Saturday 13th October 2018 (update)

And the final part of our trip hoves into view, as we had to collect the hire car which will enable us to get to our final hotel, in Upstate New York.

We had encountered trouble in picking up the car in the city and dropping it off at the airport, the website kept crashing, so just to get the agreement done, we had to pick the car up at the airport.

We just had to decide how to get there.

Boston is a very different city from New York, smaller, less busy, and the airport is just over the water from Downtown. Driving there is now easy thanks to the completed Big Dig, and there is a metro, and from the station nearest to the hotel is just three stops down the line. I had favoured a taxi, but riding on a new subway? What's not to like?

Once we were up and about, we got dressed and were out of the hotel at nine, and like the City of London at weekends, all the shops and cafes around here are closed at the weekend, so we think we would have breakfast at the airport. So we walked uptown from downtown, as is the way and tried not to hear Pet Clark singing as we walked.

The metro station entrance is built into the old State Building, which is an odd way of catching a train, but once down the stairs, a helpful member of staff said we could buy a ticket for two people for five bucks, showed us how the machine worked, and told us which platform to go down to.

Catch a train for Wonderland he said.

And so Big Country played in my head. But then I was taking my wife to Wonderland!

We waited on the platform until a modern train pulled in; being early in the morning it was just about empty. We stood as the train dived under the river, passed through two stations before depositing us at the airport. All we had to do was work out how to get to the terminal!

But the metro station is not in the terminal, we had to catch a bus.

A bus was waiting, and I insist we sit on the back seat like all bad boys do. Soon it took us on a three minute ride to the rental car building passing some major intersections and roads to other terminals, not the the arrivals terminal, so no breakfast again.

We get the car with little fuss, a Toyota thing, quite large, but no Mustang. It would prove to be slighly annoying, as the slightest pressure on the accelorator would cause it to drop a gear or two, so never seemed to be in a settled state, unless cannoning down the interstate at 70.

Jools said “should she program the sat nav”? No, I know where I’m going. Fateful words.

The roads out of the airport are all different now the Big Dig is completed, and I saw no signs for the north coast, New Hampshire or Maine. Instead we go through a series of tunnels, out the other side past Fenway park and out through the suburbs. Running beside a commuter line, which meant my concentration was on that rather than the road signs, so it wasn't going to end well.

We pass under I95, but there were no signs for north either, just south to Rhode Island. But we knew we had missed the turning. It was pleasant enough, but we were heading in the wrong direction; west.

A few miles on we stop at a rest stop, go into a Dunkin Donuts for breakfast of bagels and sweet coffee, then back outside to the car to program the sat nav.

Which then proceeded to take us back into Boston, back to almost into the centre of the city before turning north. Didn’t feel right to me, so we drive through leafy suburbs, downtrodden areas and industrial zones, all while the rain grew steadier and steadier. It was all interesting, but not that picturesque, and had I not been to Rockport before, I would have thought it not worth bothering with.

But we were heading north, just not very quickly. We go round what was called roundabouts, but were just huge junctions, with traffic lights, and no lanes and poor signs pointing the ways off. I was tense. But we kept on the right roads, the city thinned out, and we carried driving on lanes and four lane highways.

After an hour we came to Salem.

Salem is spooky central, and with it being Halloween this month, and elsewhere in America this is a month long event now, you can only imagine how serious Salem takes it. Traffic was nose to tail along the main road through the town, and crowds of people filed out of the car parks on the edge of town walking to where the action apparently was. It was Saturday I suppose, but the thought of going there when the crowds would be thick wasn't a good one.

Once through Salem however, the urban sprawl of Boston gave way to New England rural country, so the road wound its way through pretty villages made of clapboard houses, white clapboard churches, it really was very pleasant. The road crossed and recrossed the commuter line from Boston to Rockport, one which I have travelled on a few times, but we saw no trains. The villages mostly had names from back home, so it was interesting to see how closely they resembled those places in England: not very.

And from time to time, the road came back to the coast so glimpses of panoramas along the coast could be seen, just no where to park though. As most along the coast, shoreline seems to be private property, or where it wasn't, the rain fell heavily.

We went through Gloucester, the town before Rockport. This I knew as back in the day, or 15 years ago, Rockport was a dry town, and I had to get a cab into Gloucester to find a bar to watch the baseball on whilst drinking a beer. You could go whalewatching from here too, and I had as well, back in 2005, on a wonderfully hot day when the sea was like a millpond, and we saw half a dozen species, but film was so expensive, I took only a handful of shots. We drove on. Where there was a market on, the main road through the town closed, and all parking taken.

We drive round and find a place on a side street, as being British we don’t mind a walk. We amble back towards the centre of town, past four churches on one street until we came to the market, and the shops beyond.

All things change, of course. Even small towns like Rockport. Shops I remembered being there had been replaced by others, the restaurant I snapped the harbour from is now a clothes shop, the chowder shops have all but closed, just two remain.

But the town is thriving, lots of visitors, ice cream shops and coffee shops. The town also has the best named street ever; Bear Skin Neck, which is on a headland and leads to the breakwater, and was once lined with fishermen’s cottages, but is now shops. And more shops

We walk to the end, walk back, and having come all this way we were not leaving until we had some clam chowder. So, we go into a restaurant at the bottom of Bear Skin, order two bowls of chowder and beer and cider. It took me some time to realise that booze was on sale in the town now, as when I was here, the city ordinance had banned it for over a century.

All things change.

We have huge ice creams, in waffle cones, way too big, really. But were good, and I ate all my salted caramel and pretzel flavour!

I had wanted to continue north into New Hampshire and Maine, but a check on the sat nav showed York Beach to be 90 minutes away, a three hour return trip, and then we had to get back into the city. It was half three already, there didn’t seem time.

So, Jools programmed the way back to the hotel, and we set off south.

But the sat nav seemed to have a thing about going on main roads, and soon told us to turn off route 128, down by the power lines. We ended up driving by the Stop n Shop, I liked that better than walking by the Stop n Shop. It took us through more picturesque villages until we arrived back at Salem. Not as busy at half four in the afternoon, we get through OK and are back into Boston.

I can’t describe the sheer panic of driving back into the city, coming to intersections where I had no idea if I should give way or the others would. Worse case was a five way junction: I mean there were lines on the road, but no traffic lights, I was just lucky nothing was coming the other way. I dashed across hoping I would not splatter someone on the way over the road.

Down wide roads, through urban areas with huge trucks double parked almost blocking the way, down sidestreets, over bridges until we suddenly come to the financial district, there is the park with the entrance to the underground car park; we had made it!

We go back to the hotel for a bit before going out for dinner at one of the pubs along the road. But where on Friday the places were heaving, on a Saturday, it was so quiet, we had to ask if they were doing food. They were.

So we have nachos to share, a cocktail then a main course, but with only one other couple eating, the food came quick and was excellent.

Back to the hotel to watch the baseball, I was determined to watch it all, but at quarter past eleven, at the bottom of the 7th, I was done.

Another day gone, and tomorrow, a road trip.