Fly drive to Miami and up to Atlanta

We  drove over 1700 miles and saw a whole bunch of awesome places. We got to hang out with our the Vetters and see some live music thanks to Plain Jane Autmobile.

Our first stop was in Savannah. After landing in Miami at just after 9am we went downtown to hire our car. On a recent heads up I had learnt that hiring the car from any location other than the airport can result in almost half the cost. By the time we were driving out of downtown Miami it was maybe just 11.30am. We were checked in and in our room in Savannah by 7.00pm ish. Not bad going for that journey with at least 3 stops.

We had to hoon it up the road because we had dinner reservations which were at 8.30pm. There wasn’t much online about the place we booked apart from the fact it is one of the oldest restaurants / buildings in Savannah. The Olde Pink House really is something special, from the outside of the building to the inside of your stomach. It is indeed old and very pink. Being in Savannah we opted for seafood. Now we may live in the Caribbean but seafood is done differently almost everywhere and in Cayman not all of it is necessarily fresh fish (it may well have been frozen and shipped in). Between us we ate VERY well, apart from a slight mishap ordering wine at first (we only got a half bottle). Originally I ordered Shrimp stuffed with crab with some sort of greens and tatoes on the side whilst Sam ordered the speciality of the joint, Crispy scored Flounder. We ended up swapping as both obviously preferred each others meals more. Oh and there was a side of grits, but not very memorable after we went to Atlanta and had grits with Matty and Lorri at a place a block from where they live that was just crazy good breakfast!

The Olde Pink House - great Savannah restaurant

The next day after a tasty southern breakfast of many different types of quiche we went for a walk around the waterfront of Savannah. It was very muggy and almost unpleasantly wet. It felt like you were sweating but in actual fact the air was just so damp you got wet! The buildings were amazing everywhere with a very steep embankment down to the waters edge.

Onwards again just around 16 hours after arriving we got back in the car (a Chevy Cobalt, which for $11 extra a day I should have made into a Mustang!) and headed over to Atlanta. It wasn’t the most pleasant of drives, we stopped off for a lunch break and ended up with a poor selection of American fast food only to drive back to the Interstate and see a lovely looking local fish / seafood joint. Soon afterwards the rain kicked in and it looked like it was there to stay. It was coming down so hard at one point with the wipers on full speed or anything slower you had zero visibility out of the windscreen and we were completely reliant on other cars lights and the gps! It let up eventually and we ended up at the Georgian Terrace which whilst it looked fantastic ended up being a bit over priced compared to the next stay at a Holiday Inn Express!

The Georgian Terrace Lobby

The main and maybe only reasons for visiting Atlanta was to see our bestest friends Matty & Lorri Vetter with their new addition Von Marten Vetter. We did had an absolute blast with them from going out to the pub, breakfast and an awesome veggie restaurant to going to a couple of concerts or gigs to see Matty Vetter do his rock star thing with Plain Jane Automobile. They are an awesome band native to Orlando Florida who thanks to Matty living in Atlanta now also frequent the music scene a bit further north too. If their live show is anything to go by then that range will spread much further soon as they are one band you don’t want to miss an opportunity seeing, check them out on itunes if you don’t believe me!

Plain Jane Automobile in the Park - Atl, GA 09

We then spent the remainder of our vacation up in Helen, GA. Helen is a Bavarian styled village aiming itself at tourism with it’s unique theme and boundless natural beauty. We stayed for 3 nights and had a great time doing many things such as hiking, waterfalls, gem grubbing, eating and drinking (Oktoberfest was on!). Infact we did so much I will leave you with one photo and prepare another post just about Helen.

Sam near Anna Ruby Falls, Helen, GA

For the last 5 days I have been driving arund North Georgia, taking in the sites and sounds of the Appalachian Mountains. I have seen plenty of new things as well as experiencing parts of the USA I probably normally wouldn’t.

By far the most unique place I have been is Helen. This Town / Village is nestled in a very scenic valley by the Unicoi Forest.  Helen is a Bavarian style village, and I kid you not the buildings are apline looking and the names like Hansel & gretel Candy Kitchen and the Hofbrau where I stayed.

I have taken quite a few photos which you can see here on Flickr. One of my favourite is this panorama which was all done rather quickly and I would have liked ot get multiple exposures of each shot, but I still kind of like the dark shadows and the lit up trees with all their clours on display.

finally got around to posting here about the sardine run. excuse the lameness i just had a hard drive failure and i’m pissed i haven’t backed up in a while. i won’t have lost much information bur it’s expensive now to buy a new hard drive and the get a proper back up system. anyways click to go see the rest of my photos at flickr.com. some people have even been asking if they can get some prints. if you are interested contact me and i will decide how to do it with the hi res images which are not online.

Feel free to leave comments or notes on my flickr account about any of the images you enjoy.

UPDATE: Hard drive failure of My Docments is going to cost me some headaches if they can’t repair it, or clone it. I do have a backup, but I will also loose some recent stuff. Please Clone work ! then I can cry from how much it costs !

You can see the flag is flying in Grand Cayman .. I believe warnings still stand in place even though we aren’t in any realy danger anymore .. but as you can see from these photos George Town was under tirany from the water (2 days ago)… It actually got worse yesterday and i didn’t have my camera with me most the day. I think i need to get me a smart back pack to carry everything aroud in. I only need my little SD20 with me all the time.
Anyway I hope You enjoy the photos we kinda enjoyed this storm although it has done quite a bit of damage .. Rackams may be out of action for a while. oh well at least I have a week off to look forward too.

Day at Donnington

Here is my favourite photo from yesterday at Donnington. As it isn’t the best (not very sharp) photo in the world I have done some photoshop work to distract from it. It’s actually a photo of Alex’s Dad in his e-type. It’s a relaitvely well known car I imagine amongst it’s cirle. A very old e-type that was rebuilt by the owner of Lacoste (I think) at a cost of �250,000. It was made faster and stronger than opther e-types and so won all of it’s races with great ease. All the other boys in the group at the time weren’t very happy they couldn’t win so they complained and had the car banned. There may be another bit to the story but I forget it. Alex’s dad has basically bought it and had it modified back to original e-type spec mechanics wise, but as his little off proved the car is still very strong.
I am currently making a new web site for myself as well as working on YUP. My new site will be based on new skills I have learnt and also have a lot more information on it with regards to me and stuff to do with me. I am also trying to swap over to wordpress from b2evolution, just because when wordpress is up and running how you want it it is much better than b2evo, I just don’t seem to be able to transfer my journal very easily. what I may do is just transfer over to the new site to kinda of have a new start date to signify my moving back to cayman and hopefully a more direction orientated part of mylife where I stop pissing it all up against the wall .. well every night anyway .. got to have fun, but got to also get to where you are going in the direction you are heading or wanting to head in. Oh and Jim will be amused to know I bumbed into Beaver of the ol Jame Bearne Photography while I was up there.

Morning View

Marina Building

Palm Tree

Here are a quick few photos from the long weekend in spain that I went on with Dad and Alan. Taken a while for me to get around to doing them as my card reader broke but it is all working good. I didnt take very many or many interesting ones as I was ill most the time. Most of the time there i was reminded why i didnt like spain that much, its not the lively part of Spain, its not a big city or a big holiday place it’s an inbetween of both. Fun when you are younger and all you want is the beach every so often a swimming pool and food and drink. When you get older thats all you want but i stopped going to spain when i was 16 i guess as it has nothing to offer someone between that age and about 30 or more.

Puerto Banus

Fuenguirola Town

Our Villa

If you’d like to go to the part of the gallery that has all the images in here is the link, I dont think i will be linking individual imagesfor right now it’s a little tideus.

Gallery Here->

• i have ideas of things i want to do.
• i know what i will miss
• but i am looking forward to the things i have ideas about
• and i know the things i will miss here i can get back at anytime

There are some more piccies in my photo gallery of the Pirates Day Fireworks and the Beach, check em out. the fireworks were cool but nothing on a normal pirates week.

So just incase you are interested .. things I will miss from Cayman that I am pretty sure if i miss it that bad i can get back:

• The Climate; which brings a permanent Tan and outdoor life.
• The social side of the island (although right now it’s depressing as most my good friends have left)
• The style of drinking, and the amount of that we do
• The Beach and everything you can do on it or in the sea
• Being able to dive whenever i like, or swim in the sea etc.
• Being able to take tropical photos above and below the sea anytime at all

Probably just a few of the things i will miss.

But I am looking forward to the freedom of travel and trying my own thing, and at the end of the day testing my life, to see what I do or am doing or have done is what i really want to do.