Friday saw a special run to OCCO day spa to buy a voucher for Doc. She has done so much for us and spent so much time running us around that we felt she deserved a bit of a pamper!! After that, Andrew and I continued on the great sneaker hunt. We went to a mall that was almost abandoned - I saw 6 people. The Foot Locker there only had Nike......and only basketball/leisure shoes. So the hunt continues...
For dinner we went to Lizards Thicket. The food was Southern Home style cooking and it was a pick a meat & vegetables type meal. Rather telling was the fact that macaroni and cheese are considered vegetables. But it was good food and plenty of it, at the usual American reasonable prices.
In the car park, I heard a woman say 'I see something out of the corner of my eye' and I felt a hand only back. She was looking at my Marvin tattoo, and she pulled up her pant leg to show me hers. It's taken me 12 years and countless thousands of miles to find some else with a Marvin tattoo. And she would have been all of 60! Her tattoo looked rather fresh, so no wonder she was happy to show it off!
After dinner we returned to Docs to chat. The usual topics of conversation came up..the differences between Australia and America, moving to South Carolina, things we have in common, moving to South Carolina.....
Saturday was brunch at IHOP. IHOP, for those not familiar with the acronym, is International House of Pancakes. I'm not too sure on the international bit, but this is the country that plays the World Series of baseball with itself. IHOPs menu is exhaustive!! So much so, I had to have extra time to make a decision. In the end I went with the country omelette and it was delicious!! So far we've had some good and some not so good food over here, but IHOP has to be high on the list of good!
To walk off the IHOP, we went to the river for a walk. To put it into context, Columbia is built next to a city, much like Adelaide, but it's there that the similarities stop. The river and canal in Columbia are stunning, and set in some seriously beautiful surroundings. And it has turtles. And alligators. We saw plenty of turtles, but thankfully, no gators!!! It was another stunning sunny day, so there were plenty of people out enjoying the sun.
After walking off some of the full feeling, Doc and I went grocery shopping for the ingredients for the next couple of dinners. Saturdays was a Mexican fiesta, and Sunday George was to impress us with his BBQ skills. I was asked to buy a bottle of Captain Morgans rum, but after seeing a large variety of flavoured vodkas, I chose to indulge. The little bottles were $1.00 each, so I bought 12. Whipped cream, wedding cake, sugar cookie, espresso, apple pie, root beer, pineapple....and the other ones I can't remember. We went back to the hotel full and happy after quesadillas, chihuahuas (the food, not the dog) and vodka!
Sunday it was back for round 2 of the food festival! George on the grill. Delicious Beef ribs, steak, grilled corn....plus Docs potato salad and coleslaw, topped off with a desert called death by chocolate. Lets just say I went to my demise quite happily!!
After dinner we gave Doc her voucher and some flowers to say thank you. She has done so much for us, and driven us everywhere we wanted to go. It's fair to say we were apprehensive flying in, since we hadn't met Doc before, only Andrew, so it felt like we had flown 12,000kms for a blind date. Doc has been my step sister for over 20 years, but the last couple of weeks we have established a sisterhood. So what she did for us, especially the DC trip was amazing. Any trip where the motto is 'so much fun you have to sign a waiver', and laughing til you cry on more than one occasion, well, you'd have to be a miserly old shit not to enjoy yourself!!
After Andrew got home from work, I drove his Mustang. Initially I was happy to stick to the side streets, but quickly decided I could handle the main roads to go get petrol. With Andrew in the passenger seat, I drove like a proper American. I was surprised at how quickly I got used to driving on the wrong side of the road. Perhaps 3 weeks of being a passenger sunk in via osmosis. Although I did feel like a learner driver again!! Aside from a slightly wide right hand turn I did ok, even the scary left hand turn across 3 lanes of traffic ok!!
Monday was bittersweet. Andrew came to spend the day with us, and after shopping for a new bag, we just mucked around. All the shopping we have done since we have been here needed to go somewhere!! We decided to make a last stop at Waffle House, thereby having had a breakfast, lunch and dinner there. Our usual server wasn't on, but the old lady who served us was delightful and funny and more than deserving of her tip!! We went back to Docs to say our final farewells to George, and the dogs Max & Momo. I quietly left a bit of my soul with the dogs to look after until I return.
New York is next. Time to tick another dozen or so things off my bucket list!!
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