Day 20 – Cincinnati - Covington

I had taken everything out of the car last night and bought up to the room at sort out this morning when I woke up. As I am moving into the Canvention hotel today before I take back the rental car back to the depot at the airport.

I had also to take down the tent I had airing in the bathroom; it is still not dry so I will need to string it out again today. Everything packed quite well into all my bags so I loaded up the car and set the GPS to find a Post Office so I could get some postal boxes to pack items I will have collected before leaving the USA.

I drove over to the Covington Marriott and pulled into the concierge to unload the car. I had requested an early check in at the hotel when I booked the accommodation so I went up to reception and was given a room on the third level. The hotel has an atrium going up the centre of the whole hotel and the rooms are around the outside with the corridor opening onto the atrium side.

I put my luggage into the room and went back down to the car. I still had 90 minutes before the car was due back and it was only 25 minutes to the airport so I drove around the local area to get some bearings and saw a Irish Pub called Molly Malone's, I went in and checked that they had t-shirts with a Guinness pint on them so I bought one for $15. They also had some Guinness coasters from last year’s Soccer World Cup sitting on the bar. I had never seen them so I picked up all I could see even thought they had been well used.

After this I went to the Rental company and dropped the car off before going to the airport and getting a taxi back to the hotel. I walked along the road from the hotel and found a diner and bought some lunch before going back to the hotel and re-hung the tent up to hopefully dry it out properly tonight.

I also ran into my first collectors of the Canvention. Jim Friesen is a good friend from previous shows and collects One Can One Country. This means he collects cans from worldwide and tries to get a can from each country that has produced cans. Jim also had a parcel for me that I had won on eBay but the seller would not send to Australia so Jim generously offered to hold it for me until the show.

After this I ran into Ed and Larry form Canada. These two blokes have also become good friends over the four shows I have been to and we sat talking for quite awhile. Next I ran into Barry & Leanne my friends from home. (Barry went with me to Ireland earlier this year.)

They have been in the USA for two weeks and we have been corresponding via text messaging. Leanne had their hire car until tomorrow so we went out for a while to Newport on the Levee. It is a building just up river from Covington that is set up over 4 levels with a group of shops, movie cinemas, galleries and bars. We went to a bar and sat outside looking over the river towards Cincinnati. We had a meal whilst there and enjoyed the sunny day catching up on what we had been doing for the last few weeks.

From there we went back to the hotel and I caught up with a lot more collectors who are starting to arrive from all over the USA.

We spent a lot of time catching up with them all before I headed off to my room about midnight to get some rest.