When the Saints go marching in...

We got rinsed at the New Orleans train station by a taxi driver who refused to take us to our hotel for less than $20. He reasoned the traffic was too bad because of the Saints game that evening. The Superdome overlooks the station, and people were already tailgating in the car park. That said, it only took us five minutes to get to our accommodation. Always the hustle in America.

Degas House, on Esplanade Avenue in the Esplanade Ridge neighbourhood, is where French artist Edgar Degas lived and worked for the years he spent in New Orleans. Built in the 1850s, it's a picture of the affluence the city experienced in the years prior to the Civil War. It's separated from the French Quarter only by the I-10, underneath which runs the least salubrious neighbourhood you can imagine.

Degas House

Of course, we had tickets to said Saints game. The taxi back to the stadium cost us $8. It was our first and only NFL game for the trip, although we'd seen a college game a couple of weeks earlier. There's just something about the atmosphere, about being packed into a stadium with 73, 042 other people, all hooting and hollering.

The Superdome has been substantially renovated since it was used as an emergency shelter during Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath. It's huge, and the stands are so steep that if you stand up too quickly you feel as though you're about to topple downwards. We were, as always, surrounded by friendly Americans. Once they discovered we hailed from the land of Steve Irwin, they were just a little excited about explaining all the rules and commentating each and every play as it happened. Jaws still drop at our accent, which is greeted with particular wonder in the South. One sweet young thing of about sixteen responded to Daniel's half-time hot-dog order with eyes wide open and a "where ya'll from"? When we said Western Australia, she nudged one of her friends and whispered of our exotic origins. Said friend asked incredulously, "what ya'll doin' here"?

The game was a good one, I think. The Saints marched in by 14 points (WHO DAT). By the end of the evening our palms ached from high-fiving every American within a ten-yard radius of our seat.

New Orleans

We left Chicago as we arrived, on an Amtrak train. This time, though, it was a somewhat different experience, in coach. The route is called 'The City of New Orleans', so there's no prizes for guessing our destination. This trip was only 900 miles and thus only took a respectable 19 hours. We'd planned for our not so grand tour to more or less wipe out our life savings, but in the interests of avoiding going into debt on top of that, we thought we could economise in economy. We left Chicago in the evening, and we planned to simply sleep away a large part of the journey.

Given that I'd compared our last experience, in a Roomette, to flying in business class (disclaimer: I can only imagine what flying in business class is like), I was certain that coach would resemble cattle class. Alas, I was pleasantly surprised when we settled into our huge reclinable seats, me by the window, of course.

Apparently everybody else intended to sleep through the night, but their doing so certainly kept us from slumber. The problem with trains, you see, is that they're much quieter than airplanes. Which is great, if you have your own roomette. As it was, our carriage reverberated with the snores of Goliath, who must have been sitting down the back somewhere. Then there was a lady (who was anything but) across the aisle from us. This sow (and she was roughly that size) proceeded to feed her piglets COPIOUS amounts of junk food for dinner (and later twinkies for breakfast), before falling asleep and drowning out Goliath. As others dozed off too, we were surrounded by a "sounder" of pigs. Apparently that's a true collective, and I've not complained about Daniel's snoring since. 

So I was well and truly awake at daybreak. It was with silent awe that I sat and stared out the window, a little incredulous at what we were passing by. From memory, I'm fairly sure we pulled into Memphis, TN, in the early hours of the morning, which meant daylight was spent traversing almost the full height of Mississippi. There's some serious money in America (see, for example, my posts about Boston). But there's some really serious poverty. We passed through tiny town after tiny town, all with main streets scattered with derelict buildings, abandoned cars. It felt as though there were more trailer parks and mobile homes than houses. Fire had swept through many places, who knows how long ago. I don't know if anybody could afford to pull these buildings down - they were just abandoned, many of them collapsed inwards after being neglected for too long. If you think Australia has a problem with rural decay (and if you don't, go and watch Cunnamulla), it's got nothing on Mississippi. It was really, really sad.

We arrived in New Orleans mid-afternoon, exhausted, vowing never more to travel coach on a train. Even better, I'd managed to sleep on a skittle - grape, incidentally - and disembarked with a large purple patch on the bum of my jeans. Welcome to N'Awlins.

Perhaps it was lucky there would be no more train travel during this trip, though it's definitely something we'll do again. Phileas Fogg knew what was up - there really is something delicious about slow travel, about spending hours on a train savouring every scene that flies by your window. For the most part, it's very civilised. More so in a Roomette than in coach, perhaps.

“It may be taken for granted that, rash as the Americans are, when they are prudent there is good reason for it.”
― Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days

The Lincoln Park Zoo

While in Chicago we stayed at a hostel in Lincoln Park, a rather lovely suburb just north of the city. The suburb takes its name from Lincoln Park, within which is a 35-acre zoo. It was founded in 1868, and one early inhabitant was a bear with a penchant for escaping its enclosure and freely roaming the park at night.

Not only is this zoo one of the oldest in the country, it's free. Better still, each year in the lead up to Christmas it's decked out with gazillions of fairy lights in every colour imaginable. After dark the zoo becomes a rainbow playground where people eat copious amounts of warm buttered popcorn and watch ice sculpting, while the animals look on, slightly annoyed by the kerfuffle. 

For Daniel, this was the pinnacle of our American Christmas experience. They celebrate the holidays with such earnest joy and enthusiasm, it's hard not to get swept up by it.

Cloud Gate

Meet the most incredible piece of public art I've ever had the pleasure of admiring. While its proper name is Cloud Gate, it's more often affectionately known as the silver bean. It's everything a piece of public sculpture should be - beautiful, thought-provoking, interesting, memorable.

Cloud Gate

From underneath

It sits in the middle of Millennium Park, Chicago, and it's constantly surrounded by mesmerised people. Weighing roughly one hundred tons, I think it is worth every penny of the twenty-three million dollars it cost to create. Amazing, right? It's no green cactus-thingy though...

Cycling and Culture in Chi-Town

Chicago is magnificent. The architecture is magnificent. Lake Michigan is magnificent. The Lakeshore Trail is magnificent. The museum campus and the museums are magnificent. The free Lincoln Park zoo is magnificent. The Christmas lights are magnificent. Are you getting the gist? I didn't even really want to go to Chicago - I knew nothing about it, couldn't really be bothered looking into it, and Daniel struggled to tell me what was actually there to see and do beyond a Jay-Z and Kanye West concert. It ended up being a magical few days, a highlight of the trip and easily the most beautiful city we visited.

The edge of Lake Michigan has not been industrialised, which makes the Chicago shoreline one of the most gorgeous in the country. We hired bicycles and rode some seven or eight miles along it, from Lincoln Park to the Museum Campus - an amazing ride despite the bitter cold and the locals laughing at our daggy bikes. It's also surprisingly hard to cycle while wearing a dozen layers of thick clothing.

Look Mum, No Eyes!

Skyline

No Feet

The museums themselves are world-class. The Campus is a fifty-seven acre park on the water, surrounding the Field Museum of Natural History (some of you may know this from the Ben Stiller Movie Night at the Museum), the Adler Planetarium and the Shedd Aquarium. You would need a week to explore the cavernous depths of these places properly - we were wrecked after a few hours. The most famous exhibit at the Field Museum is Sue, the largest, most complete and best preserved T-Rex skeleton in the world. Running in a 3-D theatre is a half-hour documentary about the discovery and recovery of Sue - it really was interesting. The most amazing creatures at the Shedd Aquarium were the majestic Beluga whales.

Chicago at dusk from the Museum Campus

The Return

It was twilight when we finally left, and the view back to the city was breathtaking. The photos really don't do it justice, they never do. We didn't ride home but jumped into a cab - it was too late, too cold and we had somewhere to be...

Things We Wish We'd Never Eaten #7: Deep-Dish and Dogs

Pizza and hot dogs are a staple in this country, and they come in all shapes and sizes. The most distinctive interpretations of these junk-food classics, though, are found in Chi-town.

Pizzeria Uno opened in 1943, and it's been going strong ever since. This particular restaurant claims to have originated the deep dish pizza, so iconic in Chicago. We got two individual 'pies' to share, one a barbecue chicken and the other a supreme.

Deep Dish Pizza

I'm not sure if deep dish pizza actually counts as pizza; it truly is more like a pie. The crust resembles shortbread or pastry, thick, solid and crumbly. It's quite heavy, really, and the texture just doesn't live up to what you expect of a pizza. The toppings are layered, some two inches thick. They're your standard pizza ingredients, but they don't cook as thoroughly and the proportional balance is different. It was an interesting experience, and not entirely unpleasant on the taste-buds, but we agreed it wasn't something we needed to try again. Dogs on the other hand...

Chicago Dogs are sometimes said to have been "dragged though the garden," and it's a fairly accurate description. On a Chicago Dog you will find all the ingredients you could imagine on a steamed poppy seed bun - sausage, onion, sweet pickle relish, mustard. You'll also find a lot of things you most likely wouldn't have imagined - crushed and quartered roma tomato, celery salt, pickled sport peppers (jalapeno-esque) and a pickle spear. Having you noticed the glaring omission? You will find no ketchup on a Chicago Dog, and it's presence immediately disqualifies anybody from having the Chi-style food experience.

Dog stand

A Chicago Dog

I ordered a plain hot dog with mustard and ... KETCHUP ... and the guy glared at me like I was a Yankees fan. Daniel went the full hog and said that, apart from being ridiculously hard to eat, it got his vote. He described it as a party in your mouth. This particular party, though, got advertised on Facebook and some unexpected guests turned up, but by the end you decided they really helped the mix of things. On the way home, however, he patted his belly and announced that the party was over and everybody wanted to leave... Nice.

The California Zephyr

Thus far we had travelled by plane, car, ferry, horse and bicycle. In the spirit of a true Grand Tour we took a train from San Francisco to Chicago. The route is known as the California Zephyr, and it's one of the most scenic in the country. It's also the longest - we were on board for fifty-five hours from 0900 Sunday to 1600 Tuesday. After considering this length of time in light of the fifty-odd hours it took us to get from Perth to Boston, we booked a 'roomette' in a sleeper car, the equivalent of a business class ticket on a plane.

Daniel and his beloved Poisian

Two large and comfortable chairs faced each other with a retractable table in between. At night, the chairs would slide flat to make a bed and a second pulled down from the roof. All in all it was very comfortable (at least for Daniel, who took the much roomier bottom bunk), and quieter and more scenic than a plane. Between books, the laptop and a cross-stitch kit I picked up in Monument Valley, boredom was not an issue, and that's to say nothing of the scenery. Over the three days we passed through the deserts of Arizona and Utah (near the La Sal Mountains where we'd been a couple of weeks previously), the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains.

The most bewildering sight of our journey was a deer, or at least a deer head sticking out above a frozen river. Behind it, leading from the bank, was the partly refrozen path it had taken up to that point. It seems the water was so cold the poor deer only made it halfway across. It'll have to wait until spring to get to the other side...



All our meals were included and taken in a communal dining car. Over some six or seven sittings we encountered some lovely people, and a number of geologists. Actually, we met three different geologists over three meals - it makes sense, I suppose, given the train route. It was nice to have some varied company - Daniel and I are getting quite sick of sitting down for dinner, looking at each other and asking "whats new?" Not much.