Back from Boston – with many photos!

Ho HO! Look at this! I’ve actually set aside time to update you all on my travels! Allllll three of you.

So, in case I didn’t mention, Mat and I went on holiday to Boston, rented a car and drove up through Maine all the way to Bangor, then west to New Hampshire and back south for our flight at the end of the trip. Overall, the trip was AWESOME and surprisingly free of troubles and glitches! Apart from our first flight out being an hour late, we still didn’t miss our connection and everything else went (almost suspiciously) smoothly. I think this is in part to there being a lot of systems and technology in America that just makes life a little bit easier. For example, when renting the car, the process was very simplified, all done on computer, and took 5 minutes max. In Belgium it took my half an hour, I had to go through a tonne of paper work and we even had to ring the insurance company because none of the information provided was clear. 

It’s difficult to describe just how grateful you can be for these little conveniences, as even the UK has quite a lot of them. Just processes being automated, sped up, made more efficient, just things you wouldn’t even notice until they were gone. I have a few noters on here who get confused about why Belgium frustrates me so much, but that’s because it’s the little things that are difficult to describe that build up over time. Just imagine every process you go through where a computer has made that easier. Now take the computer away, add a load of forms, a necessity to go to a mystery office where no one speaks English, and all the Dutch words that aren’t even understood by the people who speak it. There you have a snippet of life in Belgium.

ANYway, suffice to say the efficiency of things really made my holiday. It was wonderful to have everything run smoothly, and to interact with Americans, who are ridiculously polite and friendly, helpful and courteous. No one bumps into you on the street and all the customer service is from people who genuinely just want to do their job right – it is a REFRESHING atmosphere!

Sooo, let’s get some photos going:

This was flying over Iceland – we had a connection in Reykjavik. From an aerial perspective, Iceland is a shit-load of rocks. Brown, lumpy rocks. And tiny houses. However we bumped into a couple who had spent a few days there and they said it was awesome, but also weird. The national dish is cured shark, and the president is listed in the phonebook. I met this couple when our flight from Brussels was delayed. We only had an hour between flights in Reykjavik and we were worried we weren’t going to make it. So were they. They were from western Massachusetts, called Eric and Gina. They were super pissed about the flight being delayed and Eric, this big beefy guy was all like "I will lead us through Iceland and make DAMN SURE we get on that plane to Boston! Ladies, you just STICK WITH ME." And I was thinking, well, this guy seems determined and pushy, I will DEFINITELY stick with them! Luckily though, we did arrive on time for the connection, and so instead we just chatted with them.

In fact, when we got off in Boston, we’d lost Eric and Gina on the plane and it had taken us a long time to get through security/border control, grab our luggage, etc. We were waiting outside for a bus and Gina came running up. They had been looking around for us for a while just to give us their contact details in case we got lost or got in trouble, and told us to call them up if we needed anything whilst in the state. SO DAMN FRIENDLY. Seriously, I don’t know any other people in any other country that do this to strangers. I love it.

So, we got the car, drove round in crazy circles at the confusing airport and eventually got to the place we were staying. We used airbnb.com, which is kind of like couch surfing but a little nicer, and up until White Mountain, we’d be staying with random people in their own houses. In Boston, we were going to be staying with Tia. She was super nice and friendly, but we didn’t realise that we’d be sharing a student house. It was a couple of houses ago that I moved out of a student house and I was really glad to, so it was kind of a shame to go back to that place of noisy housemates and skanky bathrooms. However, we spent most of our time out exploring so it wasn’t too much of a problem. And she recommended an awesome place to eat called The Breakfast Club – DELICIOUS.

After eating a full load of pancakes, eggs, bacon, home fries, iced tea, french toast and regular toast, we drove around for a while and came across Harvard, which was beautiful. We found the bookstore, which we enjoyed very much, and walked around the Natural History Museum, which was ok, but I’ve never found a natural history museum that can hold a candle to the one in London yet.

the library

I dunno what this was? It was nearby…?

rocks inside the museum

me looking dorky

Mat, equally dorky

Davis Square – we wanted to visit the museum of bad art, but they wouldn’t let you in without a movie ticket, and I didn’t fancy ‘TED’.

The second day in Boston was primarily focused on shopping. and we did fairly well at this, spending a horrible amount of money but having a good time in the process, WHICH IS WHAT HOLIDAYS ARE ALL ABOUT, RIGHT?! Seriously though, I’m such a scrooge with money, doing something like this is unheard of for me. But we got some nice things, we found a flea market that sold some old comics and stuff, then we went to Newbury Street and bought clothes, shoes, bags, books and all the rest!

So the day after all the shopping, we were going to drive up to Salem and stay with a lady called Jackie. On the way we passed by what used to be Danvers

Mental Asylum. It was used as inspiration for Lovecraft’s stories and also as Arkham Asylum in Batman (Batman knowledge very limited, ask Mat, I dunno). We’d read that it was half demolished but when we got there it was fully restored again and was now some very fancy apartments. Nonetheless, it made for some good photos:

After a stop here, we got to Salem and did the whole Witch Museum thing (which surprised me – it was nowhere near as bad as Europe, I’d got the impression they’d burned witches for decades like the rest of us! Ah well, good news they didn’t I guess?) We stopped for a bit at Scratch Kitchen (amazing place where everything is made from scratch), and ate tea on the beach before arriving at Jackie’s.

Jackie was a great host, so friendly and accomodating. She actually left the entire apartment to us for the night! And left us breakfast things, and beers! It was quite strange though, she looked so alike to Huney Badger, and was similarly chatty and so on, I could have sworn they were sisters!

Then we we had a four hour drive to take up north.

We drove up past Portland to a small place in Windham on the lake, where we were going to stay with a woman called Karen. She lived there with her three kids, two cats and a dog, all of whom were very friendly and crazy. Literally across the road from her house was the most beautiful lake that was warm enough to swim in, and after a four hour drive, that was exactly what we needed.

The next day we had another four hour drive, through Augusta, all the way up to Bangor. We programmed the GPS not to take any interstates so we drove all the beautiful country roads instead. It took us longer to get everywhere but it was totally worth it.

 

We had a bit of lunch in Augusta and then got to Bangor and had NO IDEA how to find the place we were staying at. We were planning on staying with a couple called Teagan and Samuel but our GPS kept taking us to strange places that were nowhere near correct. As it got dark and we were driving alone through miles of forest, we did get a bit stressed, especially when you’re looking out for a BLACK mailbox! Eventually we found it and they were really welcoming. Teagan even made us pumpkin nut muffins for breakfast! Nomnomnom.

Our main reason for visiting Bangor was because we’re big Stephen King fans and this is where he was inspired to write books like ‘It’, where the fictional town is based loosely on Bangor, with some sights and features remaining very much the same in both the books and real life, for example:

the big plastic Paul Bunyan statue

the standpipe (and the park next to it)

the barrens

and of course, the Kenduskeag river

We even managed to find Stephen King’s house, complete with batwing and spider web gates! We literally only stopped for 30 seconds to take a quick photo, as I’m sure he must hate the amount of people who go to look at his house. I really didn’t want to stand around gawking.

So after our exciting time in Bangor and a quick trip to the Folk Festival (good lemonade;not enough music; cheesy craft stalls abound) we were back on the road, heading to White Mountain National Park!

We stopped for dinner in this tacky place:

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The next day we were inspired by the mountains to be as outdoorsy as possible, so first we went for a bit of trail biking, which was super fun (and a tiny bit scary, given my ability to fall off ANY bike ALL THE TIME):

And for the second half of the day we decided it would be a great idea to drive up Mount Washington. There were signs saying that if you were scared of heights, an easily distracted driver, or not too confident on the roads, then the drive was not for you. With all the crazy disclaimers floating around in America (seriously, the ones on restaurant menus are just hilarious) I wasn’t taking any of it seriously. I was all like "Yeah! I’m fine with heights, I’ve been driving this car for a whole WEEK with no problems and there is no way I get distracted! This will be AWESOME!" And for 30 bucks, it had better be awesome.

Before you could get on the road, you had to read an information pack about how to drive up there. You had to put the car in low gear and keep it there for the entire journey up and down. Although the road would be just dirt in some ways, the pamphlet assured us that there would always be enough space for cars to pass each other going up and down. It warned us that even though the sound the engine made would be alarming and loud and smelly, not to worry as that was normal. So maybe I was a little worried by now.

We started our ascent and since it was in L, the fastest we could go was 20 miles an hour, at a push. The road was 8 miles long, one vertical mile high, and JESUS CHRIST IT WAS TERRIFYING. There was no guard rail at any part of the journey and so sometimes you would be driving mere inches away from a sheer cliff drop. And that info about the roads alway being wide enough? FAT CHANCE, especially when most people thought it’d be a great idea to bring their great big honking pick up trucks along this route. I lost count of the amount of almost-heart-attacks I had. You would round a narrow, dirt path corner, trying not to look at the view as it was a huge ditracting mountain top drop, you round the corner only to find a big truck blasting its way down upon you forcing you even closer to the precipice! These photos do not do this terrifying ordeal justice AT ALL:

I don’t think Mat managed to take any photos of the sheer drops, I have a feeling he was almost as scared as I was. But we made it up, and I heard afterwards that many people just stop halfway up and turn back around so at least we did it! And it was certainly a memorable experience! 

the car we rented + my terrible sucky parking

And so after a wonderful couple of nights in the mountains, we packed up and headed back to Boston. We booked a ‘mystery hotel’ for our last couple of nights in Boston – basically you get to know the star rating and general location of the hotel, but no more. Then after you book, you get to find out the hotel name. It’s a pretty good deal as we got a 4* hotel for 120 dollars per night. And it did turn out to be super fancy so it worked out nicely, however breakfast wasn’t included, and, especially in America, breakfast is my favourite meal of the day! The amount of pancakes I ate out there was insane, and in Belgium they NEVER do eggs and bacon for ANY meal so it was super super awesome to be able to get that EVERY SINGLE DAY.

And then on the last day in Boston, before our flight in the evening, we went to the Samuel Adams brewery, where they do free tours! You get to taste awesome free beers and keep the glass at the end. Even if you give a suggested donation, it just all goes to charity. The tour guide was fantastic, really funny and charismatic, we couldn’t really believe they put on this tour so many times every day for free! And we did love drinking Sam Adams beer whilst we were in America, my favourite was the Oktoberfest – nommmm.

That little rabble rouser won’t sit still even for a minute!

XxX