Ok, fans... I know I've been tardy with my blogging lately... the heat's been frying my already weak brain, my sleep pattern is completely fucked after the US trip and in my waking hours I've generally been vegetating in front of some screen or other for the past 5-6 weeks.
Anyways... quick summary of my trip:
Spent over two weeks on the other side of the pond, had a good time. Started with a quick trip up north, saw three new states (Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont), making for a grand total of 43 states visited. I stayed overnight in Maine, in a small town called Norway. I was curious about the name of course, but it turns out the whole area is packed with European placenames, so there's nothing to suggest any actual connection to the old country. The town was incorporated with its present name back in the late 1700s, way before the first Norwegian immigration and it is surrounded by other small towns with names like Denmark, Sweden, Paris, Poland, Moscow, Oxford etc, so Norway is just a coincidence. Its main claim to fame is that it is the birthplace of Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln's vice president 1861-65 (actually, Hamlin was born right next door, in the tiny hamlet of South Paris...). Lincoln unceremoniously dumped Hamlin in the '64 election to make space on the ticket for the loyal southern senator Andrew Johnson.
After New England I drove down to Virginia to spend a couple of days touring the historical sites of Jamestown and Yorktown. Jamestown was the first permanent British settlement in America, started in 1607. They have a reconstructed outdoors site, with huts and ships and such that's really only so-so, but the museum on the 2nd floor of the visitor center is one of the best and most informative I've ever been to. Lots of good stuff that really puts the colonization into historical context and explains the conditions in Britain at the time. Highly recommended!
Yorktown was the last major battleplace of the American Revolution, and I didn't explore it too thoroughly. I drove by the battlefield and snapped a pic, then spent an hour walking around the visitor centre, which is a couple of minutes' drive away. The centre is informative and also worth a visit.
Next, I drove down to see friends in Winston-Salem, NC. I also got in a trip to the Reynolda House, once home of one of the great tobacco families and now a museum, with a very good collection of American art. It's well worth a visit, if only to see how the rich and famous lived, but if you're more interested in art than me, you'll enjoy the other aspects of it too. Ok, I'm not a complete barbarian, I quite liked some of the stuff there, they had several huge landscape paintings from the old masters of the 19th century, great pioner and western wilderness theme things, for which I am always a sucker.
After Winston Salem I drove down to see a friend in Birmingham, Alabama. That stay included a trip to the State Aquarium in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Great if you're into that sort of thing, personally I was a bit disappointed by the lack of maneating sharks. Don't miss the IMAX, though! I saw a very good film from some South African national parks, and I'm sure the other movies were good too.
I then spent an uneventful weekend in Atlanta before slowly making my way up the various interstates back to Newark, from which I flew home. I'll be posting some more stories from various places in the coming days, if/when the inspiration comes over me.
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