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I had high hopes for New Mexico, officially the 25th state on my travels around the US, and it did not disappoint. The state boasts a distinctive look, great food and for my money the best state flag… so what’s not to like?

Welcome to New Mexico!

In Santa Fe, the buildings really are all this colour

We ate a lot of food like this

We flew in and out of Albuquerque but spent the majority of time in Santa Fe, which is smaller, more touristy and quite lovely to walk around. Thanks to the Spanish, the city is built around a central plaza and (gasp!) is not just a mindless grid of roads, although – in a sign that the tourism thing might have gone a bit far – approximately 95% of the shops are art galleries. We went on an eccentric walking tour with a guide whose train of thought was a little indirect, but he was very personable and took us to the ‘miraculous staircase’ at the Lotto Chapel. (Basically, the idea is that St. Joseph – yes, that Joseph, of Mary & Joseph – returned to Earth in order to finish off some building work in the 1870s.) And as a bonus, the walk back to our AirBnb was dark enough that we could see a fair number of stars at night.

The central plaza in Santa Fe

Note all of the chiles

Poking my head into a Pueblo home

The best part of our trip was our morning at the Bandelier National Monument, combining some light hiking with a bit of ladder climbing to look at Pueblo homes – between 400 and 900 years old! – carved into the side of the canyon.

Afterwards we drove to Los Alamos, home of the Manhattan Project to build the world’s first nuclear bomb, and visited the World’s Worst Museum about the whole thing. OK, maybe not the very worst, but the introductory video is mind-bogglingly badly pitched. One would have thought it would be possible to celebrate the scientific advancement of nuclear technology, acknowledge the obvious horror and devastation of its use on Japan, and then give different points of view on whether it was, on balance, a necessary evil.

Instead, I’m not even sure it would be obvious to a child that anyone does die when a nuclear bomb is dropped – there’s just a quick cut to US civilians dancing in the streets. To add insult to injury, the narrator bizarrely declares that “all” of the native people cleared off the land to make way for the Manhattan Project were “happy and willing to do so for the war effort”, as if they conducted a survey. I cannot comprehend why you would even bother lying about this. You’re not going to get a 100% approval rating for bringing in cake to work, so why say something so transparently unbelievable? Get a grip, Los Alamos.

At the Bandelier National Monument

Inside the Alcove House after many ladders

The t-shirt was a risk, but it paid off

We returned to Albuquerque from Santa Fe the same way we had came: by train.  That’s right, an actual train slap bang in the middle of the sixth-least densely populated state, with $9 tickets you can buy on your phone, on a railway which has only been operating since 2006. If it can be done here, no one else has any excuse. By our final day we were pretty exhausted, so took a leisurely walk around the Old Town, sat and listened to a fetching rendition of The Winner Takes It All on some wind instruments (no sarcasm, it was pretty good) and sat in a diner watching a muted, subtitled episode of General Hospital. (We were perplexed by this show in so many ways, but most noteworthy is that zero scenes actually took place in or around a hospital of any sort.)

Albuquerque Old Town

The world’s creepiest petrol station

Halfway there! 😉

Last weekend we journeyed to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin with Rudy, Amanda and Melissa – the last of whom I first met in New York two years ago but has studiously avoided me in her subsequent trips to Chicago. No longer! We stayed in a quaint AirBnB, took walks around the lake (though not the full “21 mile perimeter” of which Rudy spoke), swung on swings, played an unwieldy game of giant Uno – shuffling was a challenge – and, most importantly, watched the Eurovision final on Saturday night. Most memorable was Rudy’s description of Portugal as he sung: “he looks, and sounds, like a Pixar animated short”.  Then of course Portugal won, which pleased me in so much as the alternative was Bulgaria, but I still think Moldova were robbed. Again.

Lake Geneva

Celebrating diversity

Rudy, Amanda, Melissa and Randi on a Culver’s stop

Melissa stayed a little longer with us in Chicago afterwards, which was lovely, and then on Wednesday it was Randi’s birthday! Apparently it was terribly gauche of us to eat out and order the same gnocchi with gorgonzola… but we enjoyed it 😀

Toronto! Also, Starfleet Academy!

In the second instalment of my unadvertised ‘visit all of the Canadian provinces and territories’ challenge (note: not actually a thing) I just spent a long weekend with my parents and Randi in Toronto. Canada’s largest city is a self-evidently wonderful place with friendly vibes, a self-confident multiculturalism and lots to see and do.

The only drawback, as everyone there will tell you, is that the weather alternates between hellishly cold winters and stiflingly hot summers… so much so that a chunk of the city is hidden underground within a network of pedestrian tunnels. We obviously hit a sweet spot for weather, however, with snow on Friday complementing our Niagara Falls tour without it getting too freezing, and then increasing sunshine as the weekend progressed!

At the Niagara Falls!

In front of the American (i.e. less exciting) falls

Most people I spoke to were pretty down on Niagara Falls beforehand, so we were pleasantly surprised by our day tour. (Incidentally, Trump really has put rocket boosters on the standard tour guide repertoire of jokes about America: we got to a contrived but accurate slam on the US healthcare system within about 10 minutes of the bus setting off.)

Alongside seeing the Falls themselves, which were smaller than I’d imagined but very cool to get up near in a boat, we also got to sample Canadian ‘ice wine’ which is super sweet, like drinking a tasty dessert. Randi and I drank more later on at the top of the CN Tower, the ‘tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere’ (as a careful lawyer might write) which really shows off what a metropolis the city is – not just a cluster of skyscrapers in the centre, but spreading far and wide with many different clusters of development.

We didn’t push the boat out in our giant heart photos

Within the Distillery District

Dim Sum in Chinatown

At the top of the CN Tower

We also enjoyed a great dim sum lunch in Chinatown, drank beer in the famous Distillery District, went on a great walking tour (during which the guide claimed that Doctor Who was doing location filming in Toronto that day – sadly we could not verify this by spotting Capaldi anywhere) and had a unique guide to St. Lawrence Market with a thick French accent and a relaxed attitude to trespassing. (This person may or may not have been my mother.)

Finally, a shout out to Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. Imagine an airport which is within walking distance of the city centre – like a train station – with no queues, tiny planes which are quick to board and (best of all) free refreshments in the waiting lounge! If you visit Toronto, such things can be mere imagination no longer. Magical.

The world’s best airport

Two quick pre-Toronto things to squeeze into this post. Firstly, we had a lovely night with Grace and her mother (both visiting from Wyoming) plus other friends in their fancy AirBnb. Grace’s mother is as cool as I would have expected Grace’s mother to me. Secondly, at Toggolyn’s we followed-through on our plan to watch The Godfather Part II together. I’m not sure I take the popular view that the sequel is better than the original, but it was certainly enjoyable to watch. The unanimous consensus is that Part III is not worth it.

Since Jason and I live half an hour away from each other in Chicago, it seemed only natural to hang out by both flying to Denver at different times and overlapping for a day. So that is what we did. Welcome to Colorado!

Misty mountains

At the (real) summit

Once reunited in Denver, we drove (by which I mean ‘Jason drove’) to Boulder on Saturday morning and then selected a ‘medium+’ hike up Mount Sanitas for a decent morning walk. (The city of Boulder bothered me for a bit because I couldn’t work out why I would have heard of it before, until I realised it is the same Boulder which rhymes with ‘shoulder’ in the Chainsmokers song.)

Once Mount Sanitas had been suitably ascended we moved on to the Red Rock Amphitheatre, which seems like a nice place to see a concert, before enjoying some of Denver’s craft beer and the company of Jason’s friend Raj. Had I wanted to enjoy some of Denver’s other highlights (bad cannabis puns are obligatory!) then that would have been very easy too, as weed shops are just about everywhere. (And for fans of intricate local tax policies, fear not, they cater for you too.)

The stage at the Red Rock Amphitheatre

On Sunday I roamed the city by myself taking in the semi-pedestrianised downtown LoDo area, a great creole breakfast place, the Coors Field baseball stadium, a nice city park and a full three branches of the Tattered Cover bookshop. This makes a truly excellent place to sit with a cup of tea, amongst all of the beautiful books, and read a Kindle.

I also went to the Botanic Gardens, where I learnt all about trichomes (i.e. hairy leaves) from a patient woman at the Science Chats table within the Science Pyramid. Full credit to the Botanic Gardens for being enthusiastic about their Science, but I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for the person who ends up taking the Sunday morning slot on the Science Chats rota. So that her teaching doesn’t go to waste, let me assure you that most plants have surprisingly hairy leaves, and that looking at them under a microscope is cool.

I wouldn’t say the Botantical Gardens was ‘in season’, but this was pretty

LoDo, Denver

Travel by train! Admittedly only a train to the airport, but still.

Finally, I wanted to lavish praise on the city of Denver for connecting their faraway airport to the centre of the city via a fast and frequent train ride costing $9. Good job!

I made it to Florida!

Blending in

OK, so I made it to Florida in 1993. But that doesn’t count for the purpose of my scratch map since I wasn’t blogging anything at the time, and my main memory is getting yelled at by my parents just because I tried to stick my hairbush into the electrical socket. So last week I tried again, visiting Randi’s cousins in the Miami area. Special thanks to Sandy, Corey, Logan and Landon for hosting us, especially as their back garden looks like this:

Not too shabby

Also pretty nice at sunset

As always, places which are luxurious to visit do not always make for practical living. On the first day we lazed by the pool until lunchtime when we decided to pop out for a bite. The nearest restaurant was an hour’s walk away, during which we saw precisely zero other people on the pavement. (To be fair, at least there was pavement the whole way… I’m looking at you, Skokie.) On the way back, the security guard at the entrance to the estate looked astonished that anyone might turn up on foot, waving us through the gate built for cars with the uncertain salutation to “walk safely, I guess…?”.

I call it the milk test: never live anywhere which isn’t a 10 minute walk away from a shop selling milk.

At the beach

The next day we hung out in Miami Beach, which is technically a different ‘city’ to Miami but is (a) just over the bridge (b) probably what most tourists think is Miami anyway. Unsurprising it is warm, sunny and wonderful to walk down the public beach, admire the historic art deco hotels and wash down Cuban food with a pitcher of sangria. Much more surprisingly, but somehow even better, is the fact that the city is dotted with free public suncream dispensers! Suddenly this seems like the most obvious thing in the world, and I am surprised I have never seen it before.

Miami, you’ve impressed me with your public health programme.

Free suncream!

The Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach

More soberingly, we also visited the city’s Holocaust Memorial. There isn’t much to say abut this other than it’s worth seeing if you are ever in the area. (Especially if you have a job in the Trump administration.)

Later, we briefly stopped by Miami-proper to visit the Wynwood Walls before going home. On Saturday, it was time for a brand new American experience: the high school ‘track meet’. I’m starting to doubt myself, but I’m pretty sure this is not the norm for the UK. I mean, sure, there was a low-key school football team and I’m sure some of their parents and friends turned up for matches. But this is a different level of school pride, which is both kinda nice and rather strange. (Doesn’t school stop at the weekends?) Either way, we got to see Landon’s relay team triumph in their race (go Sharks!) before recuperating from all of this vicarious exercise at the beach club.

Automation in action

Sportz

More sportz

The Cat in the Hat

Wait, who is that adorable child up above? She is Randi’s newest cousin, and reason enough to visit. As a bonus we got to spend our final day with her and her dad Greg at a free Dr. Seuss festival, hanging out with the Cat in the Hat, Thing 1 and Thing 2. I’ll be honest: as a child, I wasn’t a fan of their anarchic ways, and was very much on the side of the law-abiding fish instead. But I suspect we have both mellowed over time, especially now that the Cat in the Hat has all of these public appearances to make.

Florida = done. Again.