---

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, folks,” said the pilot, “but we have no captain for the flight and I don’t know where he is, so I’m afraid you’ll have to deplane and collect your luggage.” I looked at Angela and groaned. We’d been sat in the small aircraft cabin for close to two hours waiting for the captain to join the first officer, but now we’d been given the news we’d all feared: our flight from New York to Boston had been officially cancelled.

“Well this is a good start,” I said as we joined the queue at the American Airlines customer service counter. “The start of our round the world adventure and we’ve hit a snag at the first post.” Angela nodded glumly as we inched forward.

After spending the night in a New York hotel (courtesy of American Airlines) we headed back to the airport and finally arrived in Boston early the next morning. After picking up the hire car we were on our way, heading north on Interstate 95, at the start of our New England adventure.

Our ultimate goal was a place called Bar Harbor, up on the coast of Maine, but feeling hungry we decided to stop off at Portsmouth, the third oldest town in the United States. As we left the interstate we passed establishments with names such as: Bob’s Diner, Bob’s Tire Yard and Bob’s Clam Hut, as well as the occasional billboard advertising gunsmiths. Half an hour later we parked up in picturesque Portsmouth where the sun was shining and the little boutique shops and street cafes welcomed us with open arms. It was a nice way to spend our first hour in a real New England town.

Back on the road, we passed through scenery that reminded us of northern Europe. The trees were mostly evergreen and seemed to stretch forever. Occasionally we’d pass signs warning us that moose were loose in the forests and then we’d leave the interstate and pass through towns specialising in lobster and clam restaurants, or else Baptist places of worship. We passed numerous signs offering messages like: You will never have a place to live until you invite Jesus into your home.

Bar Harbor was a pretty seaside town filled with tourists. Angela and I wandered the compact central part of town, admiring the view of the harbour as the sun began to set. Our evening meal once again proved the difference between America and the rest of the world because my plate was filled to the brim with masses of chips and two huge pieces of fish. There was no way I could finish it and it wasn’t a one-off because the same thing had happened the previous day. I’d received a plate full to capacity with chicken and fries and get this; it had only been a starter!

“I want to go whale watching!” announced Angela the next morning. The previous evening we had seen the whale watching vessels moored at the harbour and I knew that sooner or later Angela would want to go. Seeing whales in their natural habitat was one of the things she needed to tick off her list.

We boarded the boat and headed twenty-five miles off shore to an area of the Maine Gulf known as the ball park. “This is where oceanic shelf drops down deep,” commentated our guide for the trip, a middle-aged man who’d been doing whale watching trips for over twenty years. “And that means whales go there to feed.”

As we swept along the ocean we could see the Maine coastline disappearing and so everyone aboard the boat settled down and zipped up our coats. It really was a bit nippy out in the open sea. Suddenly a tiny bird flew towards the boat and landed somewhere near the bow. The guide spoke up. “That bird is lost and exhausted and has been blown off course by the wind. We get this all the time. We’ve had a couple of bats and even an owl join us out here at sea. We rescue them and take them back home after the trip.

“Okay folks,” said the guide. “We need your help to spot the whales and there are a few ways to do this. First of all you need to move your eyes to the horizon and then bring them down slightly. Next pan across the ocean to look for signs, and the easiest one is the spray from a whale’s blow hole. It’s like a little puff of smoke that hangs in the air for a few seconds.”

There were a fair few lobster boats about on the ocean, bobbing away with their crew of two, and we also spotted a lot of sea birds and even a seal but where were the whales? Suddenly a puff of smoke appeared in the distance - and we were off, charging over the swell at top speed like a boat in Moby Dick. “These whales are most probably finbacks,” said the guide, “the second largest whales in the world. Unlike humpback whales, they won’t show you their back fins as the dive, but they will show you their long black backs, and the best time to photograph one is just before their terminal dive - the dive they do before they go deep down.” We arrived at where the blow hole spray had been but there was no sign of a whale anywhere. We bobbed around for a bit and then another puff of smoke was spotted and we were off once again.

“I wonder when they’re going to give out the harpoons,” I quipped to Angela as we bobbed around at the second spot. “Cos this is getting a bit boring.” A small bird called a storm petrel fluttered across some waves and an arctic tern flew overhead, but that was it. Inconsiderate bloody whales.

“There it is!” said the guide. “Two o’clock! An adult finback!” every passenger made a stampede for the starboard side and then craned their necks to see it. And there it was, about two hundred feet away, arching its back through the water before disappearing under for a few moments before reappearing again. “That was the terminal dive, folks. It will be down for at least five minutes.”

This went on for another hour or so, with us chasing a blow hole puff and then bobbing around for fifteen minutes waiting for a whale to surface. In these down times, the guide did his best to tell us about whales and whaling but when we eventually began our return into Bar Harbor, I was quite glad. We’d seen the whales now and we could rest easy.

We were soon back on the road again, driving west towards an area called White Mountains. It took about four hours to get there, passing through some gorgeous scenery along the way. Houses with sloped roofs were dotted along the side of road, an indication of how much snow the area got during the heavy winters. “It really is beautiful around here,” said Angela.

The next morning we were back on the road heading up into the hills. We had toyed with going on the famous Cog Railway, which offered breathtaking views of the mountains and forests as it chugged its way upwards, but in the end had decided against it. Instead we parked up in the small town of Jackson, located inside White Mountains National Park. “It’s so quaint and picturesque.” Angela said as we stood admiring a great little church near a wooden bridge. “I could happily live in Jackson, New Hampshire.”

Two hours later we arrived in Portland, the largest city in Maine, and after checking into the hotel, we were out wandering the historic port area. At the recommendation of the hotel receptionist, we caught a ferry over to Peaks Island, once a popular summer seaside destination of the 19th century. It still seemed fairly popular nowadays too, at least judging by the amount of passengers aboard the twenty-minute ferry journey, and when we arrived we found ourselves on a little island full of friendly people with picturesque coves and beaches. Crime was clearly not an issue on Peaks Island because push bikes we left unlocked by the dozen all over the place and the only felony we witnessed was being committed by a brazen gull stealing lettuce from the back of an unguarded pick-up truck.

At a nearby information board, a notice caught Angela’s eyes. It was a handwritten note from a couple of eleven-year-old local girls advertising their pet pampering service. They offered dog walking (but not biting dogs), cat walking and they’d even take your lizard for a wander. They would look after chickens, hamsters and gerbils, but would not under any circumstance look after rabbits, because Annabelle was deadly allergic to them. As the sun began to set, Angela and I caught the return ferry back to Portland.

The next day we were back in Boston getting fleeced by the excessive charges for one night of parking. Unable to do anything about it, we parked the car and were soon wandering through Chinatown towards the harbour area of downtown Boston.

There were plenty of people about on such a sunny day, and the tour buses and ferries were clearly doing a roaring trade. “Wasn’t there a famous tea party in Boston?” I said to Angela as we wandered the restored 19th century Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Angela nodded. The Boston Tea Party occurred just before Christmas in 1773, when a group of colonists set fire to some ships and threw the British tea is was carrying into the harbour. It was due to taxes or something, and did not involve fine china cups and delicious pastries.

We had a wander around the stalls noticing the high presence of students around. All seemed to be having fun and some of them were wearing large paper hats to indicate that it was their birthday or they were with someone having a birthday. Nearby a couple of cops sat astride their motorbikes, occasionally posing for photographs, and we decided that Boston had a definite good vibe to it.

Visiting the Cheers bar simply had to be done even if it was a tad on the cheesy side. Armed with our map we passed a large park that had a lake known locally as the Frog Pond. We knew we had arrived at the correct place because of the amount of tourists about, either on foot or else sat on one of the many sight-seeing buses that buzzed around the city.

“Cheers!” I said to Angela as I took a sip of my Boston Ale from the bar downstairs. And even though I’d seen the program may times, nothing seemed familiar now that we were actually inside the place. It was only on the way out that we read a placard saying that only outside footage was filmed for the TV series, with the interior shots filmed in a studio.

The next morning we headed to Logan Airport for our flight to Toronto. Our short road trip through New England had come to an end.



Strengths
-Very friendly
-Picturesque towns and countryside
-Lots to see
-Very clean - hardly any rubbish anywhere
-Refreshing mountain air
-Lobsters

Weaknesses:
-Not much

---