America!

I've been on a road trip to America. That and more is what this slightly different post on my blog will be about.



Me, my parents and my brother went on this trip together with my aunt, uncle and cousin who live in Tampa, Florida and that's where the trip began after landing in Orlando, Florida. Florida is absolutely the most boring American state we've visited on this trip. It's flatter than the Netherlands and there are absolutely no interesting cities in it. The landscape consists mostly of shopping malls. Anyway, while I was on this road trip I was thinking about writing about it on this blog. I thought of filling this post with interesting and fun media related with the places I've visited. I couldn't even come up with something interesting for Florida. That's when, near the end of the trip, Bill Maher came to the rescue, with his fun but slightly nonobjective documentary Religilous in which he objects against the lunacy of religion. Sometimes he goes too far in making fun of it, but some things are just so preposterous one can't help but make fun of it. One of these things is the Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando. Orlando has many theme parks about all kinds of crazy things. But this one is actually so preposterous that, well it has to be seen to be believed.





When we left Tampa we went on our way to Washington D.C., but that's a to big distance, so we stayed a night in Savannah, Georgia. Savannah is a quite beautiful, typical Southern city which seemed full of life. Kids were playing by the river and musicians played nice music. It's also the first of quite some places on I've visited on this trip where Forrest Gump was. The park where he explains that 'life is like a box of chocolates' is in Savannah. We couldn't now which park it was, because it turns out Savannah has a lot of parks with benches like in Forrest Gump.



Mr. Gump of course also went to Washington where in the pool of water close to the Washington museum he reunited with his beloved Jenny. It was so hot in Washington that many people who were there those to days probably thought of reenacting that scene.

Before I go further, I'd like to say that despite me making fun of Forrest Gump, the movie is a wildly original and great one. The scene where Forrest gives John Lennon the idea for Imagine, is one of the most inventive scenes I've seen. It's a bit sad that both Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks careers have now become a bit boring. Zemeckis has made with the Back to the Future films, Forrest Gump and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? some wildly original movies. It's a shame he now makes movies like The Polar Express. As for Tom Hanks, he used to have interesting roles even in some lousy movies. I don't like either Philadelphia or Big very much for example, but he gave a great performance in both of them. The Robert Langdons and Charlie Wilsons he now plays, he could do in his sleep. But most importantly, he seemed to act with a lot of joy and energy. Now that seems all gone, although there was some of it in The Terminal.



Of course we saw many other monuments in Washington. The Lincoln Memorial was quite impressive and so was Capitol Hill. I did expect the White House to be a bot larger though, but it still was fun to see. The National Archive, where the important American documents are located, is also very interesting to see, but just like it's the case with the museum of Air and Space, it glorifies the army a bit too much. The National Gallery has some very nice (post)modern paintings and the Library of Congress is also very impressive. As one can read we saw many museums and monuments, but what we saw the most were boy scouts. They were absolutely everywhere and they came in all sizes.



After Washington we continued to New York, but not before stopping in the university town of Princeton. It's amazing how little we hear about Princeton in the Netherlands, considering it was founded by the Dutch and is heavily influenced by both them and the Germans. The official color of the university even is orange.



New York is one of the greatest cities in the world. It's full of people and energy. It is a city that really seems to be alive at any time of the day. This is the second time I've been to New York and I've seen most of the important monuments and museums of the city, but what I like the most is just to walk through the city, preferably Manhattan, and just look at all this activity on the streets. There are people hurrying to go to work, some are just strolling through the city, and others sell hot dogs. I climbed the Empire State Building this time and it was absolutely spectacular to look down from there and see all these busyness around. We also went to Moma, which is probably the greatest museum I've visited, although I must admit that I haven't visited many and that I'm not a really big fan of them. I've almost finished writing about New York, but of course no writing about New York is finished without a reference to Woody Allen. Here is therefore the opening to Manhattan.



Next destination: Niagara Falls. For this destination we left the States and entered Canada, because the falls are more spectacular on the Canadian side then on the American and because the hotels are cheaper there. This was the biggest disappointment on this trip. The falls are pretty spectacular indeed, but you kind of expect them to be a bit bigger and you can not watch water fall very long before becoming slightly bored. We've also learned that how much water falls down the fall is regulated by some technology. When there are more tourists, more water falls. That is a bit disappointing. After all you go to the falls to see a natural wonder. Besides all this the city of Niagara Falls is absolutely horrible. They tried to be something like Las Vegas, but as we would later see, it is not nearly as spectacular and it mostly looks stupid and annoying. There are all kinds of museums with wax figures that don't look at all like the people they suppose to look like. There are thematic restaurants which have themes that have nothing to do with Niagara Falls or Canada. For example there is a Rainforest Cafe! On every corner there are people selling shit, sorry, there is no other word for it. Anyway, I've written more about the bad experience, than about the good ones, so here is some proof that not everything Canadian is bad.



From Niagara Falls we went to Chicago. This was only our first stop in the city. My cousin, who is the son of my aunt and uncle, lives here so we had a free apartment. Since we arrived late and were very tired from our first part of our trip we didn't do anything for our first day here until my cousin came back from work. After that we ate in Barack Obama's favorite restaurant. One must admit that he has good taste. The food was pretty good.

The next day we flew to Las Vegas and the west. More about this in my next blog entry.