2 BLONDES, A CAR AND A CONTINENT

With the musical whirlwind behind us we headed to St Louis where we embarked on a vintage clothing expedition scoring ourselves some absolute beauties to sell to you lovely people (coming soon to Ebay….watch this space), before heading to Pittsburgh to recharge the batteries and ready ourselves for NYC. We booked ourselves into the cheapest motel we could find and experienced the most horrific motel stop yet. As we checked into Americas Best Value Inn we could smell the dodgy from a mile off, as we were shown to our room we got the feeling the place might double up as a half way house for the Indian community. Then once inside we were greeted with the most filthy room ever, complete with pins sticking out of the lamp shades a la voodoo ritual and wait for it…. a swastika painted on the mirror accompanied by a series of dates and numbers scrawled in dripping red paint! How homely! We were quite distressed and argued with the manager for a good half an hour before he gave us another room on the other side of the motel for free. The only good thing that happened out of our Pittsburgh stay was catching up on the new series of True Blood (obsessed? Us?) and dining 2 meals in a row at Bob Evans.

With one more night to kill before we could check into our New York hotel we got as close as we could in a budget motel in New Jersey where we tried to pretty ourselves up. Being babes on a budget, this involved experimenting with a horrible sand paper-like device called Smooth Away and dabbling with blonde hair dye. Both were disasters which left us with rashes and ginger hair. NYC here come the beauties!!

As we drove into NYC it was time to kiss the silver bullet goodbye, so we unloaded the last 2 months of our lives onto a busy sidewalk and played tag as we struggled to drag everything into the worlds smallest lift and then into the worlds smallest hotel room. With no room to move we decided the best thing to do was to get out and walk, walk, walk. And walk we did, all day long until it was time to meet up with a friend from home Sara at the famous Schiller’s in the Lower East Side. We drank cocktails at the bar before being escorted to the ‘best table in the house’. A definite Sex in the City moment…

Next port of call was a party we had been invited to by one of Hayley’s friends, but somehow in the excitement we had lost the address so called upon an unexpecting local to help us with directions which led us to asking if we could pop upstairs and use his internet in his apartment. He welcomed us in with open arms and told us we should join him later for a drink at his bar Nurse Bettie. SCORE!

Josie awoke the next morning to discover Hayley had been on midnight deli run and was surrounded by pastrami sandwich crumbs and empty chip packets! We shook of the hangover with coffee’s in our favorite Bryant Park and set off again for a marathon eating/walking/window shopping day.

That night we took up the offer of our New York local Stephen and joined him for a ‘quiet’ drink in his bar….we were still playing drinking games in the wine cellar at 6am….

All the unexpected partying had left us with tickets to Lollapalooza in Chicago, for the next day, and no way of getting there! Somehow all the rental cars in NYC were booked out so we bought some overpriced plane tickets. The next conundrum, we needed a place to stay for the night and a car load full of luggage to store while we were away. We remembered a drunken conversation from the night before when Stephen offered to adopt us so we could stay longer, so we called him and gave him the good news! We also suggested he might like to store our luggage in his wine cellar….Amazingly he did. GOD BLESS AMERICA!!

All that was left to do was go round 3, partying the night away. We were the toast of the town, getting customised cocktails and a whole lotta love from Mike, the best barman in NY….

And attracting new fans who were convinced we looked exactly like Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts, alright then!