We're back... but our luggage is still on holidays!
After a week of travelling, wearing down the rubber on our shoes, developing monster blisters (not me, my wife did!), seeing more American history than Abraham Lincoln, and eating more food than we should have eaten in two weeks we're back in Calgary. Unfortunately I can't say the same about our poor bags.
We were scheduled to return from Philadelphia via Chicago into Edmonton at 10:30pm. But as our flight to Chicago was delayed by an hour and we only had an hour layover in Chicago, we would have missed our connecting flight. So we re-routed through Toronto, on a later flight. We arrived at 1am into Edmonton, but 48 hours later, our luggage is still officially somewhere between Chicago and Edmonton... although I have a sneaking suspicion it's sitting in some dark corner of the Edmonton airport.
Luggage issues aside, we had an awesome time. It was great to see the originals of the great US historical documents, like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with its amendments. I did learn a lot about north American history, and came to realize something new about the United States.
The country really is a lot poorer than it lets on. When you figure how much the government pays for the various wars it fights, money that could be allocated to looking after it people, you can see visible signs that there really isn't so much prosperity.
It struck me on the first day we were there. Our hotel was near the Lincoln Memorial, which is at one end of the famous Reflecting Pool. We walked along the Reflecting Pool from the Lincoln Memorial past the Washington Monument to the Capitol building. I was staggered that the Reflecting Pool was green with algae and slime. The grass surrounding the Pool was patchy at best, but riddled with weeds and not mown. Actually a very untidy sight that I would expect to see in a poor ex-Soviet republic. Then, rather than having a pretty building where food, drinks and souvenirs were sold, it was literally a tent, and the washrooms were a row of Port-A-Potties. Hardly impressive.
After a week of travelling, wearing down the rubber on our shoes, developing monster blisters (not me, my wife did!), seeing more American history than Abraham Lincoln, and eating more food than we should have eaten in two weeks we're back in Calgary. Unfortunately I can't say the same about our poor bags.
We were scheduled to return from Philadelphia via Chicago into Edmonton at 10:30pm. But as our flight to Chicago was delayed by an hour and we only had an hour layover in Chicago, we would have missed our connecting flight. So we re-routed through Toronto, on a later flight. We arrived at 1am into Edmonton, but 48 hours later, our luggage is still officially somewhere between Chicago and Edmonton... although I have a sneaking suspicion it's sitting in some dark corner of the Edmonton airport.
Luggage issues aside, we had an awesome time. It was great to see the originals of the great US historical documents, like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with its amendments. I did learn a lot about north American history, and came to realize something new about the United States.
The country really is a lot poorer than it lets on. When you figure how much the government pays for the various wars it fights, money that could be allocated to looking after it people, you can see visible signs that there really isn't so much prosperity.
It struck me on the first day we were there. Our hotel was near the Lincoln Memorial, which is at one end of the famous Reflecting Pool. We walked along the Reflecting Pool from the Lincoln Memorial past the Washington Monument to the Capitol building. I was staggered that the Reflecting Pool was green with algae and slime. The grass surrounding the Pool was patchy at best, but riddled with weeds and not mown. Actually a very untidy sight that I would expect to see in a poor ex-Soviet republic. Then, rather than having a pretty building where food, drinks and souvenirs were sold, it was literally a tent, and the washrooms were a row of Port-A-Potties. Hardly impressive.
In general many of the buildings were run-down, and poorly maintained. In many ways it did remind me of the many poor European cities I had visited, certainly not the image United States would like to portray to the outside world.
When you go further and look at the health system, frailty of the economy, and the general slide of the nation from the world's primary economic powerhouse, to a diminishing influence, it all bodes poorly for the US.
As a Canadian (I think of myself as one, as it is the place I call home) it is sad for me to see our nearest neighbour in such strife, and hopefully the ill effects will not creep to far across the border.
I'm not holding my breath.
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