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John Harris has absconded from Australia for five weeks with his wife Sandy and eight-year-old daughter Eden. While the true purpose of their trip to North America is to spend Christmas with Canadian friends in the snowy suburban streets of Ottawa, they have extended the front end of the trip and the back end of the trip with so many add-ons that the Norwood City Council is considering sending in the building inspectors. This itinerary is enough to make grown travel agents shudder: Disneyland, Hollywood, the Big Easy, the Bad DC, the Big Apple, the Big Hole in the Ground, Lost Wage and that Pacific island where you get leied on arrival. Will it stand the strain? Will it collapse? Dear reader, I know not, so read on to discover how it all turns out.

Meeting squirrels by the White House

Highlights of our 24 hours in the seat of western power

  • Eden feeding squirrels in front of the White House

  • A "city lights" tour of Washington monuments at night 

  • Attending a spirit-filled service at the Methodist Baptist Church

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Three months is not enough in this city

Highlights of our three days in the Big Apple

  • Watchiing the Broadway show of Mary Poppins on our first night

  • John scoffing oysters at the Grand Central Oyster Bar

  • Catching a Neil Young concert in Harlem on our last night

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Eden and Sandy hit the town on Bourbon St New Orleans by night, December 12, 2007).JPGThe Big Easy

Highlights of our visit to the sweetest town in the South

  • Eating southern tucker like Crawfish Etoufee and Jamabaya

  • Eden watching a gold-bedecked "statue" assailing passersby

  • Listening to a three-piece combo play late in a Bourbon St bar

 

Eden and Sandy on the top of Splash MountainDisneyland daze and wi-fie woze

Qantas Flight 93 touched done just after daybreak. After flying backward across the international dateline, we arrived in Los Angeles about an hour and a half before we flew out of Adelaide. For the first time since I bought it, the date on my Seiko watch is correct. The Qantas queues were cleared expediently and, despite pre-departure warnings to the contrary, the welcoming US officials were neither officious nor intrusive. That may be one of the advantages of travelling with a sweet-faced eight year-old girl.

Sandy, Eden and I spilled on to the sidewalk in front of the LAX terminal about 9am. Our hotel had suggested we take the Super Shuttle from the airport to Anaheim, so we went on the hunt for a Super Shuttle dispatcher in blue shirt. When eventually we found her, she exuded an air of indifference to our desire to use her company’s conveyance. As we had nothing better to do, we loitered in the general vicinity until the dispatcher eventually grunted at us and pointed to an approaching van. As I gathered up our cases to stagger towards the blue minibus, the dispatcher suddenly became uncharacteristically animated. “Don’t you go forgetting my tip,” she hollered at my back as I scrambled aboard the bus. When I opened my wallet to extract five dollars for her unstinting service, the smallest note I could find in my fluster was a $20 note – too much for too little, I decided, and thus ran the gauntlet of her glower as our bus pulled away from the curb.