Cumulative miles driven: 126

Our USA Road Trip did not really get off to the best of starts yesterday, although this was mainly courtesy of the 'new' American Airlines (a recent merger of American Airlines and US Airways), on our second and third flights of the day. We had previously flown with British Airways from Paris to London Heathrow before joining their partners in the One World Alliance for the flight across to the US.

Given the average American is, to put it bluntly, rather large, it was surprisingly cramped on the nine hour long haul flight from the UK to Charlotte in North Carolina. Given a combination of strong headwind, delays leaving Heathrow and baggage being very slow onto the carousel we missed our booked onward flight to Jacksonville and were re-booked onto another two hours later than planned - this flight was then delayed by ninety minutes! Given our early start from Paris it was a good job that it was just a two mile drive from Jacksonville Airport to our hotel as we were both cream crackered and in need of sleep after twenty four hours of travelling.

So today is probably really the start of the Road Trip itself as it was just a short drive to reach the Florida coastline. It would have been much better beach weather had it not been grey and misty but the Atlantic Ocean is the Atlantic Ocean regardless and this marks the official start of the drive to the west coast of the USA. Our planned route is around 4,000 miles and our rented Chevrolet Sonic will hopefully not cause us any bother as we journey to the Pacific Ocean.

The day also enabled us to visit St Augustine, around 30 miles south of Jacksonville, and what an unexpected delight that turned out to be. As a former Spanish colonial town, which has been much rebuilt and restored, it was a nice place to spend a few hours wandering and was a complete contrast to Jacksonville that we visited later in the day. St Augustine is now on the 'return to' list whereas downtown Jacksonville, which seemed souless and devoid of life, definitely is not!