North Carolina

At last! A day off. The weather here is foul - and we can't film in the rain, so today and tomorrow are a chance to wash my socks, catch up with people, and of course - update my blog.

I'm now in North Carolina (queue another graphic):

I'm also going to try and setup a map today of where I've been - as I've got all this GPS information, so surely there must be a way of putting it into a google map or something similar...

North Carolina is pretty cool. I'm now just outside the city of Raleigh (which I think is the state capital). Interesting facts about North Carolina:

• Home of the first flight by the Wright brothers (and I saw the site they did their flight from the other day, photos to follow).
• Population of roughly 9,061,032.
• Home of a lot of Tobacco and Cotton plantations (though these are becoming less profitable).
• They have "grits" here.
• We are staying near the William B Umstead National Park. Yes, that's right, the B. Umpstead national park.

Grits. I suppose I ought to explain what grits are. I first heard of grits in the 1992 film "My Cousin Vinny", and have always wanted to try them - but never had the opportunity to do so. In the film, grits were never really explained -but they sounded so awful, that I felt I had to give them a try.

So I did.

And they are gross. Basically they are just ground corn, like selmolina, but savory. Not my cup of tea at all.

On the mention of tea, I'm glad to report that I have consumed three cups of almost english tea, though I have made a bit of a mess in the process. American's don't really do tea - or at least, not in the way it should be done (when I say should, I do of course mean the British way). Hotel rooms here are loaded with appliances: a 32" flat screen tv, 3 lamps, a fridge, microwave, coffee percolator - but no kettle. There are even 2 phones - in case I find it hard to move the 2 metres away from the bedside phone to the one on the desk. Or should I say 2 yards. Anyway, sans kettle, I have succeeded in making tea using the coffee percolator. Although, each time so far I've overfilled it - resulting in a tea expedition to the furthest corners of the side unit. Oops.

Right. Time to work on this map.....