New York, NY

We arrived in New York on Wednesday 24th in the afternoon. It was snowing a lot and of course it was very cold.

We took a taxi and went straight to out host Evan. We left our bags there and left for a first walk through the big apple. We didn't go very far: we came across "The Food Emporium", a food market, and stopped there as we were quite hungry!








The following morning we visited the Empire State Building going up to the 86th floor. The view of the snow covered city was wonderful, but the freezing wind made it hard to stay outside on the observation deck for long.















In the afternoon we spent some time on Times Square. The surrounding buildings are covered with big screens showing colorful advertisements. It's really a show by itself standing there and watch, espetially at night.















And the shops there are amazing: the m&m's store, Toys'r'us, Disney, gift shops.....we spent lots of hours there during our NY visit, which, after all, gave us some rest from the bone chilling weather.
On Friday we stopped at Union Square. There was the farmers market and lots of small bars, restaurants and shops around the plaza.












At around 2 pm we moved towards Times Square and stood in line in front of the Ticket Ticket office for getting discounted musical tickes. We got tickets for the broadway musical "Million Dollar Quartet", based on the true event of the reunion of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins at Sun Records in 1956. The show was amazing, presenting the most popular songs of the four musicians.





On Saturday we headed to lower Manhattan to the financial district and to "Ground Zero". On the way we stopped at the Rockefeller Center and at Washington Square. Once arrived at "Ground Zero" we took a look at the visitors center, a kind of museum showing pictures and statements of 9/11. The whole exposition was very touchy. We also took a guided tour, organized by people who were directly affected by the catastrophe. The tourguide first told us what life was at the World Trade Center and about the energy surrounding that area. Then we were told about the day of the attack and one of the tourguides told us about her personal loss! Very touchy.







On Sunday we visited lower Manhattan again as we didn't have time to see everything the day before. We first went to the Battery Parck for a good view of the Liberty Statue. After that we walked along the famous Wall Street and finished with a walk across the Brooklyn bridge.














On our last day, Monday 31st, we packed all our bags and then headed to the museum of natural science for some pictures of the entrance hall (unfortunately there was no time for a visit). At around 2 pm we left with all our heavy bags towards the metro station, direction JFK airport. We were both sad and happy to go back to Switzerland. It was an amazing 1-month trip, but also tiresome and exausting. We were looking forward to have a fix place to stay without moving every day.

Boston, MA

After Washington, D.C we went to Boston again. We wanted to see our friends Bruce and Sally one more time before flying back to Switzerland. We arrived at 7 am of the 24th at the Greyhound station in Worcester (pronounced “Wuster”!?). Bruce came pick us up!

There was lots of snow everywhere: very beautiful, but freezing cold (about -21°C!! Which is -6°F). Once we arrived at Bruce's , he made a delicious breakfast for us based on eggs, bacon and toasts! Both, Bruce and Sally, had some errands to run that day, so we spent some time relaxing on the couch and watching the squirrels and the birds on the back yard. There was pritty much something going on in the backyard! Lots of beautiful birds coming for food (they have different seed trays in the garden) and squirrels chasing each other on the snow covered tree branches!

The following day Bruce and Sally drove us into Boston. We had some bags to pick up at the Greyhound station, we had sent them directly to Boston from San Diego.

We parked the car and walked to the capitol (for our picture collection) and then to the northend, where we had a delicious lunch in an italian restaurant followed by a desert at Mike's (a very good pastry). It was very hard to choose between chesecake, cookies, muffins, cannous, tiramisu, brownies, etc (espetially for Romina).

We walked back to the car after that. It was freezing, but it was a beautiful sunny day.

Once arrived at home we had to re-pack all our stuff and get the bags ready for the approching flight back to Switzerland. It was a long and annoying procedure! Wednesday morning Bruce took us to the Greyhound station: our last bus trip to New York. It was sad to say goodbye to Bruce and Sally! They're really lovely people and we always felt at home by them!

Washington, D.C.

We arrived in Washington early in the morning on the 22^th january. After a short stop at Starbucks we took the metro to Arlington, VA where our host Millie picked us up.

She drove us to her home, so that we could leave our baggages. After a talk with Millie we were ready to go to D.C. again.

We visited the Air and Space Museum. The museum is huge! It contains a lot of original “peaces” of space & flight history (for ex the original Command Module of Apollo 11, named Columbia)! Also there was the first american spacecraft from which the first american “space walk” was done. We met Stella and her brother again in the museum and we stayed there until the closure time (5:30 pm).

For dinner we went to an ethiopian restaurant with Stella, her brother and Millie. Our previous hosts in Raleigh had told us there were different ethiopian restaurants in D.C, so we wanted to try! The food was very good and the special thing about it was that we ate with our hands, not with the usual fork and knife. The meal (meat with onions, peppers and tomatos) was served on a soft, thin, flat, bread (like a crêpe, but a bit thicker). We had to rip pieces of the bread apart and grab some food with it.

After dinner a friend of Millie joined and we had a nice chat over a drink. The next day we went to D.C. again. First we looked for the White House for some pictures.

We then wanted to go to the Capitol and the Lincoln memorial, but it was too cold, so we had to take a stop at the American history museum. Also this museum was huge, containing all different aspects of american history and culture. Unfortunately we only had time for the scientific section. After the museum we quickly took some picture of the capitol before going back home. Millie had ordered pizza and we ate togheter before taking the metro back to the bus station.

Washington is a great city! Plenty of big and beautiful buildings and lots of big museums.

2 days are definitely not enough to see it all!

Raleigh, NC

We arrived in Raleigh, NC on january 20^th at 12:30 pm.

Melissa, a couch surf contact, was waiting for us. She drove us downtown and we had lunch together. A friend of her also joined us. We went to an italian restaurant and had a great time talking together. At around 2:30 pm Melissa dropped us off at the museums (unfortunately she couldn't stay with us). We visited the NC history museum, which contains exhibits about the indian population who lived in NC, about jewish people in NC, about the first president G. Washington and other topics.

At 5:30 pm Jen, our host, picked us up from downtown and drove us to her house. Her husband Josh arrived shortly after us. We cooked pasta for them and after dinner we had a nice time playing games and watching a movie. Josh and Jen have a cute cat named Bean. She is a bit shy at the beginning, but gets affectionated after a while!

The following morning Josh gave us a ride to downtown. We visited the history of science museum and stayed there almost all day. There were different exhibits about the nature and the animals of North Carolina. The museum is quite big and there are lots of things to see and read. That's why it took us almost all day to see it.

We still found a moment for a visit to the State Capitol. The chamber of representatives, the senate and the governor aren't in the capitol any more, but in a new building. The State Capitol is still used for some meetings though.

Josh picked us up again in the evening. When we arrived home Jen had prepared pizza!! After dinner we had some time for a game before they drove us to the Greyhound station. Our bus left at midnight for Washington, DC.

Orlando, FL

We arrived in Orlando an Monday 17^th at 6 am as planned.

We wanted to bring our baggages to our hosts Alex and Rachel before they left for work. But on the way to the bus stop a policeman (border patrol) told us we would better wait, because the way we were walking was not so safe at night! We followed his advice and waited. Of course we couldn't bring our luggage and had to keep it with us all day! It was also raining all day, and we didn't know where to go, because there was no museum we knew about.

We tried to go to the visitors center and ask for things to do in Orlando, but it was closed (it should have been open, but noone was there!).

So we spent most of our day at Starbucks and at the central bus station, waiting for the rain to stop.

We had a little umbrella for the two of us, but as we had so much stuff with us we couldn't avoid getting wet!

Towards the end of the afternoon we took the bus to go to our hosts. We took a nice walk all together to a nearby grocery store and bought all we needed to cook dinner for them. The two of them are very friendly and open and they have two crazy but very sweet cats: Paul and George.

On Tuesday 18^th we went to Disneyworld. It was hard to choose which theme park (out of 6) we wanted to see, but we finally decided for Disney's Hollywood Studios, focused on Disney's film and film making. We met our friend Stella (a friend we met in San Diego) and her brother there. It was nice to meet her again after 3 weeks! Stella and her brother are traveling to New York exactly as we are (but by plane) and they are going to visit the same cities as we are.

So we will meet them again in Washington, DC, Boston and NYC. They return to Korea one day before we leave for Switzerland.

On Wednesday we visited the Kennedy Space Center. We took the Greyhound bus untill Titusville, FL and there we rent a car. It was impossible to go there with public trasportation.

The center was very interesting. We took a guided tour through the whole ground of the center and were shown the places where rockets and shuttles are assembled and places where they are launched.

We also did the shuttle launch simulation and saw a movie in 3D on Imax screen which showed beautiful images of space taken with the Hubble telescope.

Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to see all the exposition because we had to take our bus back to Orlando at 4:45 pm.

In the evening Rachel gave us a ride to the bus station and at 10:45 pm we left Orlando direction Raleigh, NC.

Miami, FL

After more than 2 days of waiting and traveling we finally arrived in Miami friday morning 14th january. We took a bus to downtown Miami and went to the public library, where we stayed few hours and organized our stay in Miami and our further stops. We toured the city a bit and then moved to Miami Beach, the "real" Miami! The city of Miami hasn't much to offer!






The cool places, beaches, clubs are in Miami Beach. As soon as we arrived to our hostel we took our deserved shower and rest!! In the evening we checked out Miami nightlife. There are a lot of clubs, bar and restaurants open till late and a lot of beautiful lights (maybe still Christmas leftovers).














On Saturday 15th we took a bus to Key West, the most southest point of the United States. It's an Island which is connected to the rest of Florida by narrow road.










It took us 4 hours to get there and arrived we only had 1:30 hours to spend there before going back to Miami.
As the bus stop was not in the center, we didn't see much and we just had time for a walk along the beach. The travel to Key West was spetial and the sight was beautiful, so it was worth the 8 hours bus ride!






On Sunday we had time to really see Miami Beach: the beach, the shops, the big hotels... It was a hot and sunny day, but still there was something which made us a bit angry. We wanted to buy a 1-day pass for the busses, but it was not possible to buy it on the bus (in every other city it's possible to buy 1-day passes directly on the bus!)
So the driver told us where to find them.
We walked and walked, asked thousends of people, but everyone told us some thing different for the location to buy the passes.
After more or less 1:30 hours we found the place. It was a drugstore mixed with a gift shop. Excuse me!! How are people supposed to know they have to buy bus tickets where medicament are sold!? What an idea! And of course at the outside no mention about bus tickets available!!
We toured Miami Beach all day (by bus of course, after the hard time finding bus tickets!) and in the evening we went back to the Greyhound station (not without difficulties of course, the first bus was late, 50min and the second one didn't stop where we had planned!) for taking the bus to Orlando.

Nashville, TN

We arrived in Nashville at 3:30 pm on january 10^th. After figuring out the right direction we directly headed to our host's house, actually to our host's sister Ali.

After a cup of tea and cookies, Ali drove us to her sister Sarah and David's house. They are both very friendly and kind. They live a bit outside the city, so we had the opportunity to see the lovely neighborhood of Nashville. They also have a cute, funny cat: Pickles.

On january 11^th we visited the city. First of all we dropped in by the capitol and we took a guided tour. As you can see it has become a “tradition” to visit the state capitol whenever we visit the capital of a state. After that we wanted to go to the Country Music Hall of Fame museum, but lucky as we are, it was closed.

So we stopped at a country bar and listened to real good live music while eating some sandwiches. We stopped at the Hard Rock café for a desert and visited the Tennesse state museum. It's about the indians who lived in Tennesse , the first settlers and the civil war. We learned about the origin of the expression “buck” indicating the U.S dollar. Apparently, in the 1760s, hunters used to moved to the Apalacchian Mountains to hunt buck deers and sold their skin for one dollar.

It was freezing during the whole day and it was snowing lightly all the time.

During the day we tried several times to get tickets to Atlanta, but they didn't hand out any tickets as Atlanta was in a state of emergency due to the snowstorm. So we decided to take another route, skipping Atlanta and heading directly to Miami. We took ticket from Nashville, TN to Columbia, SC, passing by Knoxville, TN and Asheville, NC.

Finally our route was a bit different, always because a lot of busses couldn't start. We left Nashville at 1:30 am on the 12^th january and arrived in Knoxville at 5 am. As no busses could leave for Asheville we had to wait 7 hours at the Greyhound station. We finally could leave towards Asheville at 12 pm. Once arrived there we were told we couldn't leave for Columbia, so we stayed on the same bus and went to Winston-Salam, NC, from where we had to change bus direction Charlotte, NC.

We arrived in Charlotte at 9 pm and took tickets to Miami, FL.

All those problems with the busses were caused by the severe snowstorm which stuck mostly Atlanta. We actually didn't see lots of snow on the roads and we discovered that the south states are not used to have so much snow as the one fallen. That's also the reason why the roads weren't plowed, or took so long to be plowed, and the real problem was the un-plowed roads and not the snow itself. Kind of ridiculous for us, but understandable for them!

In some Greyhound station the red cross handed out free food, beverages and blanket for the waiting people.

After other 12 hours waiting in the station of Charlotte we finally could leave to Miami at 9 am on the 13^th january, an almost 24h long trip. We changed bus in Jacksonville, FL after 10 hours of trip. We took the last bus of this very long trip at 10:30 pm headed to our final destination, Miami, FL!! :)

Kansas City, MO/KS

We arrived in Kansas City at 9:20 pm. We were so glad that our host Candace was waiting for us the Greyhound station with 2 friends, Jeff and Allison. Espetially after she told us that it wasn't the nicest part of town.
We went to the Country Club, a nice bar with country music in the background, for a couple of drinks.






On Sunday 9th Candace took us to the World War I museum. It's a really cool place, plenty of information about the war, but also quots from soldiers or other involved people and objects / clothes used at that time. It's definitely a good place to go for the ones interested in history.
We stayed at the museum until closure at 5 pm, but we took a lunch break and went to a barbecue place with Candace and her 2 friends, Jeff, an expert of barbecue in Kansas City, proposed the place. We really had to eat a barbecue in Kansas City and we are glad to have done it!


After the museum Candace guided us around with the car and showed us the city. It's an interesting city. With a mixture of old and new buildings. Also it seems like the city is widespread and not concentrated in one spot as the other cities we visited.














Back at her house she cooked delicious pasta with a pumpkin-cream sauce with nuts and cranberries.
We also were delighted by the presence of her cat Kitty!
After dinner Candace took us to the Greyhound station. This time we had our tickets and we were there more than one hour earlies. But still we had problems. Our bus departed with 2 hours delay, so we couldn't get the connecting bus to Nashville in St. Louis.



We stayed in St. Louis (at the station, at least this station had free wifi and we could plan the next cities) from 5 am to 9:30 am and then headet to Nashville. Another travel during the day!
A snowstorm is getting closer in Georgia, espetially in Atlanta (our next stop after Nashville!), Alabama, some cities in Tennesse. So a lot of busses couldn't run or were delayed.
Therefore this time the delays weren't Greyhound fault, at least we tryed to believe so. We still had some doubts, because during the trip Kansas City – St. Louis there wasn't a snowstorm and between St. Louis and Nashville neigher!?!?
The landscape is different from Kansas, there are more hills and more trees. The color is greener compareted with the previous landscape, but the predominant color is still yellow-brown.

Denver, CO

We finally arrived in Denver at 8 pm (instead of 7 am), but our unluck was not finished! As we didn't know exactly how to arrive to our host's house. We looked for a Starbucks Coffe and loooked up the route and the busses to take on Google Maps.

Unfortunately we didn't put in the right adress: we confused 9^th avenue with 9^th street. So we took a very strange bus (more like a travel-bus than a city-bus) and ended-up in a school campus. We finally realized our mistake and that we were in a completely wrong place, in cold Denver at 10 pm.

We asked a campus security for help and he walked us to the main bus and trax (line trams in CH) station. He asked some of the drivers which bus we had to take but noone could answer! The security man told us to take a cab and left. He was very kind and he even left us a little flash-light. So we wantet to call a cab, but we didn't have the phone number and the phonebook was, of course, missing the pages we needed. Under the entry for “cab” it was written to look for “taxis” but the last page of the phonebook was with names beginning with “L”.

We then walked to the nearby Burger King, grabbed a coke and used the free internet to figure out where we were and which busses we had to take to finally reach our destination.

We finally arrived to Britt's house (our host) at 11:30 pm and cooked the promised pasta. We felt so sorry for her she had to wait so long!

The following day we went to the State Capitol all toghether and we had a guided tour. We took a great walk to get there. The weather was sunny ad not really cold.

Denver is a nice city with lots of trees and squirrels!! We saw at least 20 squirrels during our short stay! They are not afraid and came very close.

After the Capitol we wanted to visit the Colorado History Museum. After our 20 year old guide book the museum is right in front of the Capitol. Actually it was, but only from the outside. The building still has the name of the museum on it, but the museum is no longer there.

We looked for the actual place and found out that the museum doesn't exist right now, it's in construction...so no museum!

We went back to Britt's house and ate tasty vietnamese springrolls before we left her house at 2:30 pm. We walked back to the downtown area. Around 5 pm we arrived at the Greyhound station and wanted to grab our ticket for Kansas City for 6:40 pm. But guess what?! The bus was full! We couldn't believe our ears!! We put us in a standby list, hoping to find 2 empty seats after everyone else had boarded. Nothing of couse! We had to stay one more night in Denver. This time we didn't have to sleep in the station, but could go back to Britt's house. On the way to the house, we walked through the touristic 16^th street Mall. It's a beautiful street plenty of restaurants, bars and shops. For example there are Hard Rock café, Cheesecake Factory, Yard House, Rock Bottom, of couse Starbucks (where there isn't?) and other famous restaurants. The following morning at 9 am we left for Kansas City. Again we lost one whole day! Spending it on the bus instead of walking trough Kansas City. We learned to take our tickets early in the morning. The only problems is that with the pass we purchases, we only can get tickets on the dy of departure! Depending on where our hosts live it's not always possible to get the ticket in the morning without loosing time we could instead spend visiting the city!

The travel ws very long! And the landscape was the exactly same all along Kansas state: nothing, cows, ranches, nothing, cows, ranches, McDonalds, nothing, cows, ranches. There also were a lot of wind power works and oil wells on the road. And of course all flat!

Salt Lake City, UT

When we arrived in Salt Lake it was freezing cold and slightly snowing. The city is surrounded by mountains, which were covered with snow, so we felt like home!

During our stay we learned about the Mormons and the Curch of Jesus Christ of Letter-day Saints. The first prophet of this religion was Joseph Smith. Back in the beginning of 1800 Joseph Smith prayed God and asked advice about which religion to follow. In responce God and Jesus appeared to him and chose him as the one who had to rebuilt people's believe in Jesus and God. Smith and his followers flew from the State of New York and settled down in Utah. Smith actually never arrived because he was murdered before. It was Brigham Young who guided the group and who decided where to settle down and build their first temple.

The Curch of Jesus Christ basically teaches how to live the earth life and how to prepare for the life after death. Another important element is the family.

All the important buildings of the Church of Jesus Christ are placed in and around the now-called temple square. We also visited the pioneers museum, a collection of objects belonging to Brigham Young and other pioneers.

We took a glance at the State Capitol and the public library, a modern strange-shaped building.

At night we stayed by another couchsurf couple: Josh and Melissa, very nice and friendly. We had a great time chatting together and plying Super Mario on Wii.

When the time came to leave Salt Lake (at 8:30 pm on january 5^th) we weren't prepared hearing the bad news waiting for us. We couldn't board on the bus because he was full!! So we had to wait until 7:30 am of the following morning to take the bus for Denver. We were quite pissed! Not only because we had to sleep on the cold floor of Greyhoundstation, but merely because we lost on whole day in Denver (one out of two!!).

After 10 hours of patience we finally started to Denver, but of course another misfortune got us. We were put in a bus that took 3 hours more to get to Denver!! So we spent one day on a bus supposed to have free wifi, but which actually didn't! There was just one good point about the whole story: We passed trought the mountains of Utah, a completely snow covered landscape, snow shining... beautiful.