Roads paved with gold

The best view of the New England Fall was on the Massachusetts Turnpike, the main road out of Boston. It appears to cut through a forest of maple, sycamore, beech and aspen trees, all of which are 'on the turn', blazing yellow, gold and orange in the brilliant morning sun. It was breathtaking. The Mohawk Trail, a fifty mile stretch of road through equally pretty forest, had the charm of the canopy of trees over the road, and the entertainment of a bizarre gift shop at the hill summit which sold such oddities as souvenirs of San Francisco, rabbit pelts and truly terrible coffee.

Another city, another budget hotel. Yesterday we took the subway into Boston, visiting Trinity Church and walking through the Beacon Hill district experiencing the English familiarity of this most symbolic place for American Independence. Charles Street raised a smile, and gave us the chance to photograph some of the shots you see in the slideshow. The Science Museum was closing within an hour of our getting there, but we hit the gift shop and Simon enjoyed icecream chilled with liquid nitrogen. We finished up in Quincy markets, sitting at the curbside on a concrete rotunda eating excellent pizza slices and listening to a full orchestra playing in the street, surrounded by market stalls selling all manner of things. Bustling with people, the air filled with the smells of every kind of food imaginable, a clear cool night with a bright moon to finish our short visit to New England.

Spongebob Rules

Billy Connolly once described taking his two girls on a journey back to his roots in Scotland, trailing around the places of his childhood and telling them stories of his life there, immersing them in the history, the music, the culture of the place.

Asked upon their return home to America what impressed them most about this odyssey they both replied 'Sesame Street on the hotel TV'.

Why am I telling you this ?
Spongebob Squarepants. Say no more.

Waiting in St Louis

Yesterday we moved from balmy California across two time zones to the frozen tundra that is Minnesota. A restless and hot night in San Francisco in a cheap hotel room (with obligatory paper-thin walls) listening to a drunken tirade from a woman in the room next door. She settled down about 4 in the morning, by which time I was past caring.
Earlier in the evening we'd eaten tomato soup from hollowed-out loaves of sourdough bread and walked through a city of $2 shops on Fisherman's Wharf, caught a tram up the undulating streets and walked a mile back to our hotel, having completely misjudged where it was. The steep leafy streets and elegant houses are quite a contrast to the grubby concrete of Anaheim and the purposeful glitz of Las Vegas.
Our flight to St Paul went via St Louis and sitting in St Louis airport we realised that neither of us has a clue where in the US St Louis actually is. Do you ? Couple this with a growing uncertainty about which day it is and you have the perfect holiday.
The wait in St Louis went on and on, and there was no information. When we eventually boarded our pencil-thin aircraft the pilot apologised for the delay. President Bush had decided to fly through St Louis earlier in the afternoon and all flights were grounded or left circling 50 miles away until he was gone.
Our budget hotel in St Paul is an old railway station, complete with rails running through the lobby and a beautiful vaulted ceiling. No elevator however, so at midnight the four of us had to lug all our luggage up the stairs to our room. No mean feat having not slept the night before.
The kids are taking travelling in their stride, finding our way around airports, organising their own stuff, waiting patiently when the President jumps our queue, being adaptable and creative with a deluge of new experiences. Me, I just seem to get get more curmudgeonly as the years go on, though in a benign way I think.