19th November- Heading to Boston, Mass. .

Mayflower 11-The sequel!

We left the Hotel and did a tour of the local area which is interesting but nothing to write home about and then left Weymouth in the direction of Boston but using the lesser road for more interest.

There have been a lot of houses built along this coast either for weekend use or for rent as most of them seemed empty. After trolling along for a couple of hours we arrived in Plymouth where the pilgrims landed all those years ago. There is also a full size replica of the ‘Mayflower’ called ‘Mayflower II’ which in about 1957 (I think it was) made the same trip as the original but when you see the size of this boat it would be frightening to travel on and it also seems top heavy. The town was gearing up for ‘Thanksgiving’ as there were several large tents set up with a bandstand and so no doubt they have fun and games in store. This US Plymouth compared to the UK Plymouth is much smaller and not surrounded by Navy as this is primarily a fishing port and we would think the population is quite small. Shortly after we arrived about eight coaches turned up and kids were everywhere and so we took our photos and left as it was getting very cold, the coldest we had experienced so far on this trip.

Its a stone I tell you!-Its called Plymouth Rock

As we got nearer to Boston the quality of housing improved and then we stopped for lunch at a Panera Bread outlet for a nice bowl of soup and then were ready to head over to the south west side of Boston to find a Best Buy where Noel could buy a charger for the I-Pod which seems to have gone missing. Noel could not stand seven hours on the London flight without his I-Pod for comfort.

We are also a little concerned about the car which has a constant reminder that it needs a service whist the battery is really struggling to start the car so lets hope that it holds up for the day.

From Best Buy to downtown Boston took a little longer than expected mainly due to this annoying American habit for when dropping off kids from school. As soon as the bus stops and puts its flashing lights on every vehicle within sight must stop and wait for the kids to get off before all can continue. So as this bus stops every few hundred yards or so and other school buses doing the same it causes severe traffic jams and thats what we got involved with and this made us about 45 minutes later at the Hotel than planned.

Anyway we reached the Hyatt and dropped off our stuff in the room and then back down to the lobby to collect the car and take it back to Hertz which was about half a mile away.

On the way back we got a little lost due to the signposting not being great but eventually we arrived back at about 6.40 and decided that a snack in the Hotel would be the plan for the evening, followed by some severe relaxation before we hit the streets tomorrow.