Dallas returns
The State Premiers are in town for a high level meeting with the Prime Minister. I picked up one or two from the Hyatt to take for a short ride to The Commonwealth Club, where a dinner was being held in their honour. Just round the corner, really, but you can’t expect such folk to [...]
Sausalito, open your golden gate!
San Francisco! One of those places, like Paris or Texas, where I’ve always got a happy grin cemented onto my face. It might be just airport code SFO, but I’m still bouncing along pushing a luggage trolley, leading a party of five off to the hire care precinct, smiling at random travellers and humming songs [...]
O. M. G.
You remember, a few months back, I narrowly missed attending an Amanda Palmer ninja concert at the Carillon in the middle of a savage thunderstorm? Well, I guess if the same thing happened now, I’d happily go get soaked. It was somewhere in Illinois when the subject came up. “Oh, hang on,” said Discoverylover, “I’ve [...]
A Route 66 icon
We cruised our way out of Oklahoma, through museums and hokey little towns, capturing a border sign at Texola and the leaning water tower in Groom, but we were really aiming for Amarillo. In fact, we were aiming for Albuquerque, but we were doing so much lollygagging and having so much fun just poking our [...]
Flight of the jumbo
I love flying out of Sydney. I get to use the awesome Qantas First lounge. Even if it’s only a cup of coffee, sitting away up there with the huge windows, the smiling staff, and the art on the froth of my latte sets me off on the right foot. I glide down the hall [...]
Into the desert
We woke up in Paris. Paris, Las Vegas. But that’s another story. We paused for photos at the town sign – it has its own car park and Elvis impersonators – but that was only a minute or two. Henderson was a longer pause, for Starbucks and an emergency shop for a camera battery charger. [...]
Signs
Now you go through Saint Louis, Joplin, Missouri And Oklahoma City is mighty pretty. You see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico, Flagstaff, Arizona. Don’t forget Winona, Kingman, Barstow, San Bernandino. We ticked them off, one by one, aiming to get a photo of the town sign for proof. Not sure we got St Louis, but we [...]
The grandmother road
You can’t drive Route 66 any more. Anybody who says they’ve done it, Lake Michigan to Santa Monica Pier is lying. Historic Route 66 is out there, sure enough, and there are any number of websites and guidebooks offering turn by turn instructions. But every now and then they direct you onto I-40 or some [...]
Bourbon and beignets
New Orleans was perfect. We’d planned our visit for Saturday night after another long day of driving when we could use a little relaxation. Halfway through our eastbound crossing of America, New Orleans was our chance to let our hair down, sample the fabled delights of the South, get wild and hungover. The one black [...]
Driving on the dark side
It’s not the first time I’ve driven on the other side of the road. The first time was in Caen, in Normandy, in 2006, in a little grey Opel. A manual car, and I hadn’t driven a manual transmission for about thirty years. I not only had a new car to learn, but a new [...]