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Had a right stress this morning when I realised that all my Amtrak train bookings had been cancelled because I didn’t take the first one from NY to Philly.

After lots of messing about and research the upshot is that I’ve had to make alternative arrangements for my next 2 trips and then all is as was. It’s cost me a fair whack more but there’s no point moping over dropped donuts is there eh.

Though there is an extra layer of worry in all this, the alternative transport is the Greyhound buses which have a bit of a reputation. The Philly to DC trip is only 3 hours so that’s not too bad but the DC to New Orleans journey is over 24 hours. A New Yorker told me a story about a passenger walking round one of the buses with a head that he had just cut off a fellow passenger, when you couple this with the fact that New Orleans is usually the USA murder capital every year, there may be some cause for concern.

On the bright side I will have my Swiss army knife on me and like Mr Kipling said, “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs ….. you’ll be a man my son”.

Erm, don’t worry Mother!

So eventually I got out and had a look at Philly. South Street was pretty cool, a long strip of shops and cafes. As the weather has been a bit bobbins I bought a hat from South Steet Hats. 2 old timer black cool cats were running the show, I’m generally pretty good with accents but I stuggled with one of these dudes. The other guy wanted $30 for the hat but I haggled him down to $20, he said “Where you from? You is a hard bargainer”. Good folks.

Then I went over to the Italian Market for some scran which was an interesting area, I went a little to far up the street though and ended up getting a meatball hoagie from a distinctly un-italian place. Philly claims to have invented the hoagie but I think they are big fibbers as it’s basically just a bread roll. It’s like a stationary shop in Budapest stocking rulers, calling them mellys, then saying they were invented down that end of the Danube.

After that I went to Philly’s number 1 tourist attraction, the Liberty Bell, synonymous with freedom, liberty and the right to shoot $hit. It’s a nice bell but at the end of the day it’s a bell, I mean how long can you stare at a bell for?

There’s a couple of lads from the lake district that have invited me out for a beer. I might join ‘em later but I want to go and have a look at the ‘Rocky steps’ in front of the Museum of Art first. Not to mention the fact that there is a Philly steak burger with my name on it, not literally of course, that would be ridiculous.

I’m not even going to try and keep it short any more.