June 17-18, 2013

Jonny and I arrived in New York on Sunday and spent our first night in Williamsburg, a suburb of Brooklyn. Williamsburg is an exciting and dynamic suburb full of creative people, such as musicians, artists, designers, etc. and it is such and amazing place to hang out as there are awesome restaurants, shops, studios, etc. as far as the eye can see! It's like Woodstock or Observatory in Cape Town, but on a much bigger scale. We stayed in the Wythe Hotel on our first night - what an absolutely incredible hotel! The building was a factory on the Williamsburg waterfront that was constructed in 1901 and has recently been converted into a 70 room hotel. The hotel is representative of Brooklyn and there is so much attention to detail it's just incredible. It's a boutique hotel, so if you like trendy, retro designs you will love this place. Jonny and I were on the third floor in a bunk bed room and it was absolutely amazing. There is a rooftop bar on the 6th floor where you can see views of Manhattan. The staff was super friendly and made us feel so welcome. I will definitely return to this hotel in the future and can't recommend it enough. For pictures and more info on the Wythe Hotel visit www.wythehotel.com

We visited many shops and restaurants during our stay in Williamsburg. One of the busiest streets is called Bedford Avenue which has a ton of awesome places to check out. We also went to a punk rock show at The Music Hall of Williamsburg, featuring The Krays, Adolescents and Subhumans. We loved all the organic food shops and made sure we ate lots of fruit and nuts to keep our energy levels pumping. We also visited the Williamsburg Flea Market which made us feel right as home, as if we were at the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock, Cape Town. 

After our time in Williamsburg, we made our way to Penn Station (one of the big train stations in New York) to catch a train to Trenton, New Jersey, where my uncle picked us up. We're currently staying in Southampton, Pennsylvania with my family and we've had a great time here so far. They cooked us an awesome meal on our arrival on Monday night which we really appreciated, as were were famished after our travels. Jonny and I had ordered a bunch of packages from Amazon and Ebay, so Christmas came early for us this year. Jonny's favourite order was a 1987 yellow Ibanez RG-550 electric guitar and mine was a Google Nexus 7 tablet, which I'm enjoying very much - especially using it with fast American internet!

On Tuesday morning, while Jonny was working on the computer I saw a deer through the window in the garden. That was super cool. Later on we picked up our rental car (an awesome Dodge) and went shopping at Oxford Valley Mall. Driving on the right side of the road takes some getting used to, but we're getting there. We ate some Japanese food for lunch at the mall (chicken teriyaki) and spent most of our time shopping for clothes. Jonny loved Abercrombie & Fitch and Hot Topic, and I found some great deals at Hollister and Aeropostle. We were hoping to get our cell phones working with an American mobile number, but it turned out to be a bit of a mission and only Jonny's phone was able to be unlocked. Hopefully we will have mobile access today.

 We also visited Guitar Centre (Jonny's first time) and Target. All the walking around made us very hungry so we stopped off at an Hibachi restaurant, one of my favourite places to eat! It's a Japanese restaurant where they cook the food right in front of you while doing all kinds of entertaining tricks, it's really quite something! The food is incredible, and the chef keeps putting more food on your plate while you are eating, so it's impossible to finish everything. Jonny and I had the chicken and steak hibachi and the chef treated us to some complimentary shrimp too!

After our meal, we bought a GPS from Target to help us get home and I accidentally put it on a foreign language, which made it difficult to use. Thankfully Matt at Target was able to put it back to English so we could find our way home. It's a lot of fun driving in America, but it certainly does take some getting used to. Listening to rock radio in the car is totally epic!

Today (Wednesday) we are heading out on a 5-6 hour journey to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We will be watching The Dangerous Summer tonight and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers tomorrow night, which is definitely one of the highlights of the trip. I'm looking forward to our first long road trip, and I'll try keep you guys updated.

Chow for now and thanks for reading.

Tim & Jonny

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