Catchup for the last week

Washington DC.
I arrived in mid afternoon, and after finding the hostel, went on a big walk round all the various monuments and so on. The Jefferson and FDR memorials were the best, the Washington one is a bit boring, although apparantly you can go up to the top which might have been nice. I saw the White House and the Capitol, as well as the Lincoln Memoria, which was packed. I went back to the hostel, which was pretty good fun, there was a good mix of people from all over the place, and we played Texas Hold'em (I lost bigtime) and lots of other card games. I was sleeping on the couch because they ran out of beds, but it was still pretty comfortable, so it was a good stay.

DC to Nashville
This was a 17 hour coach journey, with a stop in Roanoake, Virginia that lasted a lot longer than it was supposed to because the driver of the connection didn't get his wakeup call. The first driver was this crazy southern woman with ginger hair who was pretty funny, but she was also pretty rude to an asian guy who couldn't understand what she was saying. The next driver was a massive black guy with a realy cool voice, who also didn't have a huge amount of patience with foreigners, I think it's pretty standard in the South. I bought a bottle of water from a service station and the guy said it was $550 as a joke, the american sense of humour is a little messed up...

Nashville
I kind of cocked up my room selection here, ended up finding a motel way out of town, took a taxi there, and had to take a bus back but eventually got to the Country Music Hal of Fame, whcich was pretty good, there was some cool stuff, and I saw the first of what was going to be a lot of Elvis memorabilia. I also saw some TV footage of Dolly Parton at 21, and she looked absolutely stunning, compared to how she looks now... There was a load of Johnny Cash stuff too, that was pretty cool, he's got some great music.
It really reminded me of the R. Crumb cartoon that has a picture of three old folks playing banjo, guitar and double bass, and above it says "Where did it go, the music of our Grandparents?". Then it says very small underneath, "It died with them, that's where it went". It depressed me, especially to see some of the more modern country music, which is so cheesy it's untrue. At least the old stuff had something about it, the newer stuff is just missing something. Anyway, after that I wandered round the city a bit, but outside of the central blocks where all the bars are, it seemed a bit of a shithole. Maybe if I went back with a car it might be more fun.