Our second stop in the United Sates was Syracuse which was an interesting experience to say the least. We first walked to our hotel and were given our room with the caveat that it might be a little dirty, house cleaning would get to it very soon. We would be very interested to see what a very dirty room looked like to them since the room was an absolute mess. Not only was there rubbish all over the place, dirty towels in puddles on the floor and the fridge had leaked everywhere but the bed was in three pieces sprawled out around the room. We tried to ask housekeeping about it but they didn't speak a word of English, all we could get out of them was "Oh that room, you don't want that room, that's a bad room."

Our first stop was the tourist information office where we were instantly told our hotel was in a bad neighbourhood and we should be very careful. They then continued to tell us that there was no public transport outside of the town centre and so there was no way for us to go out to any of the nice areas around the place without our own car. All they could recommend to us was a walk to a mall and then onwards to a polluted lake.

We tried to make the most out of it but when a thunder storm started up we made the decision to escape as quickly as we could. By the time we worked out the logistics we had to sprint the 4km (in a hot storm with all our packs on) to the bus station to get there in time to catch the last bus out of there for the day.