St. Augustine, 19/7-2004

Hello again

    I’m getting closer to the end of my vacation, but there are still lots of things I haven’t seen – Like the entire east coast.

    I picked up Johs and Karen in New York at Kennedy Airport. The plan was for a quick get-away, using classic Scandinavian cunning and the cover of darkness to get out of town before the evil host of maniac taxi drivers had a chance to spot us. It worked beautifully! I had a day and a night in the Big Apple, catching up with my old roommate, and doing a bit of reconnoitering for my return at the end of the month. It is not, I repeat, NOT a city I’d want to drive through during the daytime. Anyway, we got away clean and headed straight for Louisiana and the jewel of the old French colonial empire, New Orleans, The Big Easy.

    In my last mail I did a little advertising for Boston, and I’d like to extend the same cutesy to New Orleans. There’s a laid back, relaxed mood, combined with an almost addictive need to have a good time, all the time, which is saturating the city. We checked into the Frenchman, a motel located just on the edge of the French Quarter which is where the action is. It was actually on a side-street to Elysian fields Avenue, which those of you with a minimum of culture will recognize from A Streetcar named Desire… How cool is that? Anyway, apart from the extremely hot and humid climate (July being the hottest month in Louisiana), New Orleans is fantastic. From the neat coffee houses near the French market, through the steam-driven riverboats going up and down the Mississippi, and up to the bars of Bourbon Street (the center of nighttime New Orleans), this city is a place for having fun and soaking up an atmosphere so thick that it needs to go on a diet. I can’t wait to go back.

    From New Orleans we headed east to Florida and the Atlantic, stopping only briefly to dip our weary feet in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Florida is very different from its neighbors to the north and west. Historically it was settled by the Spanish, not the English. Climatically, it benefits from the same warm weather but is cooled down by a refreshing breeze perpetually blowing in from the Atlantic. Culturally, the clash of a focus on tourism and the status as America’s retirement-home makes for a peculiar blend of condominiums, hotels, and luxurious manors up and down the long coastal stretches. We went to St. Augustine first, which is claiming to be the first European settlement in North America. The town is nice, having several very well preserved landmarks from Spanish colonial times, and is within driving distance of Kennedy Space Center, which, for a space geek like me, was extremely interesting. Still, with the splendor of New Orleans behind us, I thought Florida a bit of an anti climax although I was as happy as anyone for the lack of mosquitoes, and the coming of the breeze.

    Next we headed back north, going through Georgia with a 2 day stop in Savannah. This city is extremely docile, but in a good way. There are not that many things to see, but the long stretches of broad avenues, lined by huge trees bending in over the road to form tunnels of lush, green vegetation, is definitely worth a day of leisurely strolling with no particular destination. It is also a nice break from the very tourist orientated cities of New Orleans and St. Augustine. Savannah is easily large enough to accommodate all its visitors, without succumbing to the lure of “selling out” on its southern charm.

    That’s it for now, for the next episode tune in to hear of our visit to Fredericksburg, Virginia as well as a tour of the great cities of the north: Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and of course, the triumphant return to New York where I’ll pick up the next batch of friends ;)

    Take care,

Martin