So at the end of 2 weeks of driving around the deep (and perhaps not so deep) South here are some of our thoughts gathered during our travels.

Although we are told it is ‘Trump Country’ there is no real sign of this. We only saw one reference which was a single sticker on a pick up truck

The cities we visited (apart from New Orleans) have cheap electric scooters to get around. This is good for the Americans as it saves walking. And Americans don’t walk anywhere. They are, however, becoming a bit of a menace as they are just dumped wherever they stop - as a result of the person having arrived, having run out of battery or breaking down. There are no official places such as with Boris Bike docking stations. It appears that some people pick them up, take them home and charge them up before ‘releasing’ them. And they get paid for it. But they go at 15mph and can be a menace!

The Big Black River is actually brown!

When exits are shown off freeways etc, the two towns shown are always in alphabetical order

The condition of roads in New Orleans is worse than the UK - but they can blame flooding

You can ‘adopt’ a stretch of Highway. I quite fancy having an Andy Webber Highway!

Salads. Arugula is rocket. Now that is science!

I like big V8s whether they are in big trucks or cars. But then petrol (gas) is about $2.50 per GALLON

Because our credit cards don’t work in US petrol pumps (don’t know why cos they work everywhere else) you have to prepay. I got quite good at estimating how much it would cost to fill up

Baths are generally very shallow, like deep shower trays which I guess is what they really are

Public toilets are low down. Both the ladies and the urinals. We have no idea why. Even disabled are low which must make it very difficult.

Light switches work back to front i.e. you switch up to turn them on. That’s weird.

Because they add a sales tax, the price you see on anything is never the price you pay. And it varies from state to state and as we went to 6 states you never have any idea!

Every town has several craft breweries. A good thing!

Americans don’t have electric kettles. If they do have kettles you boil them on the hob. Sometimes they don’t, in which case you use the coffee machine to heat water.

The Americans are very respectful to each other and, especially I think, to ‘seniors’! This we liked!

People take excess food away from restaurants in boxes. This is OK but there are times when people don’t even want part of what is on the menu so take it away without having it.

In Sri Lanka all toilet seats were loose. In US all loo roll holders are loose. This seems to annoy Lin more than me!

So, dear readers (if any of you have stuck the course) it is now over. Sighs of relief will be heard.

And that’s it until the next little trip

Take care y’all

Andy & Lin xx