Thursday 16 April 2009

America day 4

No running today but plenty of travel! We hit the road early dropping their gorgeous dog Bridie off at karas paernts house and then heading out on the highway.....looking for adventure...(Sorry).

We drove all told for the best part of eleven hours, from Conneticut through new york (Passing Westchester; 5 geek bonus points if you know why that's cool.) New jersey Pennsyvania, Maryland and Washington DC. We stopped off at the Yuengling brewery for a quick tour which was awesome. They make possibly the best american beers I've tasted, including a Porter which is all kinds of awesome. Even their lager is a treat for anyone used to the chemicals 'n' foam of budweiser et al.

The picture above is the lagering caves where the beer is turned into larger over a couple of months. Now of course it's all done through serious cooling technology but way back when it had to be done through the cold constant temperature of the cave system. The brewery even survived through prohibition by selling their porter as a health tonic to anemic and nursing mothers! As you may imagine the number of cases of anemia skyrocketed after prohibition kicked in!

pottsville where the brewery is is a strange town. Obvious very old the streets are narrow and crooked in a way any british person would find comforting. it in a kind of alpine area that is one of the prettiest areas I think I've seen over here.

After that it was time to grab my favourite fast foo, taco bell (See the archives for my treatise on why its the best foodstuff known to man) and then another 4 hours on the road.

As we got within 5 miles of the hotel some fucker pulled onto the motorway made all the cars stop dead and caused a pileup the like of which I've never seen. The car behind us braked too hard severed into the concrete barrier in the middle of the road and flipped his SUV fully two rotations before landing back on its wheels and being rammed by the car behind him. all the cars behind them piled into the back of them and jammed the motorway solid.

We were within feet of having an SUV land on our roof.

And worst of all the car that caused this serious accident has no idea that his sheer fuckwittery caused this to happen.

I apologise for swearing but we're all pretty shaken up.

Anyway, 'breath' After we'd recovered we checked into the hotel and went out to downtown alexandria for dinner, it was pretty busy so after a couple of places we got to a Tapas bar which was excellent. Steve and kara had never had tapas before so I ordered for everyone and they were very impressed with the free for all nature of teh affair.

It did help that the tapas was excellent!!

We stopped into an irish bar on the way home for a quick drink and I was amazed to find EVERYONE in there was smoking. It made for such an unpleasant atmosphere it was a weird reminder of how things used to be in the UK and I'm so glad they've now changed.

Looking forward to new york where no-one smokes.

Sleep now.

Taco bell.

Built up DC

Near smash.

hotel

Alexandria main street Tapas and an IRish bar where everyone and I mean everyone was smoking.

Bed, sweet bed.

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