Good evening, Singapore, and welcome to episode number 29 of Sleepless in Singapore. Today is August the 4th, 2024, Sunday night. My name is Julian, and for the next half an hour or so, I am going to tell you the third and potentially last part about a road trip I did with my friend Marcus in the US. This journey took us from somewhere around Jacksonville all the way along the east coast of the US up to Philadelphia. So, please make yourselves comfortable, relax, and let my voice be your guide to a restful night.

In Jacksonville, I don't remember much except for the fact that initially, I wanted to meet with a friend I made in Taiwan a couple of years back on my big trip. His nickname was Will, and we were in contact somehow. Then our schedules got mixed up a bit, and we arrived a day later. Somehow, we couldn't make it work, which I thought was very sad because I really liked the guy. But then also ever since, and that's three years now almost, I don't think I've heard from him again. Neither has he heard from me, so I'm probably just as much to blame here.

Anyway, in Jacksonville, I remember we went to a barbecue—a Brazilian barbecue, a rodizio at the Terra Gaucha Brazilian Steakhouse—which was quite nice. Aside from the nicer meats they do at the rodizio, you know, the rodizio is where the waiters and the waitresses walk around the room with swords or at least big kinds of shashliks, like huge skewers with meat on them. They just walk around, and as long as you have usually like a little sign or a green cap or something on your table that points upwards, they just come to your table. With a huge knife, they cut off a little bit of that many kilograms of meat to your plate, and then they put it back to the world rotating grill. I'm guessing that's why it's called rodizio.

They keep doing that until you turn your little placard or your little sign on the table around from green to red or from smiley face to sad face or usually it's something like that. I really enjoy these kinds of Brazilian barbecues because, A, it's a lot of nice meat usually, and B, they have my very favorite dessert, which is a pineapple that's been, I guess there's a bit of sugar and cinnamon or something. It's also on one of these swords, and then they also grill it and then they slice it off, and that is just a very, very beautiful dessert. I really like that a lot. So that's pretty much what I remember of Jacksonville—missed opportunities and a nice dinner. But sadly, that's also pretty much it.

Breakfast the next day was on our way up north along the coast in a little place called Kingsland in Georgia at a Cracker Barrel—a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store. I had not heard of that before. That's a southern US fast food chain where they serve you this sausage and sauce. I don't know if it's a breakfast place or an all-day diner. They have this very southern US typical food, quite heavy. Definitely not a good breakfast for me, who's trying to not eat too much flour and too many carbs in the morning because that always makes me crazy sleepy. So I can tell you, after that breakfast at Cracker Barrel, which was alright, Marcus had to drive for the next couple of hours.

Also, a lot of fun at this Cracker Barrel Old Country Store is that they have a whole store next to the restaurant, and you can buy funny trucker hats and, you know, like all kinds of old, I don't know how to describe that. In Germany, we probably would say "Gemmischwarenladen," where you can buy all kinds of necessities people had like 50 years ago. It's kind of interesting. I can recommend going there and checking it out.

Then the next stop was in Savannah, Georgia, and that was a super lovely place. We only stopped there, I think, for a bit. I don't think we slept there, but Savannah is a very, very nice old town on the coast of Georgia. A lot of old houses. We did a city tour with one of these tourist buses that I think is always quite fun. There is an old cinema. There are all these old brick stone houses. Yes, here I have it—we did the Old Town Trolley Savannah Tour in one of these old buses, and there was a really entertaining tour guide. The bus took us around for two hours, and we saw a lot, heard a lot. I guess I forgot a lot again about Savannah, but I remember we really enjoyed it there, even though it was just for a short time.

From there, we made our way to Litchfield—Litchfield Beach, to be precise. There, we had a house for the night at a golf club or a country club with what looked like a big artificial lake and very, very meticulously maintained lawns. Very green, very scenic, but also a bit like, in general, artificial. It felt like one of these places the—not the rich, but the wealthy Americans would go to retire. In the evening, we ate at Peron's Restaurant and Bar in Litchfield. Peron's or Peroni's, I don't know. Judging from the pictures here, I had a large Sapporo and quite a big steak and a lobster tail on top, so I'm guessing that wasn't the worst evening.

The next morning, I also remember we went to this market. On the way, we saw this old town, old-style marketplace with a corner that says "German Specialties" and "Schala and Weber." I'm not sure what that is, "The House of Quality." I do remember they had very nice sandwiches. Then we made quite some distance. I don't think we did anything in South Carolina, sadly, but in North Carolina, we went all along the coast. I don't know if you've heard of that, but there are the Outer Banks, which is this stretch of islands—very, very narrow, but very long islands on the coast of North Carolina. Starting, depending on how you look at it, somewhere down in Wilmington, I guess, and then more or less going up all the way to Virginia Beach.

Marcus and I, we had a great time at Wilmington or at Kure Beach. Kure Beach is a place I had visited before on a trip I had to do for work many years back in '14, '15, something like that. My colleague Sophie and I, we were in North Carolina in Raleigh for a business trip, and one weekend we took a car and we explored North Carolina a bit. One of the places we found and we found to be very nice was this Kure Beach and Wilmington Beach, Carolina Beach, where now, many years later, Marcus and I also enjoyed our time. It's a very relaxed, laid-back, beachy vacation home atmosphere. Again, I think this is something maybe more for the more wealthy Americans who retire here or who go here for their weekend houses and stuff like that.

Then we took a ferry. Where did we take that ferry? Well, I don't know exactly where we took that ferry, but it was somewhere on the Outer Banks, or at least what I think is the Outer Banks already. I found it—it was from Cedar Island, North Carolina, to Ocracoke, North Carolina. If you look at that on a map, it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere. There's a long road, the I-70, leading all the way out to that little island going all the way to the Cedar Island National Wildlife Refuge. Then this road just stops at the very end of the island, which is where the ferry is leaving. It took us an hour or two all in all to Ocracoke.

On that little stretch, there is pretty much nothing. There is a long island—the Ocracoke Beach. There seems to be a little fishing village on the northwestern coast. Then there's another ferry to the next little island. I realize that sounds pretty boring when I'm looking at a map and talk about it, so you go ahead and Google these names, Ocracoke and the other names, and you will see why I'm excited about it.

At night, we made it all the way up to Kitty Hawk, which is a little village on the Outer Banks. There, we stayed in a wonderful little Airbnb with a very, very nice host who gave us a beer and welcomed us into their home. I went into the ocean for a little bit—the Atlantic Ocean, that is. Then in the evening, I still have very vivid memories of that. We first went to Longboards Grill, and we had a crab because we thought this is a place where you have a crab, but neither the place nor the crab were especially nice. After dinner, Marcus and I walked around, and we went to that pier. On that pier, there was one of these gaming halls like Avalon Pier. It's called Avalon Pier. They had this arcade place, and we were shooting plastic guns, and we played these games, and we had a whole lot of fun.

Later on in the evening, we went to this bar where there was karaoke going on, and we met this semi-professional NASCAR driver who could not be more American with his mullet haircut and his trucker hat. His parents were there supporting him, and they were super nice. They were from a very different world than we are, or Marcus and I were, but still, we spent like an hour or two partying, talking, trying to understand the American culture or that part of the American culture. He was very proudly telling us of his NASCAR racing career he has, and it was pretty interesting. It was very cool to learn that. The parents told us just how proud they are. I remember that story—they told us where apparently the guy, I forgot his name, got stung by a stingray, and he almost died when he was a little kid. That's why they love him even more now.

So, yeah, that was quite an evening—very, very interesting. That was also our last day of that road trip because then the next day, we were thinking if we should do another stop or if we should see Ocean City and, or, you know, like these places that we've heard of. But we kind of also looked at the map, and we figured out we have to drive a bit more, but if we make it, we can also just make it back after two and a half weeks of road trip to King of Prussia, where Marcus is living. We decided let's drive back to King of Prussia, let's spend another day or two or maybe even three before I fly back at his home, and that's what we did.

The drive home was—well, we didn't go for the scenic way, we just went for the fastest way, so there's nothing special to report about that. But before I conclude this whole story about that road trip after three episodes, I want to mention two things. Actually, maybe there is no point in mentioning it, but I’ll mention it anyway. For the breakfast the next day, we went to a place—I cannot even find the name anymore—at a place at the Chesterbrook Village Shopping Center, and they had what I think was the best pastrami sandwich I ever had. The Chesterbrook Shopping Center, that is just a little outside of King of Prussia, or maybe even still is in King of Prussia. It's hard to tell which are the city borders of King of Prussia, but anyway, that was so memorable that I still think about it sometimes. I talked to Marcus a year later, and we wanted to go back there before the next road trip we did the year after, and they had closed down, and we both were really sad.

The other thing—Marcus and I went to, I think that's a Walmart or a Costco, and we bought the biggest chunk of meat I had ever seen. It was a huge brisket, and we threw that on Marcus's smoker. Marcus got this pellet smoker, and we left it on there for the whole night or even longer, I don't know. Then the next day, we had that brisket, and man, was that good. Marcus absolutely nailed it. I'm looking at a picture here. It's so juicy, and I mean, the homemade stuff always tastes better, but homemade or not, again, this was maybe one of the best briskets I had eaten until then.

Also, before I left, because we had a couple of days still before my flight home, we went to the Gettysburg National Military Park, which is, as the name suggests, a national park but at the same time a museum. Again, it's one of those where you can drive through, and this is really a big one, so you can spend hours there sitting in your car, driving around from these different hills where the battles happened to the monuments and to all these statues and all that stuff they put there. So that was very interesting, and again, also a very interesting way to travel or to define a museum. You don't walk into a building and look at some things that are exhibited there; you drive around. You look at the whole thing, and everything got just a whole different dimension.

On the way back, we also went to Amish Village and to Intercourse, which is a very Amish village. We had a look at how the Amish people live—also quite interesting. Then I can see we went back to get that pastrami sandwich again on the next day. Finally, on August 20th, I was leaving from JFK Terminal 4, where I actually took a taxi to because it was in the morning, kind of the only option and also kind of the cheapest option to the airport. So I took a taxi there, and then I left from JFK for another 19-hour flight or actually 18-hour, 40-minute flight to Singapore.

Luckily, I did not have any annoying people next to me. Actually, I didn't have anyone next to me, so I had a quite comfortable flight home, even though it was only in premium economy. Then finally, two days later, because of the very long flight and the way I crossed the date line in this direction, I arrived in Singapore and was already getting ready for the next trip that I am going to tell you all about in another episode.