Homeward Bound

Day 22 - August 18th

After 21 nights, 12 hotels and 2000 miles on the road we'd finally come to the end of our trip. Our flight wasn't until the afternoon so we filled the morning with some tourist shopping including trips to Bloomingdale's and Macy's (which is spread over 10 floors and contains a McDonalds and not one but two Starbucks) before returning to the hotel to get our bags and catch the shuttle bus to the airport - then home. So long America!

The Last Day

Day 21 - August 17th

We grabbed breakfast from a popular deli called Zabar's that we found recommended in the guidebook and then took our bagel, muffin and coffees into Central Park where we sat on a park bench and watched the world go by for a while. We walked to the other side of the park (which was much closer than I'd expected) and to the Guggenheim, our last art museum of the trip. The building itself is impressive and the main photography based exhibition as well as the permanent galleries were well presented.

From there we got the Subway down to Greenwich Village

and went to the bistro we'd intended to visit on the second night of the trip, which feels like a lifetime ago now. We then visited the High Line park, a disused section of raised railroad track that runs above several blocks on the west side of Manhattan. It's a great use of a disused space and makes for a relaxing walk.

From there we walked around some more of Greenwich Village and did a bit of shopping at some of the independent shops in the area, including one called 'The Little Lebowski' that specialises in merchandise related to the movie 'The Big Lebowski' - the owner even wears pyjamas and a dressing gown as a homage to The Dude. Down the same street we found three 24-hour chess shops, complete with tables outside where you could pay a couple of dollars to use their chess boards for an hour. Quite why anyone needs one chess shop in the middle of the night, let alone three, is somewhat of a mystery but strange little niche stores like this are part of the charm of New York.

For our last night we went to a restaurant called The Terrace in the Sky, on the top floor of an apartment building in the uptown area of Manhattan. We got there around sunset and the views of the city were amazing, especially from the outdoor terrace that looks straight across to downtown. Foolishly I hadn't taken my camera so you'll have to take my word for it.

The Bright Lights of Times Square

Day 20 - August 16th

Breakfast today came in the shape of a restaurant called Big Daddy (slogan "Who's your daddy?") so as you can imagine the portion sizes were typically American - I managed just about half my pancake stack. After that we got the subway down to Times Square, another one of New York's must-see sites from where we strolled past various other landmark buildings, ending up at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). This had some great exhibits and kept us entertained for a couple of hours although we both came away underwhelmed by the special Matisse exhbition which just focussed on a couple of years off his work - the exhibit description described this period as 'often overlooked' which perhaps should have read 'best overlooked'.

Rather than grab lunch at this point we went to see a movie, and stuffed our faces with popcorn and nachos instead. The film we chose was The Expendables, a ridiculous 80s style action movie directed by Sylvester Stallone and the perfect popcorn movie. It was showing in RPX, which seems to be a custom alternative to IMAX developed by Regal Cinemas - I've no idea what the technical details were but both the picture and a sound were amazing. The audience cheered whenever any action occured (i.e. most of the way through) and laughed out loud at even the weakest one-liners and on the way out one guy announced to us 'That film was AWESOME'. I'm not sure I'd go that far but it was deinitely entertaining.

It was pouring with rain outside so we ran to the subway, but no sooner had we swiped our metrocards and gone through the gate than I realised I no longer had my glasses. We retraced our steps back to the movie theatre (still in the pouring rain, Amy wasn't impressed) and eventually found them under the chair in front of where we'd been sat. Phew! Luckily for me the relief at finding the glasses made Amy forget that she was soaking wet and we'd wasted two subway tickets. Phew again!

After a brief rest back at the hotel we finished the day with dinner at a nice but unremarkable restaurant near the hotel.

Road Trip Done

Day 19 - August 15th

The day started groggily, we'd been kept awake by the guests in the room next to ours talking and taking photos until 2am. The rooms had an adjoining door which had a noticeable gap underneath, enough that we could see the flashes from their camera and hear enough of their conversation to know what kind of photos they were taking.

We had breakfast at the B&B and went for another walk around Philadelphia to see some more sites, both feeling tired and grumpy (although I think I was grumpiest). We then collected the car and drove slightly out of town to the Eastern State Penitentiary, one of the oldest prisons in the country. It was an eerie place and there was an interesting audio tour narrated by Steve Buscemi, cool!

Today was the end of our road trip so we embarked on the short drive from Philadelpia back to New York to drop the car off. According to the sat-nav the trip should only have taken about 90 minutes but the reality was well over 3 hours - just queueing to get through the final tunnel into Manhattan took over an hour, and by the time we dropped the car off I was quite happy to see the back of it.

We checked into our hotel up on 103rd street (quite a way from downtown but handily right next to a subway station), freshened up and then headed out to a jazz club called Smoke just a block away on 104th street where we had a great evening listening to live jazz - the food and cocktails were pretty good too.

Philly

Day 18 - August 14th

We checked out of our hotel and went for breakfast at a cupcake/coffee shop in the hip-and-trendy Georgetown area of Washington, then drove over to Arlington Cemetery where we saw JFK's grave and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier memorial. It's a huge cemetery with rows of white gravestones, very reminiscent of the second world war graveyards in northern France.

Our next stop was Philadelphia, which ended up taking a lot longer to reach than expected (partly due to an accident on the freeway and partly due to some idiotic instructions from the sat-nav) so by the time we'd arrived and checked into the B&B it was early evening.

We strolled into the historic downtown area where we were able to see the famous Liberty Bell and have a tour of the Independence Hall where the declaration of independence and the constitution were written and signed. After that we had dinner at a restaurant called Buddhakhan, which claimed to serve 'asian fusion' but wich seemed to me like it just sold Japanese food - that was fine though, we both like Japanese food. The most memorable feature of the restaurant was the 10ft high gold buddha statue (which somehow looked much classier than it sounds).

Smithsonian

Day 17 - August 13th

Our one full day in Washington was packed with museum visits and sightseeing along the national mall.

We started with the Capitol building, which you can't get very close to now due to security, then moved on to the National Gallery of Art. There are two wings, one containing the old classics and the other housing the more modern art. The modern art was definitely the more interesting - I'm sure the renaissance is important but there are only so many pictures of cherubs and crucifixions I can look at before losing interest.

The next museum stop was the Holocaust Museum, this was much bigger than we expected and ended up taking 3 hours to get round. Even Amy managed to learn something and she's a trained up member of the Holocaust Education Trust.

After the holocaust museum we visited the Washington Monument (the big obelisk), the Lincoln Memorial (the one with the giant statue of him sitting in a chair) and the various war memorials, then back to the Natural History Museum.

We only had an hour there but as we'd already been to the New York Natural History Museum we skipped all the similar exhibits and spent most of the time looking at the huge diamonds and other precious stones that include some of the largest in the world.

We finished the day with dinner at a cajun restaurant near our hotel.

The Capitol

Day 16 - August 12th

We started the day with a room service breakfast, it seemed rude not to make use of the suite and it's not every day you get to sit around in a plush bathrobe in your hotel suite, reading the newspaper (and pretending to be Donald Trump). After that we took a walk along the boardwalk which turned out to be much less exciting in daylight, particularly as it had started to rain. For a minute I thought I might be in Blackpool.

We then hit the road again, skirting round Philadelphia for a second time and heading on down to Washington DC. As we were driving in we drove past a row of boarded up houses just a couple of blocks from our hotel and started to wonder what the neighbourhood was like, but Washington seems to be one of those odd American cities that switches from destitute to grandiose in the blink of an eye and luckily our hotel fell in the grandoise section. Our room wasn't quite as plush as the last suite but still had a separate lounge area with sofa so much plusher than most of the hotels we've stayed at.

One great thing about Washington is that most of the museums are free and in summer are open until 7.30pm. Since we only have two nights in the city we took advantage of this and got the American History Museum done on this first evening. There were loads of unique artifacts including the original 'star spangled banner' (which measures a huge 36 x 30 ft) some of Abraham Lincoln's personal effects and much more besides.

Upon leaving the museum we found that the rain had followed us to Washington so we just dashed to the nearest bar - although on entering we discovered that smoking in bars is still legal in Washington so then we dashed to the nearest affordable looking restaurant instead.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

Day 15 - August 11th

We had a long drive down to Atlantic City today so left the hotel early and headed for the US border at Niagara Falls. Before we crossed the border we'd intended to stop and view the falls from the Canadian side but the parking was either $20 or involved a lengthy park-and-ride so we skipped it and went straight over the border to the US, where

there was a $10 car park right next to the falls. We started with the Lady of the Mist boat tour which goes close to the bottom of the waterfall. We were given rainproof ponchos to wear and when we got close it was clear why, even though we were probably never closer than 50-100m from the waterfall it was like being in a torrential rainstorm - we couldn't really see anything up that close but it was good fun and the views are still very dramatic when you get a bit further away. Next up we walked over the bridge to the small island that separates the two main halves of the falls (the American Falls and Horseshoe Falls) where there's another attraction called Cave of the Winds. This time we had to wear not just a poncho but sandals too, and with good reason. Once we were kitted out we walked out onto the decking which takes you right up to part of the waterfall, including standing under the edge of it. It was only really a splash compared to the main waterfall but still felt like being pelted with stones and gives a real sense of how powerful the waterfall is.

Coincidentally, as we were leaving we bumped into Tom Adams, who used to work at the same company as me. He was doing a similar road trip to us but in the opposite order. It's a small world.

So, soaking wet we got back into the car and headed for Atlantic City - an 8 hour drive through the states of New York and Pennsylvania. Despite being smaller and more densely populated than the west these states are still vast, with an amazing amount of greenery. Pennsylvania in particular seemed to be nothing but dense forest all the way to Philadelphia (Which the sat-nav took us straight through the middle of, luckily after rush hour had finished).

We approached Atlantic City about 9pm, it's not as big as Las Vegas but still looks the part at night with flashing neon signs and giant billboards adorning the hotels. We checked into the Trump Taj Mahal, one of the biggest casinos and with it being midweek we were lucky enough to be given a free room upgrade. And what an upgrade it was - the suite had a lounge with sofa, armchairs, dining table and a huge flatscreen TV, and another big TV arm chair and writing desk in the bedroom for good measure, and the bathroom had two sinks, a huge shower and a separate jacuzzi. I thought the room at the Trapp Lodge had been big but this was at least twice the size!

It was pretty late by the time we'd checked in and explored the room so we had a quick dinner at the casino's steak house then hit the sack.

Museums, Museums, Museums

Day 14 - August 10th

No driving today, instead a full day of sightseeing. We walked up to the Royal Ontario Museum first, we hadn't realised but the touring Terracotto Army exhibition was currently there - we'd missed it when it was at the British Museum so that was a bonus. There were loads of other interesting exhibits at the museum too so that took all morning. After that came the shoe museum (Amy's choice if you hadn't guessed) which was more interesting than I expected - they had a history of shoes all the way back to early human history and covering many different cultures, and also famous shoes including some by Michael Schumacher, Pablo Picasso, Marilyn Monroe and Elton John (and a pair of Napoleon's socks!).

We had a late lunch at a place called Kim Moon Bakery in chinatown, we were the only westerners in there and the menu was only tenuously translated into English but we managed to avoid ordering the chicken's feet and everything we had was delicious - and the whole meal cost us $9, ace.

After lunch we visited the Art Gallery of Toronto, which was again excellent. The building was designed by Frank Gehry and while it looks very cool it's not easy to navigate, particularly when you're in a hurry - we only had 90 minutes before closing time so some of the exhibits we pretty much ran through (sometimes twice due to the confusing layout).

We had a drink in the hotel bar, then dinner at a nearby Ethiopian restaurant. I'd never had Ethiopian before so I wasn't sure what to expect - it turns out to be quite like moroccon and other middle-eastern/african foods. We had a 'Misto Misto' (mixture of everything) which consisted of lots of little dishes served on a great big pancake-like-thing, you tear bits off the pancake-like-thing as you go along. The food was all delicious although very spicy!

Toronto Toe Woe

Day 13 - August 9th

We'd initially considered spending some of the morning in Montreal but after the experiences of the day before it really didn't seem appealling so we made an early start for Toronto instead. This was the longest journey yet, clocking in at

nearly 400 miles but was highway all the way so it only took a manageable 6 hours. On the way we stopped at Tim Hortons for timbits (mini-donuts). I'm fairly sure there's a law that you can't visit Canada without going to Tim Hortons - Canadians certainly seem keen, there are even more of them here than Starbucks or McDonalds and you can even get an iPhone app to locate the nearest one (there was a whole segment on the news about it!).

Anyway, with our sweet tooth satisfied we arrived in Toronto in the mid-afternoon. We'd booked a table at the CN Tower restaurant (it's a very touristy thing to do but buying a main course gets you free access to the tower, which normally costs $27 dollars per-person, so it's actually not a bad deal) so the plan was to walk into downtown along the lakefront before dinner. However, when we left our room we noticed that the rain had followed us from Montreal so we got a drink in the hotel bar and watched people rushing around in the downpour, getting slowly wetter (and many of their clothes quite see-through, crikey!).

Once the storm had passed we started on our walk, which was much less graffiti/litter/tramp-ridden than the day before. The only problem came in the shape of Amy's chosen shoes, which were clearly not the same shape as her feet and by half way had resulted in at least 2 bleeding toes (why do women do this to themselves?). Eventually though we walked/hobbled to the tower and got the elevator up to the 115th floor for dinner.

The restuarant rotates every 72 minutes which is slow enough that you wouldn't notice, except for the fact that the windows don't rotate and instead travel past at about one pane a minute. It's a slightly disconcerting effect but the views were stunning enough that it didn't matter. We were lucky that the weather had cleared so we could actually see a decent distance - I'm not sure I'd have wanted to be in the tower during the earlier lightning storm either. The food was also of a pleasingly high standard and hailing a cab at the end of the evening was so easy that we accidentally hailed two, oops!

Parlais vous Anglais?

Day 12 - August 8th

Another bright sunny morning in Vermont. We had breakfast at the Trapp Lodge (American sized portions again... seriously, who eats 4 thick, plate-sized pancakes?) and a walk round the beautiful gardens then back in the car for the next leg of our journey, into Canada. At this point all the speed limits switch to km/h, all the road signs go French and the number of roundabouts goes up noticeably (we saw a few around Boston and Vermont, but not many). Also, our sat-nav only does the USA so we had to resort to manual-nav. Despite these new challenges and some road closures due to Traveux (roadworks) we found the hotel in Montreal without too much trouble.

Our initial impression of the city wasn't great - the first thing we saw upon leaving the car park was someone sitting in a boarded up doorway making a crack-pipe out of a coke can, nice. The next hassle was getting some Canadian cash - we hunted round a nearby shopping area for minutes before eventually finding an ATM which didn't take Visa cards, the next two machines we found were out of order and the fourth finally worked, but only with one of my two Visa cards and would only let us take a maximum of $100 (about £65) which is a bit of a pain when the machines charges $3 per transaction. We then walked to the Old Montreal district (the main tourist hotspot), this was only 3 blocks from our hotel but on the way we encountered more graffiti, litter and people sleeping rough than we had during several days in Boston and New York.

Old Montreal and the harbour front were significantly nicer but still had an air of being out-and-out tourist traps and lacked any real atmosphere. Still, tourists is what we are - so we did about the most touristy thing we could and booked onto a dinner cruise. By the time we'd been back to the hotel to change it had started raining heavily and we feared the cruise curse might have struck again. Luckily, unlike Acadia it wasn't foggy or windy so the cruise went ahead - and actually, during a rainstorm, being in what is effectively a glass bubble was probably the best place we could have been, the views weren't bad at all (the same couldn't be said for the walk back to the hotel - the tramps seem to have multiplied and spread even into the tourist areas, and of course they were more drunk).

Ben & Jerry and The Trapps

Day 11 - August 7th

We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at the hotel and a short walk around Montpelier to make sure we hadn't missed anything (we found a fountain and a soccer pitch) and then said goodbye to Montpelier and home to the Ben & Jerry's factory where we had a short guided tour, tasted a free sample and checked out the flavour graveyard where all the discontinued ice cream flavours go to die.

From there we drove to Stowe, a thriving ski resort in winter and also a popular summer holiday location. We took a walk along the recreation path (a scenic spot that you can't drive round? this isn't the American way!) then drove a couple of miles further up the mountain to the most expensive hotel of our holiday, the Trapp Family Lodge.

It's an alpine style lodge built by the Trapp family after they fled from nazi Germany in 1942 and has dramatic views of the mountains, Maria Von Trapp (whose life The Sound Of Music is based on) lived here for many years and is buried in the grounds. We spent the afternoon making the most of the swimming pool and spa, and just sitting on our balcony taking in the scenery - a relaxing change of pace after some of the hectic sightseeing we've been doing. We also had dinner in the lodge, where they served typically Austrian fare (wienerschnitzel, sachertorte, etc.) in typically American sized portions, and locally brewed Trapp Beer and Trapp Wine which were both very tasty.

Across New England

Day 10 - August 6th

Overnight the weather had cleared up so we grabbed some muffins and juice from the deli across the road and made an early trip back up to Cadillac Mountain.

It was well worth the return trip as the views were stunning, very different to the previous day when we'd struggled to even find our car in the car park amongst all the fog.

Satisfied that we'd now seen the views that Acadia had to offer we started our journey to Montpelier, some 300 miles west in Vermont. The sat-nav tried to send us off down the interstate but we overruled it and set off along Highway 2 instead, this was a shorter but slower route which took us through many of New England's small towns and villages and made for a much more interesting drive than simply blasting down a huge freeway. To help pass the time we decided to count stars-and-stripes flags. After about half an hour we'd counted 200 so we gave up. I'm pretty sure if we'd attempted to count Union Jack flags back home we'd have seen about 2.

The highway also took us past Mount Washington - I'd read stories of how erratic the weather on the mountain can be (it holds the record for the fastest recorded wind speed on the Earth's surface at 231mph) and true to form, as we approached the wind picked up, the temperate drop by 10 degrees and the previously blue sky turned to ominously dark clouds. As we drove through the mountain pass there was a torrential downpour but half an hour later the sky was back to bright blue again - Mount Washington really does have its own crazy microclimate, even though it's only 6,200ft high (by comparison when we visited Yellowstone even the scenic highway we drove along goes up to 11,000ft and the weather there is mostly fine).

We arrived in Montpelier in the early evening. Our hotel is in a beautiful building dating back to 1828, not as old as some of the buildings on the East coast but pretty old by Vermont standards (westerners didn't settle here for a long time after colonizing the coast). Montpelier is a sleepy little town, despite being the state capital the population is only about 8000 and it didn't take us long to see the sights - the state house and er... yeah, it was pretty much just the state house. One of the highlights of the town is the Main St Grill and Bar which is staffed by students from the New England Culinary College - which means you get an interesting menu for a pretty good price. Vermont has some slightly odd alcohol licensing laws, for example we were allowed to take our unfinished bottle of wine home from the restaurant but only after the proprieter of the restaurant had marked a line on the side of the bottle and signed it, so that if the police stopped us we could prove we hadn't been drinking in the street.

A Grey Day In Maine

Day 9 - August 5th

The day started humid and hazy. We drove over to Bar Harbor, the main town on the island, where we had breakfast at Cafe This Way and then bought tickets for a sunset nature cruise around the bay. We also stopped off at Radioshack to get a US plug adaptor (we managed to leave the last one in our hotel in Boston, doh!) and an audio cable to plug the iPod into the car stereo. We'd been using an FM transmitter but there are so many radio stations in the US that we had to retune it every few miles to avoid interference.
We left Bar Harbor and headed to the Acadia Park Visitor Centre where we bought a park pass and then started on the Park Loop Road which takes you round the park. This seems to be how all American parks work, you just drive round stopping at any scenic bits to take a few photos and then hop straight back in the car, you can hire bikes but since we were only in the park for one day we took the convenient option (along with about 95% of the other visitors, we only saw a handful of cyclists).

At the first stop were some park rangers with telescopes which it turned out were trained on a pair of Peregrine Falcons perched on the clifftop - usually you can walk up to the cliff but during the nesting season the whole area is off limits so after a brief look we carried on. The next stop was at a vantage point overlooking the bay, although by this time the hazy was turning to fog and we could barely see any of the islands. There was a short path down to the rocky beach and by the time we'd walked down and had a short look around it started to rain - we were glad we hadn't hired bikes then.

We stopped off at a couple more beauty spots but it was raining hard so we didn't stray far from the car, and soon reached Jordan's Pond, the site of the only restaurant in the park, where we'd planned to get some lunch. Unfortunately due to the rain everyone else had the same idea and there was a queue just to get into the car park, let alone get inside and get food. So we carried on to the next attraction - Cadillac Mountain. This is apparently the highest point on the Atlantic Coast north of Rio de Janerio standing at around 1500 feet above sea level - not particularly high but on a grey day like today it was high enough that we'd disappeared into the clouds. There's a road right to the top and by the time we got there visibility was down to a few metres. Instead of dramatic views of the park all we got was a wall of grey.

From there we headed back to Southwest Harbor where we did a bit of shopping and had a late lunch at our hotel, then returned to Bar Harbor for our cruise - which perhaps unsurprisingly had been cancelled. As we queued for a refund we overheard the people in front saying that their cruise had gone out in the afternoon but due to the weather they'd seen nothing and almost everyone on board had been sick.

We finished the day with a bit more shopping and dinner at Maggie's Restaurant before returning to our hotel, although we did then nip back out to get takeaway blueberry pie from the shop across the road... mmm, pie.

Farewall Massachusetts, Hello Maine

Day 8 - August 4th

We left Boston early and drove North to our first stop at

Ogunquit in Maine, passing through about 20 miles of New Hampshire on the way. So many of the towns round here have familiar names, presumably the settlers just named them after their old home towns. So far we've passed Warwick, Coventry, Salisbury, Belfast, Amesbery, Newbury, Portsmouth, York, Dover, Scarborough... and that's just the ones without 'New' stuck on the front. New England is certainly a fitting name for the area.

Anyway, back to Ogunquit, which I'm pretty sure isn't named after an English town. It's a beautiful seaside town with a long sandy beach one one side and cliff-top walk on the other. We took a short stroll along the cliffs, went for a paddle in the sea and had lunch (taking full

advantage of the huge array of seafood on offer) before heading north again. The next stop was Freeport - a collection of outlet stores for big brands like Gap, Timberland, etc. It's a bit like Bicester Village except weirdly it's an real town rather than a purpose built mall - quite how that happened is a mystery but it must be convenient for the residents to be surrounded by discount stores.

From Freeport it was another 3 hours drive up to Acadia park on Mount Desert island. We arrived in the early evening, crossing the bridge onto the island and then driving the last few miles to South West Harbor down a winding road with the sun low in the sky, it really was beautiful. We checked into our hotel in the centre of the small town and strolled past large houses in their beautifully kept gardens, and marina filled with huge yachts (this is clearly an area awash with money) to a restaurant called Beal's Lobster Pier down on the harbor front. We picked out our lobster from the tank and a bottle of wine from the fridge (you know it's a classy joint when you pick your own wine from the fridge) which we drank from plastic cups while our dinner was boiled alive.

Needless to say the lobster was delicious, as was the wine, unfortunately as soon as the sun set the mosquitoes descended - we only sat there for five minutes after we spotted the first one but in that time Amy managed to pick up at least 20 bites and I managed to get bitten several times on my hand and even on my thigh, despite wearing trousers. Those mosquitoes meant business! On the way back to hotel a couple of deer bounded across the road, straight through someone's garden and off into the trees behind.

Salem - It's a bit like Whitby

Day 7 - August 3rd

This morning we drove from Boston to Salem, about 10 miles away. We had breakfast at Salem Diner, built in the 1940s to resemble a futuristic train (all metal and curves) and pretty much unchanged since then. After that we visited the Peabody Essex Museum - a fantastic collection of native american, Japanese, Chinese and Indian artifacts mainly related to the history of trade with the Europe. The only downside was that the museum had nothing to do with Salem. The rest of Salem was disappointingly tacky and rundown, with most of the attractions focussing on witchcraft and ignoring the small historical detail that there never actually were any witches and actually 16 innocent people were murdered purely as the result of public hysteria. The abundance of shops selling 'healing

crystals', psychic readings and other tawdry nonsense draws a sizeable number of goths which made the place feel a lot like Whitby in Yorkshire (look up Whitby Abbey if you've not been there) but more run down, a bit like Scarborough infact :)

In the afternoon we returned to Boston and visited the Harvard campus and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) museum. For an ivy league university Harvard was a bit underwhelming - the scale and granduer are nothing compared to Stanford in California or even Oxford and Cambridge back home.

The MIT museum on the other hand easily lived up to our expectations, featuring a collection of robots, strange mechanical art installations and some cool holograms - it had a superbly nerdy gift shop too where I overheard two boys arguing about how a spherical die worked. Nerds!

From MIT we walked across the river to the Back Bay area, stopped off at a guidebook recommended 'Dive Bar' for a beer and then went up the Prudential Tower, the second tallest building in Boston after the John Hancock Tower (which doesn't have a public gallery). You get a really good view of the city including a birds-eye view of Fenway Park where we could see the Red Sox players warming up for the second game in the series against the Indians. We had dinner in an interesting restaurant which was decorated with record covers and also had an Elvis shrine and christmas tree in the corner... hmmm!

We finished the evening with a drink in the original Cheers bar. Contrary to the Cheers theme tune they didn't know our names but we enjoyed the experience anyway. The drinks measures were huge, I had a whisky and it was easily a double shot, probably more. Possibly why it cost me $10!

Duck Tour & Red Sox

Day 6 - August 2nd

We'd booked a 9am duck tour yesterday so we rose early, grabbed the complimentary breakfast at the hotel (in a way I was glad just to have a croissant and a coffee) then walked up to the tour start. All the tour guides/drivers have their own 'wacky' bio in the brochure and ours was no exception. He told us his name was Jumping Jim, a nickname he got because he used to be a base-jumper until one day when he accidentally landed on a police patrol car. I've no idea if any of that was

true but he was certainly a character and insisted on shouting 'quack quack' at passers by whenever he got the chance - it was a bit like being stuck in a bus driven by Timmy Mallett. Nevertheless the tour itself was really interesting and we learnt a lot about Boston's 380 year history.

The tour dropped us back outside the Museum of Science so that was next on our holiday hitlist. Even Amy, who is notoriously apathetic about all things science, enjoyed herself - possibly because of all the interactive exhibits (which were aimed at kids but don't tell her that ;). My favourite bits were the live electricity show which included some impressively bright/loud indoor lightning, and a cloud chamber (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber) which lets you watch the trails of alpha and beta radiation. I could have sat and watched that for hours.

We grabbed lunch from a take-away pizza place in little Italy (we had to queue for 40 m

inutes, usually a good sign of quality) which we ate in one of Boston's many parks, then followed that up with some pastries from a popular little italy cake shop.

After a visit to the market to do a bit of shopping, and a short walk round some of the heritage sights of Boston, we headed back to the hotel to freshen up ready for our evening's activity - watching the Red Sox play baseball at Fenway Park. The ground was just a short subway ride from our hotel and we arrived in plenty of time for the match. Time that we filled by purchasing a signed baseball then ordering hot dogs, popcorn, beer and lemonade. Pretty much all the bases covered (if you'll excuse the pun). We also purchased a programme which came with a pencil for filling in the scores - fine except that neither of us really understood the scoring system. That didn't really matter though, the atmosphere was great and the junk food kept coming so we had an enjoyable evening despite the Red Sox narrowly losing (at least I think that's what happened).

Boston Bound

Day 5 - August 1st

There were some new B&B guests at breakfast this morning; a pair of botanists, one from Austria and one from New York state. The New Yorker seemed surprised that as Brits we'd never been to Kew gardens and weren't keen gardeners, and suggested that we might infact be terrorists. A botanist's view of Britain is apparently rather different to reality.

After breakfast we left Providence and drove up to Boston. The journey was just an hour, so by midday we'd already parked up - despite a slight sat-nav confusion (it doesn't like Boston's freeway tunnels) that resulted in a couple of extra laps of the downtown one way system.

We stopped in a cafe to plan the rest of our day, then went on one of the swan boats that float around on the lake in the park. I'm not sure who's idea the boats were, to me they just seemed like oversized pedalos and since the lake really isn't very big it was all a bit odd.

They've been running for over a century though so it's clearly a popular attraction.

We had lunch at a seafood restaurant in the area known as Boston's Little Italy, remembering to order appetizer sized portions but still leaving stuffed with our plates only half emptied.

After that the plan was to check out one of the duck tours (like the usual bus tours, but on old WWII amphibious vehicles so part of the tour is on the river) but they were booked up for the day so instead we booked one for tomorrow morning and went for a stroll round china town and some other areas of downtown. Boston has a really nice feel about it - it's nowhere near as hectic as New York and it's much greener and cleaner, but unlike Providence it's not dead either. And there's plenty of history and architectural variety.

In the evening we visited the Oak Bar, situated in the ultra-posh Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel

(which counts among it's past guests every president in the last 100 years, various royal families and plenty of film stars). The bar is as fancy as you'd expect but drinks weren't outrageous - $10 (7 pounds) for a cocktail is hardly unreasonable when it comes with free bar snacks and the waiters wear bow ties.

We had dinner as a slightly less upmarket, but still delicious, middle-eastern restaurant where true to form we ordered way more food than we could possibly have eaten. Their 'set menu for 2' should really be called 'set menu for 4-6', yet it still only cost $15 each. Bargain.

Providence

Day 4 - 31st July

The day started with breakfast at the B&B and more Warwickshire gossip, then back into downtown Providence which was slightly livelier than the evening before. We looked round some of the sites, including the oldest First Baptist church in America, dating back nearly 400 years (which in American history terms is practically the dawn of time). There are a fair number of boarded up shops in downtown, including some major fast food chains and retailers, but the mega-mall on the edge of town seemed unaffected. We had Johnn

y Rockett burgers in the food hall (and one regular portion of fries which we couldn't finish between us) then left the mall and visited the RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) museum. This had quite a mix of exhibits from the traditional through to the ultra-modern and ultra-weird. Quite a few famous artists were represented including Picasso, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol and Tracy Emin.

We went for dinner at a place called Red Stripe near the

B&B, so called because most of the food was cooked using Red Stripe beer. We foolishly ordered appetizers and mains, and of course by half way through the appetizers we were full again.

At sunset approached we headed to downtown for a regular event they call Waterfire. This consists of setting fire to bundles of wood placed along the river while an orchestra plays in the main square. It certainly looks very pretty although after half an hour one flaming pile of wood starts to look a lot like the next. Judging by the huge crowds and the big cheer that went up when the fires were lit, this is about the most exciting thing that happens in Providence.

Let's Hit The Road

Day 3 - July 30th

Today was the day we'd start the road trip, but we began it with a stroll around midtown Manhattan to find somewhere for breakfast. Predictably we ended up in Starbucks, but less predictably we also ended up right next to the Empire State Building. So, after breakfast we took the $20 elevator j

ourney up to the 86th floor, past yet another security check although early enough in the day to avoid queues. The view is pretty spectacular and makes you realise just how huge New York is. Apart from the coastline there's nothing but city as far as the eye can see.

With another tourist attraction ticked off our list we headed back to our hotel, checked out and then hailed a taxi to take us to the Hertz car rental on 13th street. Collecting the car was straightforward but then we had a minor panic as the sat-nav I'd borrowed from work refused to pick up our location and stayed resolutely locked on San Francisco airport. We hadn't bothered with a road atlas but our New York guidebook showed roughly where the entrance to the I-95 freeway was, so we headed off into the New York traffic hoping that we'd figure it out along the way. Amy's directions were spot on but we still breathed a sigh of relief when we got out of down-town and the sat-nav sprung to life. It turns out it just doesn't like all the skyscrapers.

Our first stop was Mystic, a seaside town in Conneticut, a

couple of hours north of New York. We ate lunch at Mystic Pizza, the restaurant where the film of the same name was set, and once again we made the mistake of ordering way too much food - two small pizzas when one between us would have been plenty, American portions strike again! After lunch we went to nearby Mystic Aquarium where I annoyed Amy by taking dozens of photos. The highlight of the visit was the wide variety of jellyfish, the penguins and a the Beluga whales (which are small by whale standards but still huge by any other measure).

From Mystic it was another hour to our B&B, located in leafy suburb of Providence. It's a large, century old house filled with flowery rugs and wallpaper and antique furniture and it felt like we'd travelled a million miles from our pokey, noisy New York hotel room.

When we arrived the cleaner hadn't quite finished, so we sat and had a cup of tea with the B&B owner, who grew up in Warwickshire, and a fellow guest from Toronto who'd already been at the B&B a few days. Once our room was ready we freshened up and then strolled into downtown to have a look around. It was 7pm on a Friday and the place was completely deserted, eerily so. We found one open bar where we stopped for a beer/cocktail then walked back toward the student area where things were slightly more lively. We settled on curry for dinner, it was easily the best Indian meal I've had in the US (which isn't saying much after previous disappointing outings in San Francisco and Vancouver) but not a patch on the curry we get back home.