Hey all you out there in Internets land!
I just got off a 30 hour train journey from the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle: a 3 day celebration of all that is exciting about computer games.
I want to tell you all about it in detail but I’ve already written about 8 pages in my diary and I really don’t want to write them all again, so here’s some snippets:
Anyone who doesn’t like Los Angeles hasn’t been to Venice Beach.
This place is paradise, I’m lost for words. The beach is endless (I’ll get my photos up soon), the only chain store nearby is a Subway, which I consider to be the least offensive of fast food, the place is all surf and skate shops, and everyone here smiles and talks to each other. Even the hobos ask me how the water is instead of asking for money. Apparently skating was invented here, and I believe the recent Romeo and Juliet adaption was set here. That pretty much sums the place up quite well. I’m going to go to Santa Monica tomorrow because my favourite band, Everclear, wrote a song about it. Hooray.
IMG_2092, originally uploaded by shrieking.
This isn’t what I expected from Chicago, but it’s what I got. I had a few down days in Chicago, where I wanted to go out, or at least hang out with someone, but no-one was around, and for a while I felt pretty low, but then I finally got chatting to a few interesting people, then went out for a quick pint with some Irish guy which turned into 9 or 10, and felt a lot better. I went to the zoo whilst hungover and saw loads of cool animals. I’m not really into zoos but it was free and penguins are awesome. Afterwards I laid about on the beach and decided that all hangovers should come with a free beach.
Washington was hot, hot, hot, and extremely humid. I sweated 24 hours a day and generally felt icky. The place was pretty cool though: I saw all the necessary sights to call myself a true tourist. Sadly I didn’t get to go out and see the nightlife much but I made it out with a bunch of people from my hostel on Saturday night into Adams Morgan, which is the cool part of Washington where all the good bars are. I met a guy named Trevor who is motorbiking around the US alone, which sounds all kinds of awesome.
A couple of weeks off from hosteling and sight-seeing makes for boring blog posts, I’m afraid. I’m heading to Washington in a few days so I’ll have more to talk about when I get there, but in the meantime, I’m just hanging out in Lancaster, PA, with some friends of Beth, playing video games and avoiding expenditure for a while. I’m still alive and well though, don’t worry!
While I was in Philadelphia I went to the Eastern State Penitentiary, which is scary and ruined and awesome, and the Mutter museum, which is full of dead babies in jars, and as such also scary and awesome.