A blog about Roswell, Austin & Atlanta
The bus from Las Vegas to Roswell was rather eventful, we stopped a few times along the route, we stopped in Albuquerque which was a strange stop, looking out the windows of the bus, everything seemed to be falling apart, there didn’t seem to many people on what looked to have previously been a busy street.
The bus from Albuquerque was a little odd, there were a total of 6 people on a full sized Greyhound bus, the ride went smoothly and we got to Roswell, which had a Greyhound station the size of a small shed. We luckily were within walking distance from where we were staying so it made it a lot easier than having to catch a cab.
We were feeling fairly shitty and disgusting after a long bus ride, we decided to just get ourselves settled in our room and order in some pizza.
The next morning we awoke and decided to walk down the main street of Roswell to the UFO Museum & Research Center. Which apparently was once free but now they charge for because they are planning to build a multi-million dollar building a little further up the street. The UFO Museum was amazing, we saw so many different things, newspaper articles from the time of the crash in Roswell and a whole bunch of other things.
Roswell is quite an odd town, even the street lamps have alien eyes printed on them and alien ‘footprints’ curl around some street corners.
There are a plethora of alien and UFO souvenir stores in the one area.
Everything is alien or UFO themed, from the McDonalds right down to the Coca-Cola vending machines.
We decided to grab something to eat at the diner that was used in Roswell, the TV series, which has since been bought by INSANE Christians who have propaganda everywhere telling you not to believe in aliens, but believe in Christ. They sold a stack of Jesus tshirts……but the food was pretty damn good, so I can’t complain.
We visited nearly every shop that was open in the area, including a couple of antique stores that we spent quite a bit of time in and had a lot of fun in, looking at everything we couldn’t ship home L
We walked back towards the hotel, looking around at Roswell and all the failed business’ are now decrepit, in some cases they have poured a concrete slab to make the stairs to the store disappear.
Being a HUGE X-Files/Roswell fan, Roswell was such an amazing place to visit, a small town with such an odd history.
The bus ride to Austin, Texas was a little bit of an odd one. At first, Megan and I weren’t sitting together for a couple of hours of the trip. I was sitting next to a gentleman in his 50s or 60s, I apologize if this next part sounds disgusting, but I want you to get an idea of how this was……Imagine if you took a shit, then ate it, then shit it out again, then brushed your teeth with that…..okay, that’s what this guy had obviously done and proceeded to breathe on me the entire bus ride.
Luckily he got off and Megan and I snapped up the seat and were comfortable for the rest of the ride.
We arrived in Austin at around 9am and got to the hotel fairly quickly and we lay down to have a rest as we didn’t get much sleep at all on the bus ride. We ended up sleeping for most of the day.
The next afternoon we had organized to meet up with our friend and local Austin-ite Roger, who came and picked us up, we were shown some neighbourhoods of Austin, as well as the city and the university.
We got some authentic Texas chili, which I thought was amazing, and it was much more filling than I thought it would be.
We then went to the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge, which is where the largest urban population of freetail bats live. They live in these tiny grooves under the bridge and the all come out at night to feast on insects along the river.
Even though it was fairly dark the sight of around 1.5 million bats shooting out from under a bridge is such an amazing sight.
Roger, Megan and I met up with two other girls while we were watching the bats. Jessica & Kelly, we all decided to walk down to the bar and have a few drinks before heading home for the evening. We had a few laughs and enjoyed each others company. We organized with Jessica & Kelly to meet up with them the next day and go to The Barton Springs Pool, which is a man-made pool which is filled from the Barton Springs.
The next day Jessica & Kelly came and picked us up, we got an awesome Mexican meal before heading out to the springs. It was amazing there, the water was about 20° and it was so damn refreshing. There was a diving board and the pool was just so much bigger than I had imagined that it would be.
After saying goodbye to Jessica & Kelly, we stayed in for the night and we got ready for our bus trip the next day to Atlanta.
We arrived at the bus station about a few hours early as we had to check out from our hotel and as the bus station was directly across the road, we got there pretty early.
Our bus was supposed to leave at 130pm, however, that bus was running extremely late and we ended up switching our tickets over for a bus that got to Atlanta 20 minutes later than our original bus, but left at 530pm.
We checked into our hotel, completely exhausted we ordered some pasta up to the room and lazed around whilst watching some TV. At one point I decided to go out for some ice to fill the sink to keep our drinks cool, the roof above the ice machine looked as if it had exploded and there was dust and dirt and water everywhere, which of course means that the ice machine is out of order.
The following day Megan woke up with such excitement and joy, we were going to Coca-Cola World.
We walked from our hotel, about 1km until we hit Coca-Cola World.
Once inside we sat down to watch a strange little animated film about the factory and what it is like to live inside a Coke machine……yes, it was rather strange.
Coke memorabilia covered the walls like a red moss. There were badges, flags, bottles, cans & anything you could think of…..they had it.
Right at the end of the tour there is a ‘tasting’ room, where there are over 60 different sodas from all around the world, and the ‘stations’ are all set up by continent.
They were all pretty good and varied quite a bit from country to country.
That is until I came to Beverly from Italy……I have never tasted such a vile thing, think of the shit-eating man earlier…….and capture his breath in liquid form….BINGO!
We got to take a freshly bottled Coke as we finished our tour of the factory and both feeling sickly from all the sodas we had consumed, we worked out way through the gift shop and onto the outside of Coke World.
After a few minutes of fresh air, waiting for the sodas to settle, Megan didn’t feel too good and vomited on a bench and in the drain…..not to worry, it was about 70/30, in favour of the drain.
We got back to the hotel, got a decent sleep and headed to St Augustine, Florida to see our friends Ballroombaby & Tomit.
When the going gets weird…..the weird turn pro
BJ
