Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Road Trip To Charleston, SC

I arrived in Charleston on 29 Nov, after a great road trip with great friends.

Here is a synopsis of the trip:
Departed San Diego on a Monday
Drove 19 hrs straight to Austin, TX, rotating between the 3 of us.
One of my buddies got a ticket for going 86 in an 85 zone in West Texas... :(

We spent 2 nights in Austin, seeing the nightlife, and daylife - their modern art museum was meager, but there were a lot of cool small galleries. The only downer was that it was raining the whole time. We paced a giant rainstorm all the way to New Orleans
We left the next morning to New Orleans, arriving in the afternoon - we went all out in New Orleans, staying at the Inn on Bourbon - a great location. We even got a balcony room.
New Orleans was a blast, and we left 2 nights later, to Atlanta.
The drive to Atlanta was pleasant, and we arrived on Saturday evening, spending the night there and leaving the next morning - the drive to Charleston took us through Augusta, where we had lunch at a great pit bbq place.
The road trip really gave me a perspective onto the rest on the country - as a native Californian that has travelled more internationally than domestically, I saw a lot of new things. Hardees is Carls. Jr?
I ate Sonic for the first time.
All the cities we drove through were new to me as well. Austin was a very college-y town. The French Quarter had a distinct smell - I'll just say it gave it "character." We stopped in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi for gas - we drove by 10 gas stations until we could find one that was open - the rest had been destroyed by a hurricane...

Charleston is a vastly different place than San Diego or Los Angeles - and I'm slowly acclimating myself. I'm getting a mixed experience as far as "Southern Hospitality" goes - a friend who had lived in the South told me that Southern Hospitality can sometimes mean two-faced. Fine by me, as long as I get served at Cracker Barrel! HAH!

I'm staying with a buddy right now, and am moving to my own place in downtown soon.

As planned, I'm beginning to see the world!