Daily sketch

Christmas in Santa Fe: 

Apparently that's one of the most touristic cities in the US, it's really nice and with old houses mexican style, no skyscrapers and things like that, but still rrreally touristic. That's why we ended up having our christmas eve dinner in our motel room with sushi bought in the only open dept store. By the way, we even bought each other christmas presents there, simultaneously.

(Day after: crawl under our huge backpacks to the bus station, swear we're going to give up that vice for the new year: 15 hrs bus ride to Las Vegas, planning to rent a car.)

Las Vegas:

Arrival at 6 am, backpack crawl to the hotel: it's 8pm, check in time at...4pm, doh! we start the NoSleepCasinoCrawl. The typical noise inside each (may it be the one roman style, the one medieval style or the circus like) is biribirubirubiribiribirubirubiru-etc. coming from the slot machines.

The Day We Rented A Car:

Managed to convince that woman to give us one, even if we're 20 with credit card+22 without. Asked for the Compact one (here cars are huge, a compact one is like a big italian car), we got for the same price a BIG one ("oh yes, we made a mistake"). I almost started to cry when they told me I actually had to drive that thing. Well, at least we can spread the content of our backpacks all over and at the same time keep breathing.

The Grand Canyon

We arrived there late and it was closed. You would ask: "closed? the grand canyon? isn't it like an enormous hole in the ground that goes for hundred and hundred of miles??" We did ask the same, but the guy only said "Eh no, no possible way to go see it until tomorrow morning". We had by then diven 1 hour in the sterrato just as like rally videogame (the woman of the rental car said:"you can go see the grand canyon, but you have to take a bus because the road is bad and you cant go with our car" but the last bus already left so...). We had to drive that back without canyon.

The "we will get a cheaper room outside las vegas"

Parhump Nevada, next town outside las vegas (1 hour drive in the desert). Turned out to only have  3 hotels/casinos. The cheapest...wasn't cheap. Slept in the car. It's nice if you wake every 2 hours to turn on the heating for a while and then go back to sleep. The supermarket had clean toilets anyway.

That was last night. Today we went to the Let's Have A Bath In These Hot Springs There On The Map (20 dollars to bath in a tub in a room), then through the Death Valley (wunderbar! but no photo could capture it's wunderbarness...) with this australian 50 years old "I drive trucks with seven rimorchi through australia"-"I saw the AC/DC 6 times live" hitch hiker that when you tell him "good luck" answers "there's no luck, it's god".

Today's learned lesson: "Please don't throw cigarette butts in the urinal, the fingers that pick them up are the same that put ice cubes in your drink"

These were the important things of last days. The rest we will tell you when we come back.

By the way, I don't know if it's known, but on the map  we always write with maniac care where we stay every night, sometimes with witty comments too (simpaticaticate).  And by clicking and clicking and searching on the counter below you also can see from where were the visitors of the blog. December is Italy 43%, USA 23% Iceland 21%. The country that wins the december contest wins free access to all the giochi senza frontiere games in 2008, so guys don't give up!

Basta minchiate via, l'yv mi si sta addormentando alla televisione, e non è mai troppo sano guardare per troppo tempo di fila la tv americana...tra un griffin e un futurama si ostinano a infilarci sempre qualche speciale sui ricercati dalla polizia e cose simili...

Baci a tutti, scusate la qualità dei post ma se ci si mette a pensare tutto quello che vi si vuole raccontare si va in blocco mentale...

buoni festeggianzi e miglior principio

Peter g