let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

It still hasn’t snowed! We were hoping it would be a white thanksgiving but no such luck… We left the Salisbury's house, tired (too much fun and too little sleep) and grumpy because we didn’t want to leave! Boston was gonna be cool but that meant we had to drive there - fortunately not very far away because we didn't get away til mid afternoon. We're not even at the shortest day and do you know it starts getting dark just after 4pm!

Mrs. Salisbury told us about a place were we could go to check out some stuffed animal heads so we took a detour through Kittery. It was a beautiful town but we couldn’t find the shop - I think it must be in a different town.

The GPS told us that to get to the Wal-mart we had to go right into the town of Boston. In fact we didn't, but it was amazing driving into town at night... and finally seeing the sea again! We were hungry so ended up stopping to cook our dinner right in the middle of Boston Common... which for those of you unfamiliar with Boston's history, has variously been used between the 1600's and now for grazing of livestock, drilling the army and for public hanging. And now our dinner as well.

We drove for ages in the morning just trying to find a carpark. Boston is the hardest place to find a carpark this whole trip - only garages, not lots (& we far too big for a garage!). In the end we asked a policeman who directed us to an MIT lot used to park their shuttle busses. It turns out MIT have their own policemen and he was one of them - good fortune alright because we parked at the lot for 2 days and 1 night... and all for free pretty close to the middle of Boston. (and we used their super-fast wifi) Perhaps you're wondering what MIT is? It stands for Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is one of the top private Colleges in the USA. The brightest students in the country go there to study sciences, engineering etc - they say it's one of the hardest schools to get into and also has one of the highest dropout rates.

We've become fans of these hop-on hop-off trolley or double decker tours that the big cities all seem to have. We got ourselves a 2 day ticket and had time in the afternoon to do the whole tour before hopping off at a shopping mall. Very expensive so we didn't buy anything... except a soda each while the olds wandered off to have a beer on the 52nd floor of a nearby building. We continue to be blessed with amazing weather and today was no exception - fine and quite mild.

To finish the day we got off at the markets where Mum found the Cheers bar and souvineer shop - we had a burger from the food hall then went for an evening wander back to the Common. Do you know there is a spot there called frog pond which is an outdoor ice rink in the winter? Dad says we can go for a skate there tomorrow - cool!

For those of you interested, we have now reached the 17th state of our journey - the list is below.

bye for now... Deanna

1. California
2. Georgia
3. Alabama
4. Mississippi
5. Tennessee
6. Arkansas
7. Kentucky
8. Ohio
9. Michigan
10. Indiana
11. Illinois
12. Pennsylvania
13. New York
14. Vermont
15. New Hampshire
16. Maine
17. Massachusetts

+ Ontario and Quebec in Canada...