Pondtales

We arrived in LA for our stop over after a long flight, we were lucky that our hotel would let us check in as we arrived early morning, despite the general rule about getting adjusted to the time difference, we fell asleep.

We woke up in the late afternoon, with nothing to do at our airport hotel so we went shopping at the nearest outlet mall as they have a free shuttle service there and back. We went to best buys and bought a Laptop and video camera to use on our trip. We had the first of many Pizzas.

The next day was really the start of our trip when we flew to NEW YORK!!! This is the second time we have been to New York, but from the moment we arrived it was all new because there were so many things to see. We had a great hotel it was two blocks from Times Square which was great but it still did not stop us from getting lost.

After our well earned rest, we had a free day to do whatever we wanted......so we went shopping, we spent the day walking around Times Square shopping and sightseeing it was great.

When it is two people travelling it is a challenge to get a photo of the two of you together and because we have already been to New York we figured we never know if we will  get the opportunity to go back so we wanted some great pics together, We found a great walking tour that include a photographer and 150+ photos to take home it was great.

The next day consisted of not only more pizza but a tour about and including pizza, we did the slice of Brooklyn tour, it was such a great tour it was a great day. We got see the sights in Brooklyn and we were taken to two different famous pizza places, first we went to Grimaldi's under the Brooklyn Bridge where we had Neapolitan-style pizza (This was my sister favourite). Next we went to L&B Spumoni Gardens in Bensonhurst where we has the legendary Sicilian-style pizza, which in my opinion was the best pizza I have ever had.

I think everyone who goes to New York needs to spend the whole day in central park and just work around we had amazing weather and It was a great day to walk around and see the many sites within the park, we had a rather disappointing lunch at the boat house but it was still a great day.

Sadly our time in New York had to come to end at some point; we flew from NYC to Raleigh, North Carolina where we hired a car

and drove to Wilmington to which the guy in the car hire place though was hilarious and told us there is nothing much there. So we were a bit apprehensive to start off with, we choose Wilmington because we are a big fan of movies and TV shows and they film a lot of them there like fire starter, Betsy's Wedding, Dawson's Creek, Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood,  Eastbound & Down (HBO), One Tree Hill and Empire Records just to name a few.

So after a 3 hour plus drive we arrived at hotel which the inside of the hotel smelt damp and look like the inside of the bates motel, at this point we were starting to think that guy was right. We managed to find a target so we did all our DVD shopping, YAY!!

We did two tours, one being a tour of the Screen Gem studios which was ok got to see the sets of One Tree Hill, then we did a movie walking tour of old Wilmington which was really embarrassing because the guy was weird and he had a mega phone which he kept on shouting action and cut. So after that we decide to find stuff ourselves, we found Karen’s Cafe and other stuff.

Back on the road again we drove for 8 hours in the one day which was not too bad because we shared the driving, but we booked a cabin in the smoky mountains national park. I was very hard to find and we go lost and pulled into someone’s long driveway thinking it was our cabin, but it wasn’t, ha-ha. We eventually found it and it was so worth it, the cabin was amazing. We spent the 3 days bumming around, enjoying the hot tub with national park in our backyard. On our trip back to return the car we pulled in to have lunch and we discovered Arby’s, this now became second go to place to eat other than pizza.

Next we went on to New Orleans which was a lot different than I expected it is hard to explain it is very diverse city. We stayed in the business district just outside the French quarter and we spent most of our time around the French markets and the Warf.

We went on the Natchez dinner cruise which was great, beautiful meal while we listen to Jazz music, the following day we did a tour of the Oak Alley Plantation which was amazing the front path had like 28 live oaks, planted in the early 1700's. It was amazing.

We also did a swamp and bayou tour it was a beautiful day to spend on a boat, we got to see a few alligators and turtles.

Because the food was mostly Cajun, which we did try but because I cannot handle much spicy food we did have Arby’s like three days in a row it was great. I did have a shrimp po-boy and some gumbo Ya Ya.  I bought a New Orleans cookbook so I will attempt to cook some not so spicy gumbo at home.

Last stop was San Antonio, we did not have anything planned here we spent our days shopping and see the sights. Our Hotel was close to the river walk so we walked along the river walk. As we were there over Halloween we knew they had a big festival on for this but we missed it because we did not realise that Halloween fell on Monday so they put the festival on the Saturday that had already passed.

 We had a great time and hopefully we get to go again!!!!