Hotel California

The theory was that a night's sleep in a hotel near the airport mid-way between the UK and New Zealand would alleviate the jet-lag effect of a 26-hour journey.

The evidence is positive; it's only taken me a couple of days to adjust to being eleven hours ahead of myself and, yes, the Los Angeles Airport Hilton is very nice thank you.

Well, I say that. The entrance is grandiose, the facade impressive in that smoked glass monolith kind of way, and the corridors are spacious and richly furnished with art and faux-antique couches. The actual rooms seem to have been an after-thought, squeezed around the edges of the magnificent approaches.

I had my fill of American TV, lost my battle with the telephone system, had a fine breakfast and a comfortable day resting in the public spaces and even took a walk. 'Walk ?' asked the concierge when I asked where might be a good place for this activity. 'Well..er.. there's a park about 10 blocks, you could get a taxi.' Was there anywhere I could walk from the Hotel ?

Following his directions I walked alone along tired boulevards lined with old parked cars. I walked for five blocks past hotels, private houses, rest homes, industrial parks and vacant lots in the humid Los Angeles sunshine. Every few minutes a planeload of people passed over me, ruffling my hair and landing moments later at LAX just across the way. I had the sidewalks entirely to myself.

It's worth saying too that travelling through this American port, which I've done several times now, was smooth and relatively stress-free. The staff were relaxed and friendly, a marked contrast to a few years ago when many of the staff were clearly on a hair-trigger.

You can't teach a chicken old jokes

We live on the edge of town, the magnificent southern uplands rolling away from just behind our house. Bonnington Road narrows from a broad avenue of fine Edwardian houses to a country lane winding deep into the Manor Valley. Skylarks overhead, rounded fields ploughed over centuries; cows, horses, sheep, occasional grand farmhouses, a ring of heather-patched hills and, of course, free-range chickens.

Simon and I have taken to cycling out here, taking the level road along Bonnington, puffing slightly up over the cattle grid mid-way, sometimes doing the full circle and mounting an assault on the Sware hill. A long near-vertical pushing a bike.

Yesterday we stopped, as usual, to view the free-range chicken farm where eggs can be bought from the honesty box at the end of the farm driveway. These chooks truly free range, radiating out from their giant shed across two fields, bobbing and scratching like so many clockwork toys. The artists and creatives amongst them can be seen in the farther fields, around the edges and less frequented rises and hollows. Around the corner, a ragged brigade had even escaped the fields, striding down the road, finding tasty morsels in the long grass. A troupe of wandering minstrels in their shreds and patches, they scattered noisily to the shelter of the verges as we cycled by.

Further on one was not so lucky; surprised by one of the infrequent cars it was food for crows, a bloody sight.

What a way to go though, for a chicken.

A mission to New York

At a distance, and with eyes half-closed (as you do) the MTA New York city subway map looks like one of those diagrams of the male reproductive system, though I'm glad it's not mine. Metaphorically tracing our route through New York today would be strangely disturbing however, so let me stay with the literal.

Decoding and negotiating the ticket vending machines was a return to HAL. A New York-style queue of patiently discontented people (mostly curious tourists making mental notes) formed as we tried to figure out the touchscreen instructions and which way to feed in the dollar notes without them being rejected. Finally armed with four Metro Funcards (more American irony) we thundered into New York in one of those distinctive boxy silver subway trains, emerged into the hazy sunshine and did that Gothic cathedral thing of looking upwards and gawping at the high verticals. It was Yosemite again, without the trees.

Food, a signature motif for our trip, is everywhere here, and good stuff too. We bought tasty filled rolls, cakes, coffee and marched through Battery Park to the Ellis Island Ferry. Street vendors sell all manner of quality and dodgy goods, and who can tell the difference ? It's a public holiday today (Columbus Day) but a low tourist season, and all the New Yorkers were at Cape Cod (we saw them queuing on the Massachusetts Turnpike on Friday) so the Statue and Ellis Island Immigration museum were quiet.

Ellis Island is where new immigrants went to be processed before gaining admission to America. Arriving in crowded and filthy ships and after the initial excitement of seeing the Statue of Liberty they waited days sometimes before disembarking and being subjected to questioning, medical examination and a tense wait for a decision. The place processed up to ten thousand people a day. I found it moving and uplifting, the photos of hopeful people who had fled the privations of Europe to find a new life, much like the waves of immigrants reaching New Zealand a century later.

Of course there were also the six million slaves from Africa, and they were the ones who made it here alive. In addition, a large percentage of the Europeans came as indentured servants, with the interesting exception of New England settlers.

I digress. From the Ellis Island experience to Grand Central Station and a grand architectural experience, as well as a superb Food Concourse, and thence to the Empire State Building, once again the tallest in New York, and a stunning night-time view of the big apple under a full moon.

Finally back to the scrotum and our hotel. Oops, did I say that out loud ?

Queens

New York, and the last city of our tour. The GPS did a major HAL coming in to New York but amidst a lot of honking horns, a man waving his fist at me and some diatribe from me towards the unit, we managed between the two of us (Carole and me) to find our hotel, then to the Avis return depot at LaGuardia Airport via the petrol station where I received the legendary New York surly service. I complained to Avis about the GPS (loud enough that she could hear me) and received a $50 refund for my inconvenience. It was the least they could do.

Driving in America's been fun though. You can do relatively little in America without a car, it seems, including getting from one end of a mall to the other. The car (a Dodge CaraVan) was spacious, comfortable, powerful and I want one.

Tomorrow, the New York subway...

Entering the Twilight Zone

Rod Serling could have created some gripping moments with the GPS, had it been invented in 1960. This thing usually conveys us safely from one set of coordinates to another, naming all the streets and points of interest and apparently having a special satellite up there just watching out for us. We trust her (yes, her), smile forgivingly at her sometimes strange pronounciations, share her sense of effortless accomplishment when we reach our destination. Then just occasionally she does a HAL; directing us to keep left, then springing a right-turn, introducing a full-reverse arrow thing on to the map screen, giving a different instruction to what's clearly marked on the display, our little blue car icon careering off the chosen pathway into a dark tangle of unknown streets. We switch to old methods, scrabbling with maps, reading road signs that are OUTSIDE the car, turning aside from The Route.

There's a silence then she says "Recalculating", but what she really means is "What are you doing Dave ?" It's touch and go. We've even switched her off a couple of times recently. The errors are getting more frequent, and more bizarre. Should I worry ?

Torrent

The Niagara River flows towards Canada, reaching the border at the famous dropping point. Consequently, trying to see Niagara Falls from the American side is rather like trying to focus on the tip of your own nose. We didn't appreciate this subtle piece of geography until we got there, noticing that for most Americans Niagara Falls (the town) is little more than a petrol and toilet stop on their way to the Canadian town also called Niagara Falls. This town (the Canadian one) looms across the river, a jumble of high-rise buildings, towers, casinos and conspicuous wealth.

By contrast, the American Niagara Falls town (city, actually) is a down-at-heel urban sprawl with the through-road to Canada clearly marked but little in the way of direction to the US side of the Falls. For foreign visitors driving on the other side of the street in a car that in other countries would suffice for a community minibus this was confusing and stressful, but we eventually found the Niagara State Park with its associated attractions. Various lookout points give views of water disappearing over an edge, and glimpses of splashing torrents below. There are two parts to the Falls; the American Falls and the Horseshoe Falls. The Horseshoe is the one on all the photos, and that's the one you can't see at all from the American side. I felt underwhelmed, frankly.

More satisfying were the walkway beside the bridal veil falls and the Maid Of The Mist boat trip. On the walkway we got drenched in spray and nearly blown off our feet by wind. It reminded me of so many family walks in Peebles. One section of the walkway is named the Hurricane Deck. Directly under the waterfall and in the teeth of the displacement-generated wind I got a sense of the raw power of the waterfall, but of greater interest to me was the very prominent NO SMOKING sign on the railing beside the cascading water. Who says the Americans have no irony ?

The boat trip took us into the Horseshoe Falls where the thundering noise, flying spray and churning turquoise water, coupled with the experience of being surrounded on three sides by towering torrents, was another experience of nature's power unleashed. I had felt this in the desert, and at Yosemite when we reached the top of Glacier Point and looked over a rocky edge to a 4000 foot sheer drop to the valley floor. Having lived all my life on two small islands I'm moved by the scale of America; its size and its extremes.

Fresh from yet another wonder of the world we undertook a five-hour car journey (an inch or so on the map) to our first New England destination. A beautiful evening with the sun setting over cornfields and autumnal forests, the light slanting across red-painted hip-roofed farmhouses with giant grain silos and - honestly - old tractors parked out in the golden fields.

To begin at the beginning

No such luck. Here we are already on our final night in LA and an unexpected treat was seeing the Disney fireworks display from our bedroom window. A contrast to last time (2004) standing on Main Street in Disneyland with two tired little kids, one asleep on the pavement and the other watching the fireworks with vague disinterest. Somehow just as special from the window, with the added bonus of hearing all the neighbourhood car alarms sounding off in response to the shock and awe of the explosions. Presumably it's just part of the wallpaper if you live in Anaheim.

I understood only hazily that Anaheim is not Los Angeles. This week my plan to see the Getty Museum was sunk by the sheer difficulty of getting anywhere in LA - sorry, Anaheim - without a car. As it happens I rearranged the car hire and got it today instead of tomorrow, so had my first experience of driving in the US on the Friday afternoon freeways of Anaheim as we shopped for food, cameras (!) and tried to find anything to eat that wasn't fried. I bottled out of driving 40 miles through central LA on a Friday afternoon to see the Getty. It'll still be there next time.

Oh yes - food shopping. Big portions, high cholesterol, low prices. Say n'more.