From the moment I got home from my road trip across America, I had people messaging me asking how we did it and how much it cost, asking advice etc. Continue reading
boston
Road trip : Boston
May 3oth:
We landed in Boston and headed straight to our Motel (without our luggage). We were staying in the Super 8 Watertown/Cambridge/Boston area. The motel itself was like many others we stayed in and what we expected for the price. We stayed in a double queen room, which was spacious enough for the 4 of us, but let’s be honest most of the time I don’t care where I stay, you’re only sleeping there afterall.
Almost as soon as we arrived, we were out the door again and headed to find the nearest clothes stores as without our luggage we had nothing but the clothes on our backs. After a half hour walk we found ourselves at Watertown Mall, we went straight for some food, nothing fancy just a burger king. Then straight to Forever 21 and Target to get clothing essentials.
May 31st:
So, this was it. We were in Boston, our road trip (after over a year of planning) was finally here.
Our day started off with breakfast in the motel, cinnabun’s and waffles started us off for the day ahead. We got into a taxi into Cambridge, we weren’t staying directly in the centre of Boston, tactical for us really. It’s cheaper to stay just out and the price of taxi’s around was never that dear either. Harvard. It was just as beautiful as I thought it would be, although the grounds were mostly empty apart from other tourists like ourselves, I could just imagine what it would be like throughout the year. The buzz of people walking about, I mean, it’s Harvard afterall. We headed for a coffee in Crema Cafe, just along from Harvard. I’m not always a coffee person but it was good!
Next on our to do list was to head to the Prudential Centre as we had pre-booked ourselves onto one of the Boston Duck Tours, what better way to see Boston afterall?
I always love getting driven around, sightseeing places and when you have someone that’s full of banter like our guide was it makes it a good trip. Our guide was called “Tim Burr” he was really quite funny and made it even more enjoyable. We visited many places that we probably wouldn’t have had we not went on the duck tour, so it was great to see and learn about them. The best part was probably when we went into the water, seems like nothing, but people got a shot of driving in the water. My friend Clare being one of them, she’s not able to drive the car but at least she got to drive a boat!
We were back for lunch time and the place we were very excited to visit was The Cheesecake Factory. This was the first time we realised just how big the portion sizes are, wow. I got the chicken parmesian sandwich, it was really nice although just far too much! And who can go to The Cheesecake Factory and not get cheesecake? Well not us, of course we got cheesecake. I opted for the red velvet, I did not regret my decision.
While on the duck tour earlier we had driven past Boston Common where there was a part that was covered in small flags, we decided we wanted to head here next.. We asked someone where they were and they pointed us in the direction, although when we got there, there wasn’t any there and we presumed they had taken them down. We chilled in the park for a little while before we headed off to walk the Freedom Trail, which took us a while to find. Actually, we didn’t even realise we had found it at first. Here we were, walking along the Freedom Trail with not a clue in the world, looking for the Freedom Trail. We walked along it for a while until we got to a wall that had a map of the Freedom Trail on it and we decided we wanted to head towards the USS Consitution, which of course was in the opposite direction. So back the way we went.
We got there about 10 minutes after the place had closed unfortunately, so we hung about for a short while taking some pictures before we decided to call it a day and get a taxi back to our motel.
Remember how we got to Boston but our luggage didn’t? Well about 11pm our luggage arrived, with one case missing. The hassle of trying to get this case back probably deserves a post of it’s own I’m not going to lie, so you will likely get that in the future.
June 1st:
If only we knew how this day would play out, I think we would have stayed in. Ellé, Shona and I headed to pick up our car from Enterprise rental while Clare headed to buy more clothes (as it was her case that didn’t arrive). Smooth sailing at first, we got there, paid the rest we had to pay, signed the paperwork and got sent up a few flights to get our car. Picked Clare up and decided to head towards Salem. We were so excited to go and do some witch stuff. But, that didn’t happen did it? And honestly, I don’t think I can tell the store again so you can read it here. Short lived trip to Salem, and back to Boston we went to get a new car and get the hell out of there. We were informed by the woman at the car rental that drivers in Boston were some of, if not the worst and were actually known as ‘MASSHOLES’ = Massachusett Assholes. What I didn’t mention before was that when we got back to the rental company they didn’t have another car there for us, we mentioned we could come back later on as we planned to go back to the airport to try and find our other case and they were so amazing. They (I can’t refer to anyone by name as unfortunately we never got the womans name that helped us, but she was so incredibly lovely) drove us to the airport and picked a new, bigger, better car for us. They really went above and beyond.
Our time in Boston was over, and it was off to NYC where we thought we would be starting a fresh and leaving the bad luck behind.
Boston, it was a pleasure.
Post travel blues
I was atrocious at updating this while I was road tripping across America but honestly, I was just trying to enjoy my time there and only spent time on the Internet when I was adding occasional photos to our instagram have a look here if you want.
Basically, as the title says I now have the post travel blues.
Driving across America with my best friends was undoubtedly one of the best experiences of my life (despite the couple of hiccups we encountered at the beginning of our trip).
I’m still in total disbelief that we actually done it. We drove 5044 miles across America. We seen and done some amazing things, I think the best parts were definitely the beautiful sights I seen along the way.
Below is just one picture from every place we went.
Boston, MA.
Above is our (second) car. We called her Monique; there is a story behind why we called her this but I’ll save that for another time.
New York City, NY.
Obviously you all know where we are. Times square baby!
Washington, D.C.
Obviously we found ourselves visiting big Abe L.
Abingdon, VA.
Abingdon for us was just a stopover, Needless to say I didn’t get many pictures apart from this from our motel window.
Nashville, TN.
Are you from Tennessee? Cause you’re the only ‘ten I see’ .. Unbeknown to ourselves (until we stepped out a taxi in the main streets) we were in Nashville during the CMA Music Festival which did mean for us there was an epic crowd of people. We didn’t get to see too much as we were in 2 bars before my group of friends got absolutely steaming and I had to drag them home.
New Orleans, LA.
I completely fell in love with NOLA, and with the Frenchmen Art Gardens especially. What a beautifully magical place. The work from local artists is just something else, they’re all so very talented. We also found ourselves in Cats Meow on Bourbon St. Needless to say (being Scottish) we found ourselves singing 500 miles by the proclaimers on stage.. who doesn’t love karaoke?
Ennis, TX.
Ennis was a small town stopover for us, and we’re all so glad we did stop over with here. We popped into the taco bell before we left and the staff were so lovely! They had never met anyone from Scotland before and so asked to get a picture with us. Made us feel so so welcome.
Amarillo, TX.
Cadillac Ranch. I was really looking forward to going here, and I definitely had so much fun. Spray paint in hand it was fun leaving our mark here, at least for a little while.
Farmington, NM.
We just had a little overnight stop in Farmington so there aren’t many pictures.
Grand Canyon, AZ.
My fear of heights kept me well away from the edge but it meant I got to take beautiful pictures like this while we watched the sun set over the Grand Canyon. We stayed at the Yavapai Lodges, if you book early enough to stay here it’s work it. Such an incredibly beautiful place.
Las Vegas, NV.
When in Vegas.. it always lands on black.
Los Angeles, CA.
We got to spend a few days exploring this beautiful city, although I know I have to go back as there’s so much more for me still to see. We made sure to find a set of angels wings. Because who can leave LA the city of angels without becoming an angel?
San Simeon, CA.
Beautiful little place. We spent the previous night on the beach watching the sun set, drinking a cider and running into the sea.
San Francisco, CA.
Can you say you’ve been to San Fran if you didn’t go to Alcatraz? We went on the night tour and it was amazing seeing this place, hearing what things were like, learning more than we previously knew. We spent 3 hours in this place, on this island and it was eerie. I can’t imagine how it felt for the prisoners.
I had the trip of my life and I’ll be sharing more stories and pictures from our month long road trip in the future.
Have you been to any of these places? Are you going? Tell me your favourite parts or what you’re most looking forward to!
I just want to do it all over again.
Counting down: 6
6 days. It’s only 6 days until we fly into Boston and begin our road trip.
I thought over these next couple of days I would use the number of days to do a list of different places I can’t wait to go/things I can’t wait to do etc etc.
Today I’m going to start with the top 6 places I can’t wait to go.
6. Boston – it’s the first place on our trip. We fly into Boston, stay for a few days then collect our car and move on. I’m really looking forward to Boston mainly because it’s going to be the birthplace of this trip. I know Boston is surrounded by so much history and I can’t wait to explore.
5. San Francisco – I’ve heard a lot of people saying that San Fran is one place they wouldn’t be too keen on going and I really can’t understand why? It’s firmly on my list of places to go.
4. New Orleans – You would be crazy if you didn’t want to visit NOLA and head to the French Quarter. I want rum punch and karaoke in my life and I know this is the place to go.
3. Abingdon – A random town we picked to stop off on our way to Nashville, yet one of the places I’m most excited for because we really don’t know what we’re going to find.
2. Amarillo – I’m definitely looking forward to going here, it’s all about heading to Cadillac Ranch. It was one of the first things we found to do on our journey so needless to say I’m looking forward to it.
1. Las Vegas – Las Vegas has to be another for me. I think this is mainly because I was meant to be there over new year and for certain reasons couldn’t. I missed out on my first chance of going so I can’t wait to actually be there.
Obviously I’m looking forward to going everywhere and actually picking these 6 was harder than it seems. Once my trip is over I’ll be able to compare and see if these 6 were the places I enjoyed most!
Feel free to leave me a comment below. Have you been to any of these places? Tell me about your experience.
ONE WEEK!
If you’ve been following me you’ll know I’m on countdown mode till my road trip in America. As of today we’re ONE WEEK out.
Time is flying past now.
This time next week I’ll be at the airport waiting to board my first flight. I’ll be with my 3 best friends both nervous and excited about what our month in America holds.
I can’t wait to go on this adventure with my best friends. I also can’t wait to share my experiences with all of you! Remember if you have instagram and want to see something from our trip (probably 10 posts a day let’s be honest) follow our group instagram.
Did I mention it was one week away?
The next week is going to be pretty full on for me. I’m working everyday, 10-13 hour shifts. Luckily I’ve already packed my case, I just need to double check I do have everything. I’m scared I’m going to forget a lot of things. I’ll need to write a check list for myself, although what do I need to make sure I take? My head is all over the place at the moment so god knows what will end up on my list.
Feel free to leave a comment below. I’ll hopefully be posting as much as I can while I’m away, so I look forward to sharing my adventures with you all.
Road trip via Instagam
As most of you will already know, I’m off on a road trip across America with 3 of my best friends in just a few weeks time. (If you don’t know about it basically the 4 of us are heading off to America at the end of May for a month. We’re driving from Boston to San Francisco and we’re all incredibly excited!).
4 travelling Scots take on America. The east coast, the west coast and everything in between.
This post is basically me just letting you all know that if you want to follow our journey, not just through my eyes but through my friends as well then feel free to follow our group instagram here.
If you don’t want to follow along, that’s all fine and dandy but I will have you know you’re going to miss some epic car videos of us pretending we’re various celebrities in music videos, loads of Scottish banter, plus many tourist pictures and some not so tourist pics.. Plus a lot more of course.
Don’t worry though if you decide not to give us a little follow, I will be trying my best to update here with new posts about how our trip is getting on as regularly as I can. Which should be easily enough done as a) I’m a complete night owl and b) when I’m in the car and not driving I won’t have much else to do.
If you’re going to decide to follow us on our instagram (@roadtrippin16x), I guess I better make a quick introduction for the other 3 girls!
From left to right we have; Clare, Shona, myself and Ellé.
You can also follow our personal Instagram accounts if you like.
Like I said, if you fancy seeing about our American adventure, then give our Instagram a follow.
We leave for our trip in 23 days, so look out for all our posts to come.
Thank you if you follow. Like I said, if you don’t I’ll try update here as much as I can so give me a follow here.
Leave me a comment if you’re going on or have been on a similar trip!
Double digits
The countdown is on.
With 99 days to go we’ve raced through the trebles and have hit the doubles.
Some of you may be sat there thinking, “what is she talking about?” Well, if you’ve read just a few of my previous posts you’ll have realised that I’m going on a road trip across America this coming May and well, there’s only 99 days until I go.
That ⬆ is our route (roughly).
Picking our car up in Boston and driving to San Francisco via:
• New York
• Philadelphia
• Washington D.C
• Abingdon
• Nashville
• New Orleans
• Ennis
• Amarillo
• Grand Canyon
• Las Vegas
• Los Angeles
• San Simeon
4 Glaswegians spending a month travelling America, it’s sure to be a fun-filled trip.
Flights are booked.
Car is booked.
Hotels are booked.
Excursions are getting booked in the next coming weeks.
It’s mainly just a waiting game now. Counting down the days until it’s time to get on our first plane to Amsterdam for our stopover before we finally land in Boston.
I shall be making sure to keep this up to date and post regular posts while I’m in America (when I’m not behind the wheel and it’s one of my friends there’s no reason not to).
Feel free to leave me a comment whether you’ve been on a similar trip, currently on yours or are in the planning process. Let me know! Or just drop by and say hello.
Yasmin x
American excitement
Exactly 6 months from today (30/05/16) I, along with 3 of my best friends, will be getting on a plane. Firstly travelling from Glasgow to Amsterdam and then a connecting flight over to Boston!
It’s starting to become really real. This is happening. Sometimes I forget all about it, because it’s something that’s been in the planning for over 2 years now. The trip sure has changed a lot I can tell you, it was crazy what my friend and I were planning to do at first.
Another road trip meeting will be happening soon, where my friends and I will discuss our next stops on our trip (having already discussed Boston and New York) it’s Washington D.C, Abingdon and Nashville next. We like to have a rough wee plan of all the things we want to do while still leaving plenty of time to be as spontaneous as we can and go with the flow everywhere also. I know the minute this is over I’m going to have to look into my next trip, which will hopefully be to Thailand for CampThailand.. But we will see!
Does anyone have any must do/see things for all our places?
- Boston
- New York
- Washington, D.C.
- Abingdon
- Nashville
- New Orleans
- Ennis
- Amarillo
- Farmington
- Grand Canyon
- Las Vegas
- Los Angeles
- San Simeon
- San Francisco
Feel free to leave any tips or such. All thoughts are appreciated!
Flights to America
It’s official now.
Our flights to America are booked for next year, I can’t quite believe it. It’s all feeling so real now.
- 30th May 2016 we fly from Glasgow to Amsterdam/Amsterdam to Boston.
- 29th June 2016 we fly from San Fransisco to Amsterdam/Amsterdam to Glasgow.
Got such a great deal on our flights, £555pp with STA Travel, almost £200pp cheaper than what we had originally found online. Now that the flights are booked it’s really sunk in to us all that this is happening, we are going on our road trip across America. I really can’t wait for this experience with my best friends, it’s going to be unreal.
Coast to Coast: USA road trip
It’s official. My friends and I have finalised our plans for our American road trip and I am ecstatic of our plans!
Basically this is a basic itinerary of how we’ll be spending our time.
- Day 1. Boston: we arrive, sort out our rental car and then head to the motel. Head out for some dinner and drinks and then get an early night for the next day.
- Day 2. Boston: our full day in Boston, we’re looking at doing some walking tours and taking in some of the history and maybe seeing some of the nightlife that night.
- Day 3. Salem/NYC: up early for some breakfast then drive up to Salem and get a feel for its witchcraft history, we’ll spend some time here before heading to NYC. We’re actually planning on staying in North Bergen, NJ. So it will be easier as we’ll just use public transport to get into New York City itself.
- Days 4-6. New York City: we plan on doing quite a few things here, a helicopter tour, matinee Broadway show, in addition to many of the other typical tourist things to do. We aren’t big shoppers so we won’t be spending much of our time in and out of shops. We’ll definitely be looking to party it up in NYC so suggestions of bars/clubs to go to would be fab.
- Day 7. NYC/Philadelphia/Washington DC: we will most likely be leaving NYC relatively early as we’re planning on stopping at Philadelphia on our way to DC as one of us has family there so we will pop in and say ‘Hi’. I believe we’re actually staying in Virginia but just a short subway ride from the capital. We’ll most likely just get some dinner and have a walk about at some of the tourist spots.
- Day 8. Washington DC: for us this will mostly be about seeing the sights. War memorials and the Lincoln statue etc. maybe visit a wee museum. If anyone has any ones they think we definitely shouldn’t miss out on??
- Day 9. Washington DC/Abingdon: we’ve just added Abingdon in as originally we had a 10 hour drive from Washington DC to Nashville but thought we would split it in half. Any ideas of what to do/see in Abingdon would be appreciated?
- Day 10. Abingdon/Nashville: we’ll most likely just have some dinner and get an early night here so we can see what Nashville has to offer the following day.
- Day 11. Nashville: here all we have is The Grande Ole Oprey. My friend is a guitar player and we all love music so if there’s any great recommendations of venues to see some live music that would be great.
- Day 12. Nashville/New Orleans: we plan on heading out early again here stopping for something to eat in Alabama and again in Mississippi. Then as soon as we arrive, we’ll most likely drop our things and head straight to the French Quarter!
- Day 13-14. New Orleans: here we’re interested in soaking up the architecture and sights. And drinking.. We’ll probably do a fair bit of drinking here, we are 4 Glaswegians after all.
- Day 15. New Orleans/Ennis: again Ennis has just recently been added. So we’ll probably just leave New Orleans and have a chilled drive to Ennis and a chilled night here.
- Day 16. Ennis/Amarillo: once we arrive in Amarillo we’ll be heading to Cadillac Ranch to get our spray paint on. Then we’ll definitely be checking out Palo Duro Canyon. We’ll be planning on getting stuck right into the Big Texan Steak Ranch for dinner. We reckon we could smash the challenge!
- Day 17. Amarillo/Farmington: we’ll probably head out early and grab breakfast at the Midpoint Cafe, as we’ve been recommended to. It will be another chilled night here for us.
- Day 18. Famington/Four Corners/Monument Valley/Grand Canyon: we will be up super early to head to the Four Corners Monument, probably explore a bit before it opens at 8am, then off to Monument Valley. From there we’ll be heading to Yavapai Lodges. We’ll be eating/sleeping when we arrive so we are up early for the next full day.
- Day 19. Grand Canyon/Las Vegas: our morning will be spent visiting the Grand Canyon. We’ll probably spend quite a lot of time here as our night in Vegas will just be eating/drinking/maybe visit a casino.
- Day 20-21. Las Vegas: our time will be spent, drinking, gambling and hopefully catch a show. This is the only place we’ll be staying anywhere fancy (The Bellagio) as it’s a birthday gift. We were planning on going to a shooting range here but have been advised to go to one in Texas instead?
- Day 22. Las Vegas/Los Angeles: we’ll be up early and heading to LA, get to our motel, grab some food and probably enjoy the nightlife.
- Day 23-25. Los Angeles: in LA we’re looking forward to the beaches, the nightlife and universal studios. We’re not massive theme park fans but Universal has something we’re all interested in.
- Day 26. Los Angeles/San Simeon: we were told we had to add in a day between LA and San Fran somewhere so we’ve chosen San Simeon.
- Day 27. San Simeon/San Francisco: like most of our travelling days it will probably just be rather chilled especially as it’s coming towards the end of our trip.
- Day 28-30. San Francisco: the only thing we have planned for San Fran is Alcatraz. Maybe rent some bikes and cycle about, go on a tram etc.
- Day 31. San Francisco/Glasgow: well this will be the day we either all dread or can’t wait for, the day we head home.
As you can all see, this is the outline of our trip and it’s one I cannot wait for.
Money isn’t an issue for us, so advice on must do/see things in each place is welcome. All our places are set in stone, along with the time scale. But please guys, we welcome any feedback or suggestions. They would be much appreciated.
Bring on 2016!!!!
Yasmin Travels 