dom.blog

They were excited in West Branch, Iowa when native son Herbert Hoover became President. It didn’t last.

No one seemed very excited about our trip to Iowa. “Why are you going to Iowa?” asked most. So I’m pleased to announce the following discovery: Iowa is lovely. Quiet, rural, unassuming – I am assuming this will be a once-in-a-lifetime visit – but still lovely. And as Reddit correctly predicted, the people we met were all delightful, which puts Iowans way ahead of fancy-pants Seattleites.

If you’ve heard anything at all about Iowa, it’s probably because it always snags first spot in the voting schedule for the Presidential primary elections, briefly catapulting the state onto global news bulletins for a few days every four years. With candidates already swarming to patronise woo the electorate, we were hoping to bump into something political, and as luck would have it our first night’s B&B just happened to be run by enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporters. So naturally we stuck around the next morning to watch her ‘launch’ speech and pose with banners:

Hillary for Iowa! Also, for the other 49 states too!

Later on, in unimaginatively-named Iowa City, we dined in Hamburg Inn No. 2 – which it seems is mandatory for any sort of political career in the US – and, in West Branch, we checked out the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum. Hoover is best remembered for being in office during the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression, and the museum’s main strategy for tackling this unfortunate fact is to focus about 80% of the exhibit on his pre-presidential humanitarian efforts.

Hoover’s ‘good guy’ credentials thus burnished, they offer an increasingly desperate series of excuses for Hoover’s failure, culminating in “who’s to say it wouldn’t have been worse without him?”, and then a series of buttons to canvas your opinion on Hoover from ‘Strongly Positive’ (hah!) to ‘Strongly Negative’. I gave him one level up from the bottom. Hell, I can think of worse Presidents…

They wouldn’t let me get as close to Hoover as LBJ, but we still enjoyed some quality fishing time together

On Sunday, the weather brightened up and we stopped at Lake Macbride State Park for a spot of swimming and kayaking, which always reminds me of our Wednesday afternoon Sixth Form kayaking lessons down at the Ladbroke Gove canal. Anyway. Kayaking is fun!

Left, right, left, right, stop to pose

Also in Iowa:

• A sign at ‘Family Video’ by the highway promises Report Card A’s Equals Free Rentals!
• It’s not always easy to find vegetarian options on menus.
• But it is easy to find great ice cream at Whitey’s (thanks, Nolan).
• The city of Davenport has built itself a seemingly pointless but enchanting Skybridge.
• Roads are empowered to suddenly declare that ‘pavement ends’ and leave you stranded on miles of unpaved track. We didn’t stay on it long enough to discover what the ‘minimum maintenance’ section would be like.

A fair bit of Iowa was like this

And in Kalona (population: 2,363) the large proportion of Mennonites gave the place a distinctive feel:

You know what I like about horses? They don’t turn on red.

“Not This Frog”

As I say, everyone was super-Mid-Western-friendly. We so enjoyed talking to Daisy, the owner of Iowa City’s A Bella Vista, that we risked the late return of our rental car to stay and chat longer. But the final word should go to owners of Strawberry Farm Bed & Breakfast after we finally turned up at 11pm. Despite the late hour they launched into a discussion of their dog, their neighbours and – most importantly – the frog which was currently perched on their front door.

“Do you know what this is?” the guy asked, but my hopes of being the unexpectedly knowledgeable city boy (“it’s a frog!”) were soon dashed as he began to list possible species. “It reminds me of having dinner under the skylight when we were growing up”, his wife added, “and we’d look up and see this frog. Not this frog.”

Perhaps we were just tired, but it felt like a moment.

IOWA, YEAH

I’m back from the Pacific Northwest  – a little worse for wear (unattractive sneezing and coughing abounds) but with a satisfied feeling of successful travel and the smug afterglow of being moved into United’s ‘Economy Plus’ seats on the way home.

So, Seattle first. The home of Starbucks and Amazon, as well as the famous Pike Place Market, one unexpected thing which we noticed immediately was that its inhabitants can be a little… blunt, let’s say. I grew up in London, and no-one there ever hung up my call on the apartment entryphone in order to let themselves in first.

Not that this stopped us from enjoying the city, and we packed in the obvious tourist destinations: dinner in the Space Needle, taking the ferry to Bainbridge island, touring the EMP Museum (see Dalek, below) and the Central Library. Together with newly-minted Seattle resident (and not at all rude) Michele, I also checked out the Northwest Folklife festival which happened to be on: think handmade “SAVE THE BEES” t-shirts on Greenpeace activists, fun music and a strong smell of pot. (Less predictably, you can also buy jewellery there which is made from ammunition. It takes all sorts.)

Birthplace of Starbucks, Seattle is known for its coffee shops

Coupley photo in Japanese garden #1

Jatherine

“Wait, I’m not actually in shot, am I?”

A concerning discovery

I love this fountain. So do young children, clearly.

Arty shot of the Space Needle from Chihuly Garden and Glass (stolen from Randi)

For the second half, we caught an early Amtrak train down to Portland. (I miss trains.) Portland had an unexpectedly spread-out feel, but still with plenty of parks, green spaces and easy walking. “OUR FEMINISM WILL BE INTERSECTIONAL”, announced large letters in one window we passed, “OR IT WILL BE BULLSHIT”. We found fewer obvious landmarks to photograph, but kept eating delicious food: a particular shout-out to Salt & Straw, whose rhubarb crumble ice-cream is something special.

Coupley photo in Japanese garden #2

Don’t just visit nature: photograph nature, in case it disappears or something

The four of us at Mt. Tabor Park

Some people have described the Northwest as their favourite corner of America. It’s not mine, but I can see why it might be. Both cities are certainly well worth a visit!

I almost didn’t make it to Austin. Having almost passed out on the train to the airport, I arrived just in time to empty my guts into the nearest toilet, before shuffling through security and onto the plane in an ugly state. Thankfully, the woman assigned to the seat next to me quickly fled in self-preservation, and I was left alone to occupy the row in a foetal position. But this only increased my happiness at seeing Josh and Anna’s faces again when my cab pulled up by our Airbnb home that night. Who’d have thought we’d be reuniting in the capital of Texas?

Enjoying the Texas House of Representatives

Somewhat awkward with the Ten Commandments outside the capitol

All the stars look a bit, ur, Soviet?

By the river

Hey hey, LBJ

Austin’s famous bats

Mock if you will, but my favourite part of Austin was the Texas Legislature, which is admirably open and welcoming to the public. We strolled into the gallery above the House of Representatives first, who were debating an amendment to allow texting in a car which had come to a complete stop. “The data show that this rule costs lives” one Representative began, before being interrupted by another demanding a source. An assistant duly scurried in with a piece of paper, although not before the first guy clarified meekly that he was still in support of the rule change, despite the higher death rate. It passed by a landslide.

Other highlights included the state’s history museum and the LBJ Presidential Library, at either ends of the University of Texas campus. In between, a pro-Palestine demonstration was loudly and successfully gathering attention away from an Israeli block party, which says something about the liberal Austin vibe. We drove out of the city one morning so we could go swim in the Pedernales River, waited under the Congress Avenue bridge for the famous flight of the city’s bats at dusk, and spun about a thousand bat puns out of the days which followed.

Austin was a great city, but New Orleans was the more special and memorable of the two. We drove – by which I mean, Anna drove us – through Texas and Louisiana in a day, stopping at a farewell-to-Texas steakhouse (where our servers danced and tried out their British accents) and at Louisiana’s welcome centre, where they hand out free coffee and tell you to beware of alligators. New Orleans, though, is clearly a place unto itself. It’s almost impossible to capture properly in photographs, because the most wonderful thing is all of the free music which pours out of every bar and street corner. We wandered from bar to bar each night, drinking Purple Haze and soaking up the atmosphere of blues and jazz.

Delicious breakfasts at Slim Goodies

Just one of the many, many live acts we saw in bars

Swamp tour

Baby boar

Literally an alligator

This is a lot of Confederate flags

As you can see, we also went on a swamp tour – not to be missed – and ate all of the right foods. Crawfish etouffee, fried alligator, beignets, snowballs: distinctive cuisine is the other reason to visit NOLA, and it did not disappoint.  I should clarify, too, that the creepy display of Confederate flags above was an aberration, and outside the city. The worst thing we saw in New Orleans itself was the trashier end of Bourbon Street, where police led a man out of a strip club while very bored looking strippers looked on. That said, we didn’t wander too far from the historic French Quarter, except to catch the streetcar to and from our house in the Irish part of town. There were plenty of references to Hurricane Katrina, but how much the city is still recovering was left mostly to our imaginations.

More than most American cities, though, New Orleans just feels old and enduring: layers of French and Spanish history pile up in refreshingly narrow, built-before-the-car-came streets. Whenever you make it to visit – and you will want to visit sometime – it’ll be here, ready with music and life.

So: my first trip to the South is complete, and two more states can be scratched off the map. (That’s not a metaphor, it’s an actual scratch map.) More American exploration on the way!

Here’s a fact: to take part in a humble game of home poker within the state of Illinois is a criminal offence. No exemption exists for domestic, non-commercial gambling between “legitimate guests or friends”, as the UK’s Gambling Commission so charmingly puts it. Tangential research corner: I was amused and/or nerdy enough to find out if Britain’s Gambling Act 2005 goes into any more detail about the required level of friendship legitimacy (would a LinkedIn connection count?) and although no answers were forthcoming, it did throw up this glorious piece of dry legal wit. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Section 42:

Cheating

(1) A person commits an offence if he—
(a) cheats at gambling, or
(b) does anything for the purpose of enabling or assisting another person to cheat at gambling.

(2) For the purposes of subsection (1) it is immaterial whether a person who cheats—
(a) improves his chances of winning anything, or
(b) wins anything.

Simulated gambling during rehearsals for a play

Apropos nothing, on Friday night I very much enjoyed taking part in an intensive one-night-only method acting course. Although my character didn’t win the simulated “poker game”, he did enjoy a brief advantage in having so little idea whether his cards were any good that no one else could figure it out either. I’m also warming to whisky, very slightly. As in, I now finish my glass.

The next morning, I set off with Randi, Jason, Catherine and AJ for our weekend in New Glarus, Wisconsin. Dubbed ‘Little Switzerland’ (although Switzerland seems plenty little in its own right) the town is famous for its brewery which opens for free, pleasantly low-key and self-guided tours. There’s not a great deal to actually see (large metallic containers and pipes which presumably have beer inside) but you’re welcome to drink a pint or more of the stuff while doing it, or else explore the snowy but sunny garden outside.

All pretty sweet

On the drive up, we stopped at the “world’s largest” Culver’s.

Not pictured: Little Vegan Switzerland

Aside from beer, Wisconsin is also known for cheese – clearly a state with the right priorities. At dinner we ordered a cheese plate, fried cheese curds and cheese fondue for starters, at which point our server actually refused to take any more of our order “until you’ve finished that”. (Her scepticism proved well-founded, and since we didn’t order anything else, it was really her loss.) And that, plus more board games, out-of-city stargazing and one alarmingly anti-abortion roadside poster on the way back (“baby Jesus was once an unborn infant!”) pretty much captures our gentle weekend adventure.

In case you were wondering, yes, home poker is illegal in Wisconsin too. You’d have to hop another state over to Minnesota for that, if you were interested in that sort of thing.

Oh, New York. Even the bad things which people throw at you (“there’s trash everywhere!”) I take as evidence of a spirited metropolis. It is, to state the obvious, the closest I’ll get to London without just going to London: the city which seems to stretch out endlessly in all directions, criss-crossed by a subway system which gets you anywhere, plus the psychology of hyper-urban crowds.

A snowy, icy and cold New York

It was also, at least in the last few days, super cold. Colder than Chicago – or at least that’s what it felt like, perhaps only because we were outside so much. Despite the weather, Randi and I managed to check off a bunch of touristy things I had missed last time around, inbetween hanging out with her friends in the city. (Tourism truism #137: people will grasp at anything which elevates them from being seen as ‘pure’ tourists.) Huge thanks in particular to Melissa and Amanda, who generously allowed us to stay with them and avoid taking out the huge bank loans which are presumably required for any form of New York accommodation.

One of the 9/11 memorial pools

One of the best things we did, a little unexpectedly, turned out be the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. Given how close we still are to the events of that day – both emotionally and politically – it seemed like it would be a difficult thing to get right. But what the city has built is a fitting tribute indeed. The memorial pools where the base of the towers once stood are dignified and thoughtful, while the museum lets the extraordinary and terrible facts speak for themselves. Indeed, the main exhibition is built around a minute-by-minute timeline of events, and I was moved by many of the small details: audio recordings of the crew members from the hijacked planes, video footage of the hijackers passing through security, an animation showing how US airspace was completely cleared of thousands of planes in a matter of hours. If you’re in New York, it’s certainly worth your time.

I’m more equivocal about the Tenement Museum, which came highly recommended but suffered from anticlimactic tour guiding. This is both a personal and a cultural thing, sure, but I really don’t like being solicited for my views, thoughts or ‘resonances’ on the subject matter – and I know this makes me sound all reactionary (“teaching is all about facilitating peer learning!”) but there’s a reason why most of the world’s great literature is not written in the Choose Your Own Adventure format. There was more confident storytelling in Big Onion’s Greenwich Village walking tour, which was excellent, and included the Stonewall Inn where the famous gay rights riots of 1969 began. (For some reason, I had never connected the British charity with this place in my mind before.)

The award for absurd security theatre goes to Liberty Island, who put you through airport-style screening to get onto the ferry and then airport-style screening again on the island itself. That’s twice as many metal detectors as it takes to board a plane. Still, the Statue of Liberty remains a beautiful thing. We also trooped to the Daily Show studios just to gaze forlornly at Jon Stewart’s soon-to-be-departing face from the posters, and walked the High Line, which is a great idea.

Braving the cold, “otherwise no one will believe we saw it”

Pilgrimage to the Daily Show

Coupley photo from the High Line. Not pictured: the High Line

Drinking out of a boot

Pizza at Roberta’s in Brooklyn, as recommended by Carolyn. Thank you!

At Times Square. Can’t wait to be back in February 2024.