Fort McHenry

This is Fort McHenry in Baltimore.  It's a neat star-shaped fort that was mainly used in the War of 1812 to defend the city from the British navy, and it's also where the national anthem of the USA was written!

Day trip to Washington DC

I'm now staying with my cousin Rosalie and her family just outside Baltimore. On my first day I went to Washington, walked around Capitol Hill and did a couple of museums, it kind of reminds me of Paris...

Colonial Williamsburg

I couchsurfed once more in Williamsburg with an awesome guy called Taylor.  He's a film major so we had loads to talk about and he's currently making a documentary on gene patenting, really interesting!
Colonial Williamsburg dates back to the 18th century and was Virginia's capital back in the day. Williamsburg is also home to the second oldest university in the country after Harvard, the College of William and Mary. This is the Governor's Palace, which went through restoration like most of the old buildings in the area.

Wrightsville Beach

I got to do a bit of night time photography which was fun, on the left is the house opposite where I was staying, they had huge flat screen TV's in every room, and even in every bathroom! Pretty crazy seeing as it's about 100m from the sea! May I ask, what is the point?!

OTH

For the One Tree Hill fans out there! Wilmington, NC. This is where it all takes place. I actually toured the Screen Gem Studios where they have the filming sound stages, but no photos allowed in there. This is downtown, and there are loads more recognizable places from the show!

Battleship North Carolina

My next stop was Wrightsville Beach, where I stayed with my cousin's husband's parents, yeah!
I pretty much relaxed on the beach a lot of the time, which was great, but I did get to tour this awesome battleship on the Cape Fear river that goes through Wilmington.  It was unbelievable, the main battery (9 canons!) could fire 16 inch 1200 kg loads every 30 seconds to an accurate distance of 20 miles, each needing 250 kg of powder to be propulsed. The whole ship had a crew of around 2300 men, and fought in the Pacific Ocean around 1940.

More beach!

Magnificient Folly Beach a few miles south of Charleston, thanks Erica for taking us there!

Night out in Charleston

 I met two English guys (Rob and Jan) at the hostel and we walked around town and then went to a few bars where we met a local girl called Erica in the bar she works at, and had a great time with her and her mates. She then took us to the beach the next day and showed us a few cool places around town!
PS : not my photo!

Antebellum architecture

Here's an example of the architecture on the South-East coast, it dates back to the antebellum period (a few decades before the Civil War).

Savannah

Ok so it's been a while...
I spent two nights in a cool town with some students of the local university, the Savannah College of Art and Design, that I got in contact with thanks to couchsurfing.org ! So it was my first couchsurfing experience and really great. They showed me around town as well as the audiovisual section of their campus, and even took me to the beach! Thanks guys for an awesome time!

And surf!

Yeah! I went to St Augustine Beach with an Austrian couple for the day, we rented a surfboard and had a great time, the waves were quite big, but the current especially was unbelievable, after 20 minutes of surfing we'd be much further down the beach... I'm also very sunburned, it ain't no Parisian sun over here in Florida!

St Augustine

Sun, sea, peace and quiet, and history! I'm in the oldest city in the USA, Saint Augustine!

Wildlife?

Lake Cecile

Sunset off Lake Cecile, 100m from the hostel.

Downtown Disney

So here I am in a motel/hostel in a place called Kissimmee south of Orlando! Weird name huh? Not much to visit in Orlando except the 70$ minimum parks unfortunately.  I walked around Downtown Disney for a couple of hours which was quite nice, it has shops and restaurants, and a lot of tourists of course! I then took the free water taxi to get back to the bus, pretty nice views...

Beach Bum!

There's Andy and Vik on the left and right, and a beach bum who we talked to for a bit, pretty cool guy, he made crickets and roses out of palm tree leaves that last forever, and made us taste some fresh coconut jelly! A lot of people in Key West are really laid back and easy to talk to, even though they're probably quite stoned most of the time!

Key West

Here's one of the nicest beaches of Key West, the most southernmost town in the whole of continental USA! It was so hot and humid, more than in Miami, and the hostel was pretty bad too, it's not very easy going to sleep in 30C... Nevertheless it was great, I met two German guys on the Greyhound bus and we spent the day on the beach and walking around town. The next day we went snorkeling, the Florida Keys are one of the largest reefs in the world and are probably going to suffer because of the recent oil spill in the Gulf, they seemed to already have been largely affected by Man's idiocy, a lot of it was dead and there weren't that many fish around either.

South Beach

I had a great time today with Antony and Patrick, two frenchies, we first went to the Wolfsonian Museum on Washington Avenue, a really cool modern art and design museum! Then we headed to the beach for a couple of hours before it started raining!

The Tides

 Thought this hotel looked wicked at night, seems like it came right out of a movie doesn't it?

Hola! Check out Ocean Drive at night!

I'm leaving Miami tomorrow morning, my next destination is Key West! I hope the weather gets better, it seems to rain from 5pm onwards for a couple of hours, big tropical thunderstorms! The streets are pretty much flooded, it's insane!

Ocean Drive

I just had a pretty restless night in a very noisy hostel! But still, not too tired! I walked around most of Miami Beach, and was surprised there weren't more people around, quite a lot of cars but nearly no locals or visitors walking around...
This is the famous Ocean Drive in Miami Beach, about 200m from the beach!