a little bit. It was so hard to understand them in New Orleans, but now I am getting used to that southern drawl.
St. Louis, a typical city in the Midwest. But with the BIGGEST arch. Very impressive, very big. I did like downtown a lot, lots of old red brick buildings, but it seemed like ghost town, nobody on the streets. Such a shame. My hosts also told me that some places I shouldn't walk because it's the most dangerous city in the US (!!!!).