The hilariousness of American advertising....

We have spent five lovely days in Asheville, 

North Carolina staying with some very hospitable 

Enjoying the Blue Ridge Parkway with our friends the Pressons

friends of the family. Asheville is a beautiful, green city, full of life, wonderful food and a whole bunch of hippies. We loved it! Our time there coincided with a monumental stage of our USA trip: Driving. And with driving comes the radio. And with the radio comes American advertisements.

Our favourites can be broadly classified into two categories:

1)    The merely ridiculous

2)    The ones with ridiculously far too much information.

First, the merely ridiculous. They produce the  

Beautiful Waterfall we hiked to

same reaction you sometimes have when someone (probably your dad) tells a bad joke that needs to be followed by an audible groan. These adverts bear a strong resemblance to such jokes. Example:

Mom: “Greg, time to change out of your pyjama pants”

Greg: “But I don’t want to!”

Mom: “But you’ve been wearing them for three weeks now”

Greg: “But Mom, that’s not fair; you never have to change your internet bundle!”

Groooooan.

Then come the second category - the ones with ridiculously far too much information. These ads are mostly for medical products, and it is not uncommon for them to have a health disclaimer that is longer than the ad itself. Please, for authenticity purposes, try and read this ad out loud, as fast as you possibly can.

“Do you suffer from insomnia? Do you work shifts? Do you sometimes lie in bed and wonder why you can’t fall asleep? You could benefit from the drug Xeronox. Proven in preliminary trials to help with sleeplessness.

Xeronox may result in elevated blood pressure, severe sexual dysfunction, fainting, burning discharges, heart murmurs, chest pain, anxiety, listlessness, depression and sleeplessness."

(That last part is my all-time favourite, bearing in mind what this drug is meant to treat)

"Xeronox is not suitable for all individuals. Any individual with a history of chest pain, heart problems, lung problems, drug use, degenerative conditions such as arthritis, recent history of brain injury, headaches or occasionally susceptibility to the common cold, should contact their doctor before taking Xeronox. Available at your local pharmacy.”

Irresistible! Form an orderly cue behind the man with the burning discharge.

As you can probably imagine, the ads here are keeping us very entertained. For the record, the driving is going well. We are yet to auto-correct and veer to the left. Long may the safe driving and advertising overshare continue!

An incredible drumming display that happens each Friday night in Asheville. We also posted a video of it on facebook if you are keen to check it out: 

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?

v=10150847368157144&set=vb.584622143&type=2&theater

Old timey fun

Hey y'all! After seeing three of the big cities (New York, Boston, Washington DC), we have ventured into the South, where we've been exploring two smaller towns in Virginia - Richmond and Charlottesville. We've had the pleasure of staying with two lovely and hospitable American families in their homes. To give you a ridiculously quick generalisation of this state, Virginia is beautifully lush and green and full of early American history.

We had a great day at a colonial city called Williamsburg, which was one of the first areas settled by Europeans. It's a total trip back in time! All the buildings have been restored to how they were in 17th century America and everyone working there is dressed in character. All the characters there are also skilled tradespeople, so it was effectively a working museum - be it gardeners, blacksmiths or carpenters, they would only use equipment and technology available in the 17th century. We were impressed!

Looking down the street in Williamsburg

Me earning my keep on a ridiculously large saw

Jess and I enduring some public humiliation for our crimes

Then today we went for a bit of a hike and an explore around Thomas Jefferson's house and gardens. Such  beautiful grounds! Honestly, it's been a new experience for us to visit tourist sites that hold a lot of interest for Americans, but aren't something that Kiwi's would normally hear or care about. We've been surprised that we've enjoyed it as much as we have! We came here with very limited knowledge of US history, but Americans are really good at packaging their history in a way that is interesting. A little bit of old-timey costume goes a long way!

From the gardens looking towards Thomas Jefferson's house

Where the dude himself was buried

Beautiful lady in beautiful Virginia

Believe it or not, of all the cool things we've seen one of our highlights has been a bed! If you aren't familiar with Sleep Number beds, they have this incredible technology that allows you to choose how firm you want (pick a number from 0-100) the mattress, with both sides able to be changed independently. Simply amazing! It was the best sleep ever. The problem is that we still have six months of travelling. Every other bed has been ruined...we peaked far too early!

Americans at the movies

Boston has been great. Not quite as cool as New York, but so much fun in its own way. First of all it has this beautiful public park in the middle of the city called the Boston Common, which was originally used for public protests and hangings. Thankfully things are a lot more civil now. But the local library has a stand at the park, so you can go and grab a book, find some grass and relax. Or if chess is more your style, they have sets of that too. Perfect for relaxing!

In Boston, good posture is inversely related to chess playing ability

But the other reason why we enjoyed Boston (over and above the accents and the discovery of Boston Cream Pie) was because we decided to go to the movies! And here is why going to the movies in America is awesome:
1.) It is considerably cheaper than going to the movies in Australia
2.) Americans also go to the movies

Let's expand on that second point. Without offending anyone, I would say that the Americans in our theatre had a much wider sense of humour than what we are used to. To them, everything was funny. Like, really, really, laugh-out-loud funny. And we found that funny! We went to The Avengers - fun, with a few cheesy one-liners, but not a clasically hilarious story. The action was incredible, but some of the script writing was.... less incredible. For example:

Captain America: I think we need a plan of attack
Iron Man: I have a plan: Attack!

Cue small snigger from the Kiwis in the fifth row. Cue uproarious laughter from the rest of the theatre.

It made for a highly enjoyable evening.

Baseball, Broadway and Boston Cream Pie

New York was a seriously good time! We spent most of our 4 days there feeling like we were on a movie set - the yellow taxis, the bright lights of Times Square, running through Central Park, the Americans that fitted all sorts of stereotypes...

We went to watch Chicago on Broadway one night, and enjoyed it so much that we went to watch Rent off-Broadway the next night! There goes our budget for the next two weeks...but oh well, it was worth it! Admittedly we spent most of the first half of Rent wondering what the heck was going on, and summarising that it has little to no plot...but the singing and dancing was incredible! Those people can really hold a tune.

And the FOOD...oh the food! Bagels bagels everywhere...amazing pizza shops on every corner...fantastic Mexican food...it was a smorgasbord of edibility!

We were really hopeful that the Yankees might be playing while we were in New York. They play so often that they had games on 3 of the 4 days that we were there. So we went to a game - the baseball was good, but it's what happens in between innings that is the real entertainment. We all sung 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame', then everyone stood and took their hats off to sing God Bless America in another break. Our favourite though was when the YMCA song came on and the groundsmen simultaneously came onto the pitch to brush away the dirt. Rhythmically. And then performed all actions to the chorus. Just amazing.

Now we are in Boston for a couple of days, where of course we will now determinedly hunt down the best Boston Cream Pie that the city has to offer. We also walked the Freedom Trail today, which is a route through the city that takes you past heaps of the historic sites and buildings that are significant to American history and the war of Independence. Unfortunately I (Jess) know little about American history so ended up reading out the information brochure to Chris a little something like this: "[Some dude] was born here in 1796, where he signed [some significant document] with [some other dudes]". I'm sorry for my ignorance, old-timey founding fathers!
So we walked our 2.5 miles and can now be genuinely classified as Boston Historical experts. Don't get us started on that Boston Tea Party.... Seriously. Don't ask about that, because there was little to no info on it. But the War of Independence? Paul Revere? Civil War? USS Constitution? Experts.

Taaaake me outtt to the baaaallgame! Hello, Yankee Stadium.

Chris ponders Boston history and why there are so many American flags around.

Don't mess with us...we have a cannon.

Buskers in Central Park. So much skill!

Goodbye Turkey...Hello New York!

Our time in Turkey has come to an end! It has been an amazing three weeks.  We’ve got a few photos below which highlight some of our favourite times in the country:

Hot Air Ballooning

Jess went hot air ballooning in Cappadoccia. Capadoccia is an amazing region - at times you feel like you are in a landscape that is halfway between the moon and a Disney theme park. In Capadoccia, early Christians hid in the area when they were being persecuted, so they built cities and houses into these huge towers of rock. It makes for some amazing views from the balloon!

Good Friends

These guys. If the last three weeks have taught us anything, it is that good friends make travel even more awesome.  Having friends that you are comfortable with and love to spend time with makes such a difference.  If anyone needs to recruit some travel buddies then we'd thoroughly recommend travelling with these two! Kirsten is excellent at organising travel plans and general life and Cam is both tall and has a longer than average arm span, which makes him especially effective at reaching things from high places, a natural future career path. Oh, and he is also awesome and will go running and rock climbing with you.

Fooooooood

This yummy specimen... and on this occasion I’m not talking about Jess.  Look at this - 4 scoops of ice cream and half a melon. So much goodness!

 Volcan

This is our new Turkish friend Volcan. That’s Turkish for volcano. Did you get that? His parents named him volcano. Sounds like a good name for our first child. Well, that or something equally intimidating like Panther. We’ve got some time to think on it!

Sailing

Sailing off the coast of Turkey. We went on an amazing 3 night cruise from Fethiye in Turkey.  Beautiful  water, sensational local food and exploring little islands. Additionally, how good does Jess’ diving form look!

Ruins

                                                              

The ruins in Turkey are amazing. There are literally thousands of years of history in Turkey. The photo is from an amphitheatre in Ephesus.

Gonça

Our tour leader Gonça. We  had an really fun tour group filled with a great bunch of Aussies and Kiwis when we were in Turkey. Gonça led our group with much enthusiasm and questionable English.  Most of her  faux pas were not really printable,  but here is a wee insight:

Chris: Gonça, I’m finding it hard to say thank you in Turkish, is there an easy word for thanks?

Gonça: Saol.

Chris: Excellent. And if we said that to an older person would they be offended?

Gonça: (With a big smile) Of course.

Chris: Okay. I’m not totally sure you understood me, but thank you.

So many fond memories of Turkey, but now we are in New York. We've just visited the local diner for breakfast and will have many more fond adventures ahead, stay tuned!

More photos for your viewing pleasure

Hello all!

For anyone who would like to see more photos of our time in Turkey, I've created a photo album on facebook which includes some of our highlights so far. You don't need a facebook account to view the photos - just click on the following link.

CLICK HERE

Happy photo viewing!

Jess 

An unnecessarily dangerous adventure

So we had a free day today. After four luxurious days on a sail boat we thought we would try going a bit more adventurous. We read about this great sounding place called Faralya - described as a beautiful beach town with a 60 metre waterfall where young Turks go to relax. Sounded like our kinda thing!

The drive in the bus to get there was AMAZING. Unfortunately our driver was trying to shorten our lives. The roads were gravel, thin and with 200 metre cliff drops on the right (think the Cliffs of Insanity from the Princess Bride). Cars were driving in both directions, despite most of the way being one car-width only. However, this did not stop our driver from accelerating around corners, passing on the inside, chatting away on his cellphone and hilariously stopping for 10 minutes to chat to his friend on a road side bench. Anyway, we got there eventually. We found our general directions to the beach/waterfall and were greeted with possibly the worst sign in history.

"Waterfall this direction. Somewhere is dangerous. 75 minutes"

What it should have read is "Disappointingly small waterfall is ahead after a dangerous and difficult walk that mainly includes rock climbing. Wear hiking boots. Ropes would be helpful. And by the way the water and the bottom of the waterfall is as near to freezing as is possible. Enjoy"

So we walked out not really knowing what to expect. We decided to go there on via the less dangerous but more lengthy path. Took about an hour and a half. The waterfall was 8 metres tall at best. A beautiful 8 metres, nonetheless, but blatantly not 60 metres. Feeling adventurous and short on time we decided to take the canyon route back down to the beach. This lasted about 7 minutes. We expertly managed some rock climbing and implausible yet possible descents of about 4-5 metres at a time. Then we were confronted with a drop down a sheer face of around 40 metres. We briefly considered WWBGD (What would Bear Grylls Do?). Then decided that as we valued our lives, we would turn around and take the long route home.

We made it back many hours later - what an awesome adventure it turned out to be! Hard work, but generally pretty fun! We remember reading in at the beginning of a Lonely Planet guide that the real travelling adventures start once you´re lost...and that was true for us today!

The beautiful but slightly smaller-than-advertised waterfall

Cam showing off some mad rock descending skills

Turkey!

We have been havıng an amazıng tıme ın Turkey- we've been travellıng wıth a great group and have seen so many amazıng thıngs! We have far too much to put everythıng ın detaıl, but we wıll put a few photos on here and hope they mıght tell a few thousand words!

Note - our keyboard ıs Turkısh so the I`s look a bıt funny!

Our hıghlıghts have ıncluded:

• Vısıtıng the Ancıent cıtıes. Ephesus was our favourıte and seeıng amazıng ruıns and an advanced cıvılızatıon
• Seeıng our frıend Cam's reactıon at seeıng a snake. He ıs a touch under 2 metres tall and can now be consıdered a genuıne contender for the London Olympıcs Hıgh Jump, based on how hıgh he soared through the aır.
• Havıng some amazıng Turkısh meals. The Turkısh have absolutely naıled outdoor furnıture. Nothıng says comfort lıke enjoyıng a good meal whıle sıttıng on cushıons. Theır ıdea of drıppıng huge quantıtıes of water by the tables onto the road to set the mood remaıns debatable though.
• Beıng foamed up by a large Turkısh man. Thıs process ıs also referred to as a ''Turkısh Bath''

And many more hıghlıghts!! We are off for 4 days saılıng ın the Greek Islands now... lıfe ıs tough.