For'n in the USA

We refused to give in to the temptation of the mattress this morning and acquired tickets for a lunchtime trip up the Washington Monument. After passing through the security checks you get whisked up 500ft in an elevator to the viewing station at the top of the tower where, on a clear day, you can see all around for about 60 miles and it's all rather impressive and stunning. Unfortunately it wasn't a clear day when we went up - rain fell heavily from the sky - and all we saw from the top was a very good close up of the inside of a cloud.

While that may not have been quite the amazing experience we'd been hoping for, it did help split up our visit to the Smithsonian American History Museum. The Smithsonians are a rather impressive feat, founded in 1846 thanks to a bequest by James Smithson, they own 16 museums and galleries in the city of Washington, all world leaders in their various fields, an have a collection so vast that only 1% of it is on display at any one time. What is most interesting about it is that James Smithson had never even visited the US, but made his donation for the betterment of the country anyway, clearly in a "Let's smarten up the dumb Yanks" kinda way. No matter what his motivation was, the results made it more than worthwhile as, other than our trip to the monument, we spent all day in just one of their museums and only just managed to see all that was on offer.

We fully intended to get up early today and go and get tickets to go up the Washington Monument and enjoy the view. These tickets are distributed on a first come, first served basis and, unless you're there by 8AM, you ain't gonna get any. Unfortunately when our alarm went off at the appointed hour, we decided we really couldn't be arsed getting out of bed, so promptly went back to sleep for a couple of hours.

Once we did finally decide that it's probably not the best idea to spend the better part of the trip of a lifetime in bed, we went back down towards the Lincoln Memorial, this time with the intention of visiting the Vietnam Memorial. We don't recommend you do the same as it's rubbish; a massive 'V' of black marble cut into the land bearing the names of all those who died during the conflict. It's a blot on the landscape, really, which is quite appropriate given the stain the conflict itself has left behind on American History.

From there we continued, in an admittedly slightly morbid vein, to Arlington Cemetery where the majority of America's war dead are buried. It's also home to the third most visited tomb in the country, JFK's, but, to be honest, while people who go there will visit it, it's not why they go there. Wandering through the cemetery is a very sobering, though not depressing, experience. It's possible to head towards one of the high points of the cemetery - in a literal, not a figurative sense - look down, and all you can see is row after row of uniform white crosses stretching out as far as the eye can see. As it's Memorial Day weekend, in addition all the graves have the flag of the soldier's birth country. Many of the people we saw there were there with a purpose, visiting the grave of a lost loved one. As Arlington is still an active cemetery, the age range of visitors stretched from the unexpectedly old to the depressingly young. Surely no more pressing argument for the futility of war exists than this place?

As we, thankfully, lacked purpose for our visit, we went to pay our respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We arrived in time for the Changing of the Guard ceremony and despite, or more likely because of, the solemnity of the occasion, we found the whole thing inwardly hilarious, though weren't quite stupid enough to let our amusement show. The reason for our hidden laughter is this:- the ceremony essentially involves the replacement guards weapon being checked for cleanliness by the Sergeant. It's all done in a number of fluid, slow movements in a very machine-like fashion, which was the problem for us. With the shades and fixed, unsmiling expression that the Sergeant was wearing, we were immediately put in mind of extremely dodgy eighties style robotic dancing and, once that thought had entered our head nothing was able to shake it and, with hindsight, mentally singing Kraftwerk songs to ourselves probably didn't help matters.

In the evening we sat on the steps on the Capitol in the rain and watched the National Memorial Day concert, an evening of music and flagwaving which made us feel proud to be an American, if only for fear of what the audience might do to us if we didn't express such pride. The most striking thing about this event was that there was no way on earth that anything similar would ever take place in the UK as, thankfully, we're not as blinded by an unthinking patriotism in the same way that certain sections of the US public are. This was an event where people turned up wearing jackets covered with stars and stripes and wore them with pride, not with the embarrassment that you'd expect such a fashion faux pas to cause. An event where the singing of the national anthem causes grown men to place one hand on their heart and use the other one to wipe away a tear from their eyes, rather than the self-conscious mumbling and shuffling that would happen and home and which is natural and proper. An event where some country music star performing the worst song which we have ever heard get applauded and cheered, rather than getting booed off. Clearly we still have a lot to learn about American culture.

Through accident, rather than design, we've ended up in the nation's Capital on Memorial Day weekend. This is essentially the same as our Rememberance Sunday, only taken far more seriously. This is partly down to the patriotic pride which covers the lands like Westlife cover poor quality ballads, but is probably more down to the fact that it unofficially signals the start of the summer, rather than respect for those fallen in wartime.

But, no matter what the reason, the fact remains that it's a fully observed holiday here and, in Washington, it's even more special than normal as today President Bush is dedicating the World War II Memorial in front of the biggest gathering of veterans since the end of the war, though presumably they were just soldiers then, rather than veterans. This event has not only caused the city to be on a heightened state of security, but also has dramatically increased the sales of Steradent within the local environs.

As well as the dedication itself, the veterans - and interested members of the public - are also able to wander around a WWII festival style thing set up along the National Mall. Kinda like an old person's Glastonbury, or Glastonbury on a Sunday as it's otherwise known. As well as a stage featuring various bands from that era, there were also exhibits of Armed Forces vehicles, a reunion tent, talks and opportunities to share memories. Oh, and a tent where children - and our Travelling Companion - could take part in activities to learn about the war and get awarded a medal for their troubles. We had a quick wander round before heading into the first public building we've been able to visit here - The National Capitol.

For a building it's in remarkably good shape, despite being burned down by the British, undergoing numerous restructuring and rebuilding work and suffering the final indignity - being blown up by the aliens in Independence Day. As befits the political centre of the country, it's asuitably impressive building, even if it is essentially just a bigger version of the State Capitol's we've visited previously, only with stepper security and a greater likelyhood of being shot if you wander away from the designated route. You don't get to see inside the Senate and the House of Representatives, again this is sometihng that needs to be organised in advance, but you do get to see some of the more artistically interesting, if politically irrelevant, sections of the building.

Upon leaving the Capitol, the dedication ceremony was already in full swing, although that may not be the most appropriate description for a rather sombre event being attended by an audience for whom swinging is nought but a distant memory. As we were there, we felt we should get involved, so picked a spot and watched it on a big screen set up in the grounds of the Capitol for the event. We arrived just in time to see Bush give his speech, a speech which, rather surprisingly, was not used to justify the war in Iraw. Or, at least, it dind't as long as you dind't look between the lines. We, being of a somewhat cynical persuasion, did and all we can say is not particularly original or witty, but it's still very apt; "Bush is a war-mongering twat with a small penis".

We said goodbye to our original hostel today and moved onto our second place of residence which had, alas, been booked solid last night. It was no great sadness to leave the previous place as, not only was the experience soured by the taxi debacle, but also the place considered fitting 9 people into a room the size of your average bathroom was a good accommodation idea, rather than an interesting way of getting into the Guinness Book of Records. They managed to achieve this seemingly impossible feat by virtue of triple bunk-beds. Being in the middle is not a good place to be, as we can now personally vouch for.

After checking into the second, slightly more luxurious hostel - 3 normal bunkbeds in a room big enough to accommodate them! - we went for a walk around the nation's capital. It's all rather impressive, lots of white marble and imposing statuery, but we should point out that we were staying not hugely far from the Mall, the government centre and touristy bit. What you see on the telly during the news, basically. We understand that outside of this area, poverty is rife, crime is high and there's a lot less white marble and more graffiti. It's still imposing, we believe, albeit in an entirely different way.

First stop was the White House Visitor Centre, where we had hoped to book a tour around the place which George W Bush calls 'home', if only because he doesn't know what 'domicile' means, but this dream was quickly shattered when we discovered that the only way foreigners, i.e. us, can get a tour is by contacting our embassy, a process which they reckon takes around 6 months. Even if we had been desperate enough to see it and decided to extend our stay in Washington dramatically, our visa wouldn't have lasted out and we're not entirely convinced that the federal centre is the best place to hide out as an illegal immigrant.

So, slightly disappointed that we didn't have the chance to bring down the administration from the inside, we went down to have a brief look at it anyway, though 'brief' is very much the operative term as you can't exactly see a great deal thanks to the size of the grounds and all the trees but this, presumably, is the point.

From there we went to have a quick look at the Washington Monument, before going to visit the recently finished World War II Memorial. We had some trepidation about visiting this as the papers here have been full of criticism about it, describing it as an architectural monstrosity. Having seen it, we must disagree and, of course, our opinion is far more valid than any expert in the field. It's certainly big. You walk into it and you're immediately overwhelmed by the granite pillars towering above you - one for each state and territory that fought - but that's the point. The war was overwhelming and, while we will never be able to fully comprehend what it must have been like to live during that period, we feel it's important, perhaps more so now than ever, to remind people that war is a bloody and horrible think and should only be entered into as a last resort, not as a strategy to get you a second term in office.

After spending some time there, we headed towards the Lincoln memorial via the Reflecting Pool. On first encounter you immediately reflect upon how manky the water is, but as you walk along, the stillness and tranquility does help you enter a zen like state which gives you time to think, even if your thoughts do eventually return to reflecting upon the dirtiness of the water and just how the ducks are able to survive in it.

Following our visits to the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, both of which feature giant statues of the respective Presidents, at least, we assume they're gigantic. We guess they could be life size, in which case they both governed in a manner that's more like Gulliver in Lilliput than the history books let on, we walked down to the Franklin D Roosevelt memorial, a walled area featuring fountains, statues and quotes carved into the masonry. It's a fitting memorial for a respected president, but we do have to question whether it was really appropriate for his to be in place long before the one for the dead soldiers.

Still trying to overcome our sadness at missing out on the White House, we went down to the FBI headquarters to enquire about their tours, only to discover that they've been cancelled until 2006, which isn't a great deal of use to us. So, crushed in a way we haven't been since we found out that Nicola Roberts didn't even make the top 100, let alone the number one spot, in FHM's sexiest women poll, we instead decided to add to our list of "Places where Presidents have been shot which we've visited" by going to Ford's Theatre where Abraham Lincoln got shot in a quite frankly piss-poor attempt to gain independence for the southern states. The only Presidential assassination more misguided than this was the guy who tried to kill Reagan in a bid to impress Jodie Foster. Still, at least Lincoln's killer was successful and able to sloganeer in Latin straight afterwards, something which is beyond most blood crazed killers.

Well, it had to happen eventually. We've managed to avoid it so far, but our luck ran out this afternoon - we got mugged. Not, thankfully, in the violent, knife-wielding, fear inducing, "Gimmie all your money" style, but in the dodgy taxi driver over-charging us by 20 dollars vibe.

In our defence, we weren't quite with it when we got in the taxi, having just spent 17 hours on an overnight bus trip from Nashville, so when we arrived in Washington DC we were about as intellectually sharp as a butter knife wielded by Jenny Frost. As a result of this, when we left the station to try and find a taxi rank, when some random bloke came up to us and asked if we wanted one, we just said "yeah, sure", without thinking about asking how much it was going to cost. Alas, once you arrive at your destination and find out just how much he's doing you by, there's not a great deal you can do given that your luggage is locked up in the boot. Hopefully we'll have learnt an important lesson from this but, given that the only lesson we've ever learnt is that we never learn our lessons, we very much doubt this.

Last day in Nashville today, so we paid a visit to the Tennessee State Capitol. We're beginning to become sometihng of an expert on these buildings now and they all seem to follow the same basic design - big rotunda which isn't quite as impresive as the national Capitol, lots of paintings of former governers, many marble corridors leading off in a confusing manner, similar to that of the David Bowie film, Labyrinth, and a ridculous amount of locked doors. They're all designed to give off a sense of power and prestige, while still remaining relatively open, though with all the security checks which are no de-rigeur in the US, they're not as open as they might be. Tennessee's Capitol meets all the requirements, but does have the added bonus of having former President James K Polk's tomb in the grounds. While this may not sound hugely interesting to you, the reader, it excited us as we're fans of They Might Be Giants, and they once wrote a song about him, thus making him the only past president that we actually know anything about.

We went to visit the Grand Ole Opry today. It was the weekly radio show that was broadcast from this venue that can take responsibility for the success and popularity of Country music in the US. You'd have thought that by now that villagers would have taken matters into their own hands, as they normally do with works of pure evil, and had at the benue with burning torches, but no matter, it still staands, albeit in a different location to the original as new theatres had to be built to cope with the constantly rising demand for tickets. Modern day radio shows can only dream of such a concept, we can't exactly see visitors clamouring at the door of the BBC desperate for a chance to sit in on Colin and Edith. Hmmm, maybe it's time for the burning torches again.

Incidentally, to get to the Grand Ole Opry we passed by both the Gaylord Employment Center and the Gaylord University. We don't know why we're mentioning this as, once again, we failed to find anything whatsoever funny about it.

As New Orleans is to Jazz and Memphis is to the Blues, so Nashville is to Country and, unlike any other city would be if they were linked to that particular genre, they're actually proud of the fact. We've never got country, to be honest. Other than a fondness for occasional alt.country tracks, Johnny Cash and Kenny Rogers' The Gambler, it's never been a style of music we've enjoyed, let alone understood why anyone with ears enjoys it. It often speaks of sadness without actually expressing that particular emotion while the more uptempo numbers just make you glad that neither you, nor anyone you know, owns a pair of cowboy boots. It's also, despite the common theme of love, a curiously sexless form of music; you rarely feel there's any sort of passion there. The closest it ever really gets to raw excitement is stuff like Faith Hill's This Kiss, Shania Twain's Still The One and the Dixie Chicks, and for these songs to achieve their not-quite-knocking-on-Christina's-door style of sexyness all they do is appropriate their tricks from the pop and rock scenes, leading you to wonder what, other than the rack they get placed in at the record store, actually makes them a country artist?

To try and find out more about justy why Country is so popular, admittedly amongst people of a certain age, we took a trip to visit the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, located just down the road from the Gaylord Entertainment Center which we still certainly don't find in any way amusing. It's an excellent place and helped give us a better historical perspective on why this style of music is so popular to so many people, even though we still feel that, ultimately, no matter how many disaffected voices it may be speaking for, the fact that the music is entirely rubbish should really remain a stumbling block for it's success.

Once again the bulk of our time today was spent on the bus as we left Memphis and travelled down the highway to Nashville. On arrival we needed to find out how to get to our hotel so we headed straight to the Visitor Centre which is located inside the Gaylord Entertainment Center. We'd like to point out that we found this in no way amusing. Honestly.

Continuing our mission to 'do' Elvis, and not in that sense, that's just wrong in so many ways, we visited Sun studios today. This is were a young, fresh faced Elvis went to make a vanity recording to give as a gift to his mother, a recording which was heard by Sam Phillips who signed him to his new record label and thus history was made. Nowadays, of course, Elvis would have entered Pop Idol and been voted off in Week 4; the public favouring a grinning, floppy haired boy who can hit all the right notes but who has the personality of a gerbil, and a particularly dull gerbil at that. But, no matter, it happened the way it did and nothing, barring Marty Mc Fly and a Guinness Book of Hit Singles from the future, is going to change that.

First up was a short tour around a small museum where we were given a chance to hear some of the recordings which made Sun famous, and not just Elvis stuff, though we did get a chance to hear the very first radio play of his very first single, That's Alright Mama, a play that was so popular with the audience, it was played another 13 times duting the 3 hour long show. This sort of repetition provided the template which commercial radio still follows today.

We were then taken downstairs to the studio itself, which has been fully restored to it's original state with the genuine fixtures and fittings. This includes the very microphone which all the singers of the time, including Elvis, sang into. Unlike similar historical artifacts this was touchable and you were happily encouraged to have your picture taken while holding, strutting behind it and pretty much doing whatever you pleased with it. You couldn't, however, as our tour guide made very clear, lick the microphone. The fact that this warning needed to be given slightly worried us, but then he added, to make us even more scared, "Believe me, you don't want to know where people have wanted to put that microphone.". Instandly we did know and felt very ill indeed.

If you wish to follow in Elvis's footsteps, you're still able to make your own recording for $30, on CD though, in a concession to the modern world, and hope that you'll get discovered. We decided that the world wasn't ready for our unique interpretation of the works of Shampoo, so we decided not to invest our pennies.

We also went to the Rock and Soul Museum. We have nothing amusing to say about this, not that stopped us going on about Sun Studios for 4 paragraphs, but we'll simply say that it's excellent and well worth a visit should you find yourself in this neck of the woods.

We went to Gracelands today, hooray! Please look at Talent in a Previous Life for details. In the evening we went down to Beale Street, the home of the blues, to catch some live music, have a couple of drinks and generally have a good time. As it was, we may have been extremely lucky as we had the joys of caztching a gig by Howlin' Wolf. Who believe is rather famous in Blues circles, though to be honest we're not a great expert in that musical form and we could quite easily be getting him confused with Steppenwulf, the other thing is that we also believed he was dead, which doesn't lend a lot of credence to it actually being him. If you know for certain then, please, let us know. Thanks!

Of course, while drinking alcohol seems a great idea at the time, it rarely seems quite so fantastic the next morning, particularly when you have to get up early the next morning to catch a a bus to your next destination. No matter, we didn't have any choice but to get out of bed and drag ourselves down to the bus station, whereupon we promptly spent the entire trip in a state of fitful dozyness. On our return to the land of the awake and alert we discovered we had arrived in Memphis, which was a nice surprise. The warm fuzzyness of this lasted until we got to our hotel (no hostels in Memphis, alas) and discovered exactly how much we were being charged for a, quite frankly, rubbish room. Grr, we haven't been this cross since R Kelly kept both Girls Aloud and S Club off the number one spot and believe us, we were very cross then.

Well, we started out today with good intentions. Having not been totally satisfied with the voodoo experience on Monday, we had a plan to visit the Voodoo Museum to try and gain a better understanding of it all, so we headed off we headed in the general direction with purpose in our mind. As we neared it, we decided to take a detour down Bourbon Street to see what it was like during the daytime. This was, depending on how you look at it, either a mistake or the best idea we've ever had, given that we ended up getting somewhat distracted from our voodoo related quest.

You see, after popping into a gift shop and being chastised by the owner for looking angry, otherwise known as our natural facial expression, we wandered past a bar from which the sound of a quite decent blues band was emerging, so we decided we had enough time to pop in for a quick drink and have a listen.

The bar wasn't exactly jumping - the audience consisted of ourself, five drunk businessmen and the barman - but they, the Jeff Chaz Blues Band, were giving it laldy anyway. This may have been down to the fact that they simply liked their craft, but more likely it was down to the fact that the businessmen were tipping ridiculous amounts of money to hear their favourite songs. Alas, we only caught the end of their set and by the time we'd finished our beer the bar had emptied. Feeling somewhat disillusioned with the shortness, but not the quality, of the entertainment we left and returned to our museum locating task, only to be distracted by some fine rhythym and blues sounds coming from a different bar. "What the hey!" we thought and wandered in and grabbed a stool, hoping to catch a fuller set this time before we headed off. This was us for the next 3 hours.

The reasons for this are twofold. First up was the fact that the band, going by the name of The Smoke City Band, were excellent. Not only were they playing some fine tunes, but they were also witty and engaging. The lead singer had an expertly sculpted quiff which we desperately hope was his normal hairstyle while the saxophonist did exactly what saxophonists are supposed to do, i.e. strut up and down in front of the stage wearing shades and looking fucking cool. Oh, and the girl singer sang one of the verses of I Will Survive to us. The second reason for our hogging of our bar stool was the fact that they had a 3 for 1 drinks offer running so after the first selection was drunk we were feeling rather relaxed and comfortable...

Nine bottles later, we decided that we'd better return to the hostel to meet our Travelling Companion and carry out our plans for the evening which were, ummm, to go up to Bourbon Street, listen to some music and have a few drinks, so back to the French Quarter we went with a slightly lopsided gait.

At this point we should probably point out that our Travelling Companion seems to hate music. The evidence for this is quite simple:- He is currently looking forward to the prospect of seeing Hootie and the Blowfish live. The mind boggles. As if to prove this point, this evening he refused to go into a bar who's band was playing an exuberant version of Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl, preferring instead to go to a bar that, for reasons best known to itself, proudly advertised itself as a jazz bar. The only problem was though, that it wasn't. It was playing Tourist Jazz; not unlistenable enough to be proper Jazz, but just tricksy and non-mainstream enough to convince the audience that they were being dangerous and veering off the beaten track by going to listen to it.

After hitting a few more bars, seeing some better bands and drinking some more, equally alcoholic, drinks we left the hustle and bustle of the street and returned to our bed, swiftly falling into the happy, snory sleep of the drunk.

As well as jazz and voodoo, New Orleans is also famous for the world's biggest street party - Mardi Gras. It's a time when the city becomes a heaving mass of human flesh, all intent on getting drunk, singing and dancing and getting as many plastic trinkets that are thrown from the floats as possible, though not necessarily in that order. Some people liken Edinburgh's Hogmanay celebrations to it, but the only thing that is really comparable is the getting drunk outside aspect of it. Mardi Gras is an exciting parade of fun and colour. It's a time when getting dressed up and wearing exotic make-up is mandatory and acting the giddy goat is very much the order of the day. It's a little bit like the Conserative Party Conference in that respect we guess. It also happened a few months before we arrived and our enquiries about whether it could all be restaged for our benefit was met with a response that could only be described as frosty. We were left with the impression that we'd be more likely to see Avril Lavigne in a girly dress than see Mardi Gras. No matter though, the city is quite aware of the draw that the party has, so we decided instead to visit two museums that are devoted to the spectacle.

First up was the more "official" museum at the Presbytere. Despite it's official nature, it's not a dull and stuffy place, instead it's a fun wander through the history of the festival, even allowing you to dress up in the costumes at the end, an opportunity which we decided to pass on. While it was good at giving a flavour of the event, even including an exhibit showing you what it's like riding on a float, the main thing we learnt from it is that the role of the King is somewhat dubious. The way it works is this: Parades, and balls, are put on by different Krewes (that's the proper spelling, by the way, for once our dodgy typing ability isn't at fault) and each Krewe has a King (or, in some cases, a Queen). The King's role is to ride the lead float, preside over the ball and other similar duties. The sort of person who gets awarded the title of King each year varies from Krewe to Krewe, but generally it's given to someone of high standing in the local community and, as such, has a tendency to be a middle-aged gentleman. Another duty of the King is to pick his Queen, his consort throughout the festivities. She, and her maids, are normally picked from local debutantes, i.e. rich girls in their late teens. So what this basically amounts to is an older man cherry picking, and we use that term carefully, his favourite teenage girls to serve him for a week. This currently strikes us as being remarkably dodgy, but we're sure that once we reach King age we'll be all for it.

The second place wasn't really a museum as it's actually a working factory. It's Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World and it's the place where virtually all of the floats and props for the parade are designed, built and stored. Mr Kern is clearly quite an astute business man as not only does he hold the monopoly on this aspect of the Mardi Gras business and charges an awful lot of money for his services, but he also had the ingenious idea of charging people to wander around a couple of his storage lots. While it is slightly over-priced, it is definitely worth a visit as it's the only chance to see the sort of things that go on the floats outside of the event itself.

Models of celebrities are the most popular thing to feature on the floats and piled up all around the building in a seemingly random fashion are representations of virtually everyone from the entire pantheon of history and popular culture including Darth Vader, Garfield and Jon, Pinnochio, Sean Connery, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Jetsons, Charlie Chaplin and, our personal favourite, Chucky and his Bride. Sometimes though, it's not too obvious who the prop is supposed to be, we spent ages wondering why they had a model of F1 driver David Coulthard on display until someone pointed out that it was actually Spongebob Squarepants.

In the evening we took a trip down to Bourbon Street, the live music centre of the French Quarter. As you wander down the street, melodies float out of every window and enter your ears. A guitar flourish pulls you towards one door while a trumpet blast lures you towards another. From down the street the exuberant tonsils of a silky voiced singer draws you closer while from over the road the sound of an extended drum solo quickly marks it out as a place to avoid. As well as musical enticements, the bars employ people to promote other lures, mainly of the 3 for 1 drinks variety, which is always appealing. The other main gimmick on offer is the Shooter Girl, most bars employing a squad of attractive young girls to go around and pester the men in the place in a bid to get them to buy an over-priced alcoholic beverage contained in a testtube. If purchased the girl then puts it either in her mouth or in her cleavage and you drink it from there in a one-er. One older gentleman, clearly with a desire to be a King, was quite taken with this idea and we watched him have about a dozen of them before standing became a task that was a bit too complicated for him and he was asked to leave. We didn't participate ourselves, and we'd like to say that it was because of our high moral standards and our refusal to be taken in by such an obvious scam, but it was more because we were hoping that the cute girl with the Miki Berenyi-esque dyed bright red hair was going to come over and try to persuade us to buy one. She never did though. Boo!

If New Orelans is famous for one thing, then it's Jazz, but as we want to focus on the positive things about the city, we'll ignore that and move straight on to the second most famous thing about New Orleans, which is Voodoo. Of all the dark and mysterious arts which can be found in the hidden corners of the world, voodoo is undoubtably the most enticing. This is partly down to the fact that it has good opportunities for vengeful purposes on those who have wronged you, but it's mainly because ultimately all voodoo potions or spells end up resulting in the very edible form of gumbo, which means that Delia Smith is just a lemon zester away from becoming a voodoo priestess.

To gain an insight into both voodoo and the city itself, we went on a cemetery walking tour. As well as giving an overview of the history of New Orleans - basically it's built on the solid foundation of prostitution, or at least a soft and yielding one - we were taken on a wander around St Louis Cemetery No 1 and Armstrong Park before fianlly being taken to meet a genuine, real-life, honest to goodness, Voodoo Priestess in her temple.

The cemetery is unusual as it's above ground, the city is built on a swamp - about as good an idea as Clea - which leads to the bodies returning to the surface if buried in the more traditional manner, an event which would be somewaht disturbing for the family members and would also make for an extremely dull zombie film - yes, they've returned from the dead, but if all they're going to do is lie there, then you might as well just film an old people's home at naptime.

There were two advantages of taking the tour around the cemetery. Not only do you achieve an insight into and a greater knowledge of what's there, knowledge which is unlikely to be discovered via the means of aimless wandering and going "Ooh, that one looks old", but also you're less likely to get mugged, what with New Orleans being the most dangerous city in the US and the cemetery in particular being highlighted as an area not to go wandering around by yourself, especially at night. The only risk when we were there, however, was tripping up over some of the more sunken tombs; something which we, amazingly, failed to do.

Amongst the homes of the dead is the second most visited gravesite in America, people still leave gifts at the base of it as offerings to the deceased and every availiable surface is chalked with triple X's. It's not, as you might be thinking, the resting place of Lolo Ferarri. It's not, unfortunately, the current home of 'actor' Vin Diesel. It is, in fact, the tomb of Marie Laveau, the famous voodoo priestess and perhaps the person that best represents the spirit of New Orleans. When she was alive, that is, though being dead drunk is close enough, we guess.

After this we were taken to Congo Square in what is now known as Armstrong Park. This was named post-humously after the city's most famous son - Louis. Apparantly in some American schools funding for art and cultural education is so low there's a notable chunk of school kids that believe that Louis Armstrong was the first man on the moon. What rot! Surely everyone knows that it was Dizzy Gillespie?

Congo Park is considered to ve the place where jazz began, the place where the new African population would gather to play music which, as time went by, began to consume the influences around it and which eventually evolved into the form that we know of today. At the time it was considered something shocking to be seen watching these performances if you came from the so-called "good" area of town. So much so, in fact, that when one gentleman discovered his wife had been attending these events, he shot himself immediatly, rather than deal with the shame of having relations with someone who was a jazz fan. This is clearly a man after our own heart.

Now, we left there to go to our final location; the voodoo temple and our audience with the priestess. Unsurprisingly, we've never been inside a voodoo temple before, and the closest we've come to someone involved with the pin-pressing world of voodooo has been seeing someone hammer a nail up their nose which, while impressive, isn't quite the same thing, so we weren't totally sure what to expect from the experience, but of all the thoughts that did traverse across our Nicola obsessed mind, none came close to matching the reality. The temple was simply a cluttered house with some odd smells in the air, much like you'd expect the home of a slightly confused and continencely unsound old lady, which was a remarkable coincidence as the priestess did appear to be a slightly confused old lady. We can't comment on her bowel control though, but we'll assume it was all in order.

She led us into the temple and bade us all to sit down, whereupon she asked us all where we'd come from, always with a big smile on her face. Presumably satisfied with all of our geographical positioning, she then launched into a rambling tale which was quite hard to follow, given her habit of going into fits of laugher at seemingly innocuous statements. The gist, as far as we could make out, was that if you're good to others, good things will happen to you, which is hardly a new and life-changing insight. We didn't complain though, we had no desire to wake up the next morning suffering from pins and needles.

And yet another goodbye to yet another city as we take yet another bus ride. This time we're off to see the Big Easy - that's New Orleans by the way, not Jenny Frost. This was an overnight bus trip and the experience was even more unpleasant than the last, mainly thanks to Greyhound scheduling a change of bus at 3AM. Laugh? We nearly throttled someone.

As it was we arrived in New Orleans, or Nawlins as the locals and people with speech defects call it, at lunchtime in an exhausted and not quite 100% there brain state, and yes, this is different to our normal condition. This slightly confused view of the world which we were dealing with may well explain why the trip from our hostel to the French Quarter, the exciting happening section of the city, a very straightforward trip which should have taken us 15 minutes, managed to take us well over an hour, our sense of direction being about as useful as a British entry in the Eurovision Song Contest.

After we eventually got there we wandered around, not doing anything specific, just soaking up the atmosphere and trying to keep our eyelids open. Teatime came around so we went to a local micro brewery for a meal. Behind the bar at this particular place was a man who had been struck by one of fate's cruellest blows; not only did he look like Jonny Vegas, but he clearly had no idea that he looked like the portly norhern comedian. He seemed happy enough in his ignorance, so we decided not to enlighten him on his resemblence and instead enjoyed our meal before returning to the hostel for some much needed slumber.

On November 22nd, 1963, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assasinated in Dallas, Texas. Due to the downfalls in it's fortunes as a result of this event, this was something that the city needed like a hole in the head. Now, however, it's a different story and, while they'd be loathe to admit it, the dead president is big business and a great boon when it comes to bringing in the tourists. They haven't quite got to the stage of distributing posters with a picture of a motorcade and the slogan "Dallas - See it Before You Die", but we reckon that that day can't be that far away.

It was this that brought us to Dallas, so off we went to visit the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository, which is now a museum covering that particular day in history, where Mr Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger and shot the President. Or didn't, depending on which particular conspiracy theory you subscribe to.

It's often claimed that everyone who was alive at the time can remember what they were doing when they found out about the shooting. This is hardly surprising as it doesn't take a great deal of mental effort to recall the fact that they were listening to the news. Even so, there's no doubt that this was a monumental day in American history, even if it has recenlty been overshadowed by a far more shocking event which caused great discomfort and fear for the American people - Janet Jackson flashing a nipple during the Superbowl.

The museum itself is very good and surprisingly tasteful. Disappointingly so, if the truth be known, as the corner where Oswald did his shooting has been recreated, but it's enclosed in a perspex box, disallowing you the opportunity to hunker down and put yourself in his shoes. It covers his Presidency in a brief but illuminating fashion, what went on in the days leading up to his Dallas visit, a minute by minute guide of the shooting itself - this includes the revelation that just before he was shot, JFK was told "Mr President, you can't say that Dallas doesn't love you", proving once and for all that America does have a sense of irony - and a look at the aftermath of the events.

It also, unexpectedly, gives some coverage to the conspiracy theories surrounding these events. It'll come as no surprise to you that a majority of Americans don't believe that Oswald acted alone, even if most of them stop short of holding firm to the belief that he was being controlled by space aliens at the time. The exhibition itself doesn't give any mention of the more outlandish views on what actually happened, but it does allow for the possibility of a second gunman, albeit in a slightly dismissive way.

If you are interested in more outlandish theories, however, you might think that it'd be a good idea to visit the Conspiracy Museum, conveniently positioned across from the Kennedy Memorial. You might think that, but you'd be about as wrong as a ladder made out of sausages. The only time it would ever be a good idea to visit the Conspiracy Museum is if you have a burning desire to throw $9 of your money away. And even then you'd probably be better off going to your local butcher and asking him to make you a sausage ladder.

The Museum is, not to put too fine a point onit, shite. It's two rooms containing a selection of pages printed out from the internet and stuck on the wall and some articles photocopied from local newspapers. Even this might have been bearable had there been any sort of order to the 'exhibits', but everything was stuck up in such a haphazard manner it was nigh on impossible to follow what was going on. A dyed in the wool conspiracy theorist would no doubt claim that this is deliberate and is done because They want you to be confused and disoriented because They don't want you to know what really happened. We, on the other hand, subscribe to the more likely theory that it's simply a pish museum designed to con tourists out of their hard earned money. Grr.

Any yet another bus journey, this time to Dallas, our last stop in Texas. We've pretty much run out of interestign things to say about the days we spend on the Greyhound. Indeed, many of you no doubt think that we ran out a few days ago, but no matter, we'll quickly skim over this one and say no more about it.

"Intelligent Fun" is not a phrase that bodes well. It smacks of parents buying their kids educational toys, hoping to improve their kid's minds while failing to appreciate the inherent oxymoron in the phrase. "Intelligent Fun" basically means getting a chemistry set for your birthday and, for any intelligent kid, the fun possibities evaporate once it's discovere that's it's not actually possible to make anything explosive out of it, even if you do mix all the chemicals together. Intelligent Fun is not a good thing so, with that in mind, it's beyond us why Houston Space Center uses that as their advertising slogan when all they really need to use is something along the lines of "We've got space rockets, man. Space Rockets!"

It was that, and not the idea of actually learning something, which drew us towards the centre. Space travel is exciting by definition, and is something else that brings out the big kid in us, even if we do have to reluctantly accept that we're unlikely now to ever make it as an astronaut. Some people wonder what the point is of spending the huge amounts of cash needed to send a man into space given the low finanical return, but if you need to ask the question then you'll never understand the answer.

As we wandered through the exhibits of replicas and actual space cragts, and as we watched footage of the great deeds achieved outside of the earth's atmosphere, we felt a thrilling sense of pride, even though there are another country's results. It doesn't matter that the British wasn't involved, it can, and should, be seen as mankind's achievement. Indeed, it's probably a good thing that we weren't, given that our sole contribution to the astrophysisist's plate of knowledge is the fact that dropping a delicate and sensitive probe from a great height onto the surface of Mars is a pretty stupid idea.

So, what does the centre have to offer? Well, the main attraction is a tram ride around the Johnson Space Center, the working arm of Nasa. It takes you through Rocket Park, where Saturn 5 is on display (it's possible to return later and have a more up close look at it, but by the time we left a thunderstorm was raging so it didn't strike us as a good idea), before you get allowed off the tram to visit Historic Mission Control, where all the Apollo missions, including the moon landing, were orchestrated from, which is, obviously a very cool thing to see. You also get a chance to see the astronaut's training room where full scale mock-ups of various shuttles and space station modules exist. Alas, you're not allowed to clamber over them yourself, which is something of an oversight we feel.

After that it's back to the Houston Centre via a brief stop at the ring of trees planted to commemorate all astronauts that have died during a mission, it also, therefore, servers as a reminder that space travel is a pretty dangerous business, which is fair enough, but one of the reasons that it's an exciting thing is because it's dangerous, opr rather, because it looks dangerous. Walking through a dodgy area of town at night dressed up as a pink bunny rabbit wearing a nappy is dangerous, but it doesn't look it. It just looks, well, stupid. A lanuch, on the other hand, with it's fire and smoke and teams of people staring intently at row after row of impenetrable numbers looks compliacted and dangerous, which is why they get televised and rabbit suit related escapades are lucky if they get a mention on page 17 of your local newspaper.

Speaking of launches (and not lunches, which are taking care of by the Zero-G diner. We were disappointed that they hadn't gone to the trouble of giving the food space related names along the lines of Saturn Fries, The Bagel has Landed, Neptuna fish sandwich, stuff like that) the centre, quite excitingly, offers you the chance to experience what it's like to be present at one. "We'll have some of that!", we thought to ourselfr and eagerly joined the queue. To say we were let down would be something of an understatement. We're not totally convinced that a real shuttle launch consists of standing in a room alongside an overexcited schooltrip while dry ice gets blasted at you for a couple of seconds. It's certainly not how we pictured it in our minds eye anyway.

As well as the aforementioned spacecraft exhibits, there's also a display of spacesuits, a number of films on various aspects of Nasa's work and history, and a live demonstration on how astronauts live in space. Uncomfortably seems to be the gist of it. There's also a number of interactive computer simulations availiable, including one which allows you the chance to plan a Mars mission. We attempted this, but our evil plan to kill off the entire crew in space was scuppered when the computer wouldn't let us take off, using the fact that we hadn't included any food, water or oxygen as a very flimsy excuse. Tsk!

Off to Houston today, so it was back on the bus for a few more hours. On the bright side this bus had TV screens so we got to watch a film to kill some time during the trip. On the downside the film was Stuck on You, the Farelley brothers 'comedy' about conjoined twins. Suddenly the three hour journey stretched out into an eternity as we were treated to this particular mockery of the movie making art.

Despite the time stretching caused by the film, we managed to arrive in Houston at 1PM, which would have been great if it wasn't for the fact that we couldn't check into the hostel until 5PM. Somehow the joys of exploring a new city are somewhat muted when you have to do it carrying all your possessions on your back.

We were overjoyed today when our animatronic drought finally ended, and in a very unexpected place to boot - the Lyndon B Jonson Memorial library. We visited this expecting it to be a somewhat dry experience, which would be ironic given the soaking we got tryign to find the place during a storm. These libraries are built once a president leaves office and contain all the collected papers from their time in power. Sometimes they contain a small museum containing a suitably whitewashed version of the President's life - we'd be quite interested in seeing how Nixon's one deals with his life, but that's beside the point. The LBJ library is quite interesting, even if the whole "Vietnam was a bit of a bad idea" thing is only mentioned very briefly. The first floor deals with his lief and times, offering a brief overview of the nature of the country at that time and other useful bits of knowledge.

It's on the second floor, however, that the magic happens. Alongside the display of Presidential portraits, gifts from foreign countries and pictures of some of the First Ladies lies an exhibit entitled "The Humor of Lyndon B Johnson". Standing there, dressed in the manner of a farmer, was what we initially assumed was a waxwork of the President, but it was much, much more than that, it was our animatronic experience. As we moved closer to it, we set it off and suddenly LBJ came alive, his head, eyes, mouth and one arm started moving in a pretty lifelike fashion as we were treated to a selection of humourous moments from his past speeches. The humour left a lot to be desired, to be honest, but the animatronic was fantastic and briefly had us convinced that Lyndon was in the room with us, albeit a Lyndon who had suffered a stroke and was paralysed down his right hand side.

The top floor contains a 7/8 scale reproduction of the oval office, but you weren't able to go into it, sit down and 'be' the President, so we don't rate that as highly.

An attraction which we do rate highly, though, is the nightly bat run at Congress Bridge. We're not sure whether you can really call a natural event an attraction, which cheapens it in a Disney-esque way, but it certainly lures a lot of people out in the chill of the evening to see it. Under the bridge exists the world's largest urban colony of bats - approximately 1.5 million of them - and every night, as it gets dark, they bats all swarm out to feed in a big velvety rush. This sounded like it might be a cool event so we went down to the bridge to wait.

As we stood, waiting for the bats to fly, unexpectedly we seemed to go off the idea a bit as our skin started to crawl. This, as it turned out, was not because of a hitherto undiscovered bat phobia but was because we were standing on an ant's nest. After repositioning ourselves and making sure no more were crawling in our vicinity, we relaxed into the waiting game and experienced only occasional psychosomatic feelings of itchyness.

After about forty minutes of waiting with only an aural backdrop of squeaks to convince you the bats were still there, it began. It'd be a fallacy to say the sky went black. Actually, it wouldn't, it was night time and that's what happens then, but the point is that the swarm didn't envelop the sky like a blanket composed entirely of squeaky mammals. Instead they came flying out in their hundreds, silhouetted against the night sky, occasionally swooping down just a little bit too close for comfort. It was a scene which we reckon fills Tim Burton's more pleasant dreams and was very stunning indeed. We stood for about ten minutes and there seemed to be little sign of the winged hoard's flight abating. As we watched, one thing did strike us, thankfully a thought, rather than a bat, and that thought was this: Had it been a different animal swarming, people's reactions would have been very different. Were it, for example, One and a half million cockroaches which were swarming every night we doubt that we, or anyone else, would have come rushing to see nature in action. Hell, we doubt we'd have even come within 100 miles of Austin had that been the case. C'est la vie, we guess.

We left San Antonio this morning to head towards Austin. This wasn't the hardest goodbye we've ever had to make, not because of the city - from what we saw of it yesterday it seems lovely - but because the hostel we were staying in was infested by cockroaches. On our first night there we weren't really aware of this, perhaps they were out having a wild Saturday night doing whatever it is insects do for fun, and peaceful slumber was our reward. Last night, however, the lights went off and and instantly a skittering sound started. This didn't instantly bother us, after all, in a hostel environment weird noises are ten a penny and not really worth bothering about. Our botherd state of mind lasted for a good five minutes or so until the skittering moved closer, up our bedsheet and culminated in something with scratchy nasty legs landing on our mouth. Naturally this did not put us in a good frame of mind as our primeval insticts kicked in and we knocked it off in a manner that was not exactly coated in dignity. We decided at this point to believe that it was just a big spider as, disgusting as that thought was, it was still a nicer mental image than the alternative.

After we'd managed to convince ourselves it was only a lesser brand of creepy crawly based attack, and a lone one at that, we got up ad went to the bathroom to get ourself a drink of water and do what it is you do in the smallest room. As we stood their in the zen-like state that only occurs in moments like that out of the corner of our eye we noticed two patches in the shower where the enamel had worn away, exposing the blackness underneath. "That's odd", we thought to ourself, "we never noticed those this morning, and you'd have thought we would have done, especially as one of them is moving". It was at this point that a different part of our brain stepped in and pointed out, quite politely, that enamel cracks don't move. Rather unwisely, it also suggested we look a little bit closer, at which point we realised we were eyeballing a cockroach. It wiggled it's antenna agressively at us and scuttled in a menacing fashion. We decided to give it space and swiftly returned to our bed, takign care not to use any more steps than were necesary and trying desperately to convince ourselves that the spider explanation still held water.

Eventually we dropped off, despite every unexpected sound being a potential attack squad of roaches and the fact that every few minutes we'd shake our sheets wildly, just on the off-chance that they'd managed to claim some territory there. We awoke at 8, not as refreshed as we would have liked, to discover that one was still waiting for us in the shower. With daylight, tired grumpiness and evolutionary superiority on our side we refused to be beaten and, with the application of some toilet paper, the invader was despatched to the outside world, proving to all who was the clear victor in this battle. That's right, the cockroach.

As today was another travelling day you may be forgiven for thinking that the cockroach story is just a way of adding flesh to a day that would otherwise just be "We sat on a bus, and then we arrived", and you'd be right. Ah well.

And where we're comign from is The Alamo; the famous, if futile, last stand by 200 Texans against an overwhelming force of attackers from Mexico. This, alongside what happened at the battle of Puebla, has taught us the valuable lesson that you should never ever get in a fight with a bunch of Mexicans. They will win.

The fact that 200 men died fighting insurmountable odds in a battle that they knew they could never win, choosing to die painfully as a martyr rather than live painfully as a coward, means that they're considered to be American heroes, the word hereo here presumably being used with it's often implied 'idiot' derivation.

The most well known incident of the siege of the Alamo, other than the basic "senseless death" vibe, which pretty much overshadows the whole event, is the moment when Travis - the commander, rather than the pasty Scottish indie band who could no more lead a group of men into battle than they could write a song which didn't suck dreadfully - drew a line in the sand and asked that all those who would stay and defend the fort to the death cross the line and join him. Anyone that didn't was free to bugger off, go home and follow the battle on CNN, or whatever the equivalent was back then. All save one man crossed the line, but while he may not be considered the equal of the men that stayed, at least he has the satisfaction of knowing that the name of Colonel Yelow Bellied-Chicken has gone down in history.

It's a nice story, but there's only one minor problem with it. There's no evidence that it actually, well, happened. This hasn't stopped them marking the spot with a brass line and a plaque explaining what went on there. Inside the musem can be found a quote from a noted historian regarding this non-event. It basically runs "So what if there's no evidence that it happened, let us believe it to be true for what it represents", which is a bit like a top-drawer paleontologist holding onto the belief that dinosaurs and humans co-existed in the same time period just because he doesn't want to accept that the comedy stylings of the Flintstones is a scientific impossibility.

In the evening we went to the cinema to see Van Helsing, the new monster killing movie featuring Hugh Jackman. It creates in a world where Frankenstein, Mr Hyde and Dracula, apparantly beign played by Brett Anderson, all exist in the same universe. A world where virtually every item of clothing is made out of leather. A world where werewolves, upon changing back to human form, are handily attired in a ragged loin cloth, A world where most transformation effects happen in shadow, almost as if there was an effects budget to consider and a world where Kate Beckinsdale seriously believes that the best outfit for hunting vampires is a tight corset and heels combo. Basically, it's a bit rubbish and everyone involved, including the extras, should be ashamed of themselves.

And yet another day spent on the Greyhound, watching the world go by, and it's literally a day in this case as we got on the bus at 9AM and arrived in our home for the next two days - San Antonio at 9.15PM. As a result of this we have even less to say about today than we did about the trip to Tucson, but on the bright side it's allowed us to use a Half Man Half Biscuit song as the headline so it can only be a good thing.

Publishing, as we do, an on-line travel diary and believing that people are interested in our musings on the world of pop music, we're clearly not averse to a touch of ego-mania. Even so, it's still rare for us to get an opportunity to actually look down on the world. In El Paso the Wyler Aerial Tramway gave us the chance to do exactly that, so eagerly we took it, hatching plans of world domination as we did so.

While the name makes it sound more impressive than it actually is, the Aerial Tramway is basically just a cable car that makes it quick and easy to get to the top of Rangers Peak which is 5632ft above sea level. The station for the cable car, however, is not as you might expect at the bottom of the peak, but was located partway up and is clearly not designed to be reached by foot and the walk damn near killed us by the time we eventually, with multiple breaks, got to the top. All the chest pains, lack of breath, and lights dancing in front of our eyes was worth it as the view from the top was absolutely amazing. From that height you could look into Mexico and the US, seperated only by the rather dried up and not quite living up to it's name Rio Grande. El Paso itself was laid out below much like an in-progress game of Sim City. As our eyes turned towards the state of New Mexico, we watched a vulture lazily circle in the air, presumably waiting for us to keel over as we attempted to make it back down the hill again.

As it happened, the vulture never got a chance for it's meal and we never got a chance to re-experience the hell as the family who were in the cable car took pity on us and kindly offered a lift in their car back into town. As they didn't appear to be axe-wielding weirdos, we decided to forget all the advice we've been given about not getting into cars with strangers and graciously accepted their offer. Besides, we figured that even if they did take us to a lay-by and chop our legs off, the pain would probably be about equal to what we'd suffer from the walk back down.

While they weren't axe-wielding psycho's, they did turn out to be devout Christian types and happily pointed out the Church at which they sang on a Sunday and suggested that I might like to come along if I was still in town. We declined this offer, having the good, and honest, excuse that we wouldn't go to worship in a Church if we were paid. Oh, and we'd be in San Antonio on Sunday.

Despite, or perhaps because of, their religous leanings they were lovely, friendly people and told us about a number of points of interest in the town. They even invited us to join them for lunch, which we declined as we considered that would be abusing their hospitality just a tad. This isn't the only act of random niceness we've experienced on this trip. Both Canadian and US citizens are among the nicest people we've ever come across. They're always ready to offer help and advice and for that, we salute you. In a purely non military way though. The soldiers in those photos certainly aren't exhibiting the friendly reaction towards foreigners that we've come to expect from our time here.

Seeing as we've been travelling through hot and dry states, Mother Nature's highly developed sense of irony has seen fit fit to strike us down with a cold. We retired to bed early last night with a thumping headache and a general feeling of bleagh-ness. Note that we only went to bed, we didn't actually go to sleep, as last night was the most slumber-free experience we've had since the now almost forgotten jet lag days at the start of this trip. By 1AM out throat was on fire, our nostrils were operating a closed door policy and morning seemed a long, long way away indeed.

It seems, however, that the American virus is no match for a Scottish, brownie toughened immune system, as by the time the dawn light began to filter through the windo practically all the cold symptoms had vanished, leaving behind only a crippling exhaustion that would have been hell had we had to actually do anything other than sit on a bus for the most part of the day.

Yes, it was another goodbye to another city, and another hello to another place. This time El Paso in Texas. Despite it's state location, it's not really a Texan town, it's basically Mexican without actually being in Mexico. It's right on the border - we were a five minute walk from Juarez - and Spanish is the dominant language. Walking the streets makes you feel like you're in a different country, particularly with all the young, thin, tanned and gorgeous latina girls, the middle-aged, overly sweaty and dodgily moustached latino guys and the rich variety of cheap consumer goods on offer from every storefront. We didn't, however, have much of an opportunity to experience the town, as the aforementioned exhuastion was beginning to overwhelm us once again, so we wisely, and you may interpret 'wisely' in any way you please, had a pot noodle, watched the last episode of Friends and had another early night. Once again we are living it up in a hedonistic stylee.

Old Tucson Studios is located just outside the city and is a location where many westerns were shot. Nowadays, however, with the Western form haven falling out of fashion, along with legwarmers, Tab Clear and Sporty Spice, it's no longer used for this purpose. Instead it's been converted into a Western Adventure Park, with gunfights, horses, saloons and everything you need to pretend you're a cowboy. Sounds rather ace, doesn't it? We thought so, so it should come as no surprise to discover that it's Tucson's number one tourist attraction and a place that we planned to visit, so off we went to the tourist information centre to find out how to get there.

"Well, you just follow the interstate until exit..." the woman behind the counter began.

"Uh, we don't drive", we interupted, "What bus can we get there?"

"There isn't one."

"Oh."

So, unable to see the main attraction we enquired about how to get to Sabina Canyon, which is like a less good Grand Canyon, it's the Triple 8 to the Grand Canyon's 5ive. There was a bus there, so we briefly rejoiced until we discovered that it stopped 4 miles away from the canyon and we'd have to hike the rest of the way. Given that the Arizonan sunshine which was beating down was the kind that can safely be described as 'blistering' we didn't think that this would be the wisest of moves, so we declined.

Instead, we decided to head up to the University of Arizona partly because we'd been told they had a couple of museums that might have been interesting, but also because we were holding on to the vague hope that we'd stumble across the Faculty of Cheerleading, which we're sure must exist in at least one Uni in the US, purely for sociological interest, mind. Nothing weird. Honest.

As it was, there was no obvious cheerleading department, the most interesting plce was the exhibit of artwork, particularly the stuff by Peter Fine and our other belief, that we'd be able to get a cheap lunch there, what with being a campus, was dashed as we discovered the masses of fast food chains that had made their homes there. Ah well.

Another day spent travelling as we leave the state of California and head out to Tucson. Because we spent the day on the bus we have absolutely nothing interestiabout today. The only event of any note that happened was that upon arriving at our hostel we were asked if we were related to a Neil Robertson from St Andrews, on the basis that we're both Scottish and share the same surname. We didn't have the hart to tell him that Robertson is quite a common surname and it was a rather stupid question. Instead we simply answered "No", before enjoying our evening meal of a nut brownie that we'd got from a vending machine in the bus station earlier. Brownies clearly satisfy two of the 5 basic food groups: Nuts, Artificial Fruit Flavouring, Chocolate, Lint and Gravel, so we reckon we're doing alright nutrionally.

See, told you we had nothing interesting to say.

We touched a dolphin today! Oh, and that's not a euphemism for anything, by the way, we're talking about an actual dolphin. And even if it was a euphemism for something, we wouldn't mention something like that on here anyway. Not that we'd be ashamed or anything like that, but because we think that somethigns are best kept private, such as dolphin touching. If dolphin touching was something like that, which it's not, and that's why we we're not mentioning it. Right? Good.

No, the dolphin we touched was a real, bona-fide one at Seaworld, as opposed to the non-existent, nothing to be ashamed of practice described above. Seaworld is nominally a themepark, but is essentially a way to make acquariums seem more fun, and very successful at this it is too.

Having now touched one and seen them up close, we've actually gone off Doplhins a bit now. Once you get face to face with them you realsie that all they are is just cure sharks. Their famous smile reveals two glistening rows of teeth clearly designed, to our eyes at any rate, for the purpose (or porpoise) of tearing your arm off at the socket for the heinous crime of not having any fish to give them. Our touch was very much of the quick, delicate, "Please, don't bite me, Mr Dolphin" style before we backed off from the eyes of evil that were boring into us. But, despite the fear of blood letting that it instilled into us, it was still a very ace experience.

Of course, it's not dolphins that the Seaworld brand is famous for, it's Shamu, a trained killer whale who before for the entertainment of the public twice a day, 7 days a week. This is no doubt quite humiliating for a creature that's supposed to be master of the deep, king of the oceans and frightening ogre to all the little fishies under the waves. Mind you, we say "A trained killer whale" when what we actually mean is "a collection of trained killer whales" as we counted at least 4 Shamu's, including Baby Shamu during his show, but then, we guess there aren't a lot of job options for whales in the world of showbusiness, other than providing cheap and easy punchlines for Michelle McManus jokes, and that's not exactly a long term career move, is it?

There was another chance to see sealions in comedic action here. This time it was Clyde and Seamore starring in their own Home Improvement-esque show - Fools With Tools. Sadly, there were no impressions in this show, but on the bright side, the animals weren't given the use of power tools and chainsaws, something for which we should be very greatful. Instead, Clyde and Seamore were cast, and we do mean cast, as this show was properly scripted and acted by all, as rival hosts of a cable DIY show and was all about them fighting over who was the true star of the show, the fight being partly caused by an evil otter who stole the contract which stated who the real star was. Yes, it was exactly as fantastic as it sounds and, if it wasn't for the fact that the sealions would be insulted by the animal involved, wouldl get our solid gold seal of approval.

The other live show was called Pets Rule! (exclamation mark is theirs, we hasten to add). As we were in Seaworld, this naturally featuerd such well known water dwelling animals as dogs, cats and, that popular household pet, a pig. The show itself was basically like watching a poor quality version of You've Been Framed, only with the bonus of not having Jonathon Wilkes butting in every few minutes with comments that somehow manage to be even less hilarious than the video's themselves.

Presumably in a bid to justify it's themepark tag, there are a couple of rides availiable. First up is another 4-D extravaganza called "The Haunted Lighthouse". We've been to a few of these 4D things now and we can safely say that the 4th dimension isn't time, as is widely believed by scientists and other allegedly educated people, but is, in fact, "being sprayed with water". There's also a water rapids ride. As with all these sorts of things, the main purpose is to get you soaked through, which is all well and good, but we feel that Seaworld goes a step too far by allowing punters the opportunity to pay a quarter and fire water cannons at those on the ride. The gits.

The final ride is Wild Arctic, which initially simulates a ride over the Arctic in a helicopter. A helicopter which is apprantly equipped with a polar bear detector, a piece of equipment which is presumably about as much use as the Frog Exagerator. After the helicopter has "landed" safely you can wander through their arctic area, which once again contains confused looking polar bears and seals who are looking up and wondering just why the sun has suddenly become a hot burny thing.

The animals are the other side of Seaworld, and one that it does little to highlight to be honest, preferring instead to focus on which ever Shamu they use for publicity shots. It's a shame as they have excellent shark, penguin and manatee exhibits. They also have a number of aquariums to show you the amazing variety of undersea life. Although while on one hand it shows you the incredible beauty which lurks beneath the waves, on the other it reveals that there are a hell of a lot of hideously ugly creature lurking there who thankfully can't be seen.

As we're in the US we thought we'd take advantage of this and try to discover some new bands, put our ear to the ground and find out just who's making a big noise over heer and will be making it big in the UK by the time we get back. It was with that in mind that we went out this eveing to see, umm, scottish indie band Belle and Sebastian. For a full review please see Talent in a Previous Life.

San Diego, and most other citires with a noticable Hispanic population, is currently celebrating Fiesta Cinco de Maya. This is an event held each year to commemorate the battle of Puebla where a vastly outnumbered town of Mexicans manages to defeat the invading French army. We know all this not thanks to paying attention in history, the only thing we learnt from that is that the past exists, but because we witnessed a re-enactment of this battle in San Diego's Old Town, where the weekend's celebrations took place.

We've never quite seen the point of battle re-enactments. It seems to be an excuse for people who should know better to dress up in ill-fitting and unconvincing costumes and run arouns firing slightly more dangerous cap guns at each other. Rather than enlightening us on the military tactics which were in place, all it achieved was to make us slightly deaf. On the basis of what we saw, the French marched slowly forward in a straight line, firing occasionally, while the Mexicans sat behind bales of hay firing constantly. Some of the French people pretened to fall down, before the Mexicans vame running across, claiming victory. Now, we're now tactition, we can't even place draughts successfully, let alone chess, but it strikes us that the half-arsed keeling over technique may well have been the flaw in France's otherwise cunningly thought out battle plan.

This, thankfully, wasn't the only entertainment on offer. The Old Town itself is a historic park, with most of the buildings turned into little museums, kinda like a less good Beamish. As well as that, there were numerous market stalls set up offering food, dodgy t-shirts and promotional giveaways from various sponsors. Dotted around the area were a handful of stages showcasing traditional latino music - mariachi rather than J-Lo - which was a brief distraction until we remembered that mariachi music is irredeemably shit.

In the same location as the fake batle, they also showed a demonstration of horsemanship. The brochure made it sound quite exciting, so we turned up expecting to see rearing stallions and major league thrilles. As it turned out though, the thrills that were on offer were a lot closer to the dull Irish indie band of the same name, as the equine skills on display featured the horses going quite fast in a circle, the horses going quite fast in a straight line then stopping and, finally, the horses going quite fast and quite close to each other. Despite the Wow!, or perhaps Why?, factor of the last stunt, it wasn't seen fit for it to end the show. Instead, we were treated, in much the same way a patient with gangrene is treated to an amputation, to a display of lasoo style rope tricks. This, when you get right down to it, is basically fancy skipping, and is no way for a grown man to be making a living.

Zoos are, of course, bad and evil places. Not, we hasten to add because they keep animals locked up in confined conditions away from the plains that are dear to them and, in some cases, the deers that are dear to them. No, they're evil because that's exactly what they don't do in these modern, enlightened, animal friendly times. This turns a zoo visiting experiences into an occasionally frustrating game of Where's Wally, something which is rather cruel for the paying customer. Don't the animals care that we've invested money into this so they have an obligation to entertain us? Clearly not if our experience of San Diego Zoo was anything to go by.

Don't get us wrong, for the most part it was an enjoyable experience, and we can certainly excuse the animal's desire to spend their time in the hot Californian sun asleep, especially the polar bear who was no doubt feeling very confused by the whole warm temperature style business.

The Zoo is probably most famous for not only having a pair of pandas, but also for persuading them to breed, by measures which we have no desire to contemplate, and so have a cute little cub as well. Pandas are pretty cool creatures, no matter what form they take, but, to be honest, once you've seen one panda, you've seen them all. Almost literally, given their current closeness to extinction. We saw the mother panda, who was eating bamboo and seemed to be enjoying herself. The cub was sleeping in the tree and may or may not have been enjoying itself, we're nto good at reading emotions from the small, white, furry back that was the only visible sign of life.

Slightly more animated where the sea lions, but then, it was a scheduled show, so they damn well should have been. Sea lions are very cool animals in general, but one of the two in this show was even acer than normal as it did impressions - of both a seal and a shark - something which clearly makes it one of the 117 Acest Things in the World... Ever!.

Also ace, though not quite that ace, was the hippo who was playing with his ball, bouncing it against the viewing panel. At least, we assume he was playing with it. It was quite possible that he was attempting to escape from the imprisonment that he'd found himself in and was trying to use the ball as a crude wrecking ball to smash his way through the plexiglass that was keeping him from his hippo freedom. It was hard to tell.

The other problem we have with zoos is that we can't shake off the feeling that all the animals, even the flamingos, are always looking at you and thinking "You know, if this fence wasn't here, I'd have you. Growl.". We prefer the slightly less threatening environs of Alphabet Zoo, with head keeper Nerys Hughes. A place where, no matter what, you were guaranteed to see a Zebra and a Quail and, despite it's name, the letter X was always ignored. Until they work out a way of officially classifying a Xylophone as an animal, that is.