New England and New Hamster - July 12th-19th 2010

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We left Guilford Connecticut on Monday morning 12th July 2010 in our Dodge(y) Rental car and with our English GPS Lady giving us directions to no place in particular. The only real plans we had were to get to New Hampshire by the Friday afternoon to meet up with more friends.

We hit the road and headed South first to New Haven and the famous Yale University. We had a general wonder round some of the buildings, with first stop being the fabulous Peabody museum of Natural History. We did intend to visit more but then Felicity spotted a Vietnamese Restaurant and both being "foodies" and it being lunch time as well, that was the next stop.

Whilst parking around the Yale campus area is pretty good (or was when we were there at least) we still had to keep moving the car every two hours and after a fine lunch we decided that hitting the road was preferable to a third move.

We headed North direction Mystic & Rhode Island and on the way picked up a Tourist voucher brochure for New England, packed with Motel vouchers. Admittedly, most of these were for the less beautiful places just off the I-95, but hey we're on a budget which doesn't run to Hilton-style accommodation...not in the US at least.

So the Comfort Inn near Mystic was our first taste of US Motel "Comfort". It turned out that these New England vouchers had "printing errors" in them and what was on the voucher was not what the motels were offering. Legally questionable, but their real price wasn't too much more so we we didn't argue. Strangely, with a number of Motels in the area competing for the same business, the Comfort Inn couldn't give us the "voucher price" for the second night - so we decamped to the Motel next door (Days Inn) and got their intended "voucher price" (ie the same price as Comfort Inn) for the next night.

For the two days we spent in the area we aimed to grip the coast as far as possible and do Mystic and the sights around Rhode Island (RI). Possibly because the GPS Lady was set to 'get us there in the shortest time' we probably didn't take the most scenic routes. Mystic was the first stop. Nice and quaint in parts (mainly those parts that had sea) but not quite as spectacular as I'd hoped. We moved on to explore the neighbouring state of Rhode Island, punctuated only by a head back to Connecticut for our second night.

We had started eating American-style...which meant large and not always healthy. Even after being in the US less than a week we were noticing it - and that was without saying 'Super size me'. It was time to get some exercise, so after having the GPS lady...let's call her Gladys...guide us around other bits of RI such as Providence we set our sights on a long walk and where better than the State beaches of Masquamicut?

Well given our budget, one place slightly better was a place that offered free parking rather than a flat $20 a day parking fee that State Beaches parking were charging. We continued driving and got Gladys somewhat irate as we continually ignored her recalculations and new routes that were targeting the parking we were trying to avoid. We finally reached a rather upmarket residential area over the bridge from the state beaches and legally parked our car on the road there. We scrambled down the rocks and walked & walked for about an hour on the beach/rocks combination before reaching the place we would have started from were we not cheapskates.

There we took a lemon ice and relaxed. Until we noticed the darkening clouds heading our way from Connecticut. Time to start our return walk back. Maybe 15 minutes into our hike the rain hit. Not a polite little shower though. Within a minute or two this was a full blown torrent of a storm and guess who had no rain protection. This managed to keep going until we reached the car some 40 minutes later - daypacks, clothes and bodies completely soaked.

To mitigate the disaster we got dried and completely changed pretty much in full view of the upmarket neighbours. This brought back memories of a play called Neville's Island that I'd acted in (as 'Neville') for the Zurich Comedy Club back home. There myself and my 3 'shipwrecked' and soaked fellow actors took our kit off on stage in front of my then new girlfriend and her mates who had come to review this new man in Felicity's life. What an introduction !

Much of the electronics we had been carrying in our daypacks seemed like they'd met their water-loo, literrally. Cameras and phones objected to being soaked by rain. My phone was dead - but by the third day it rose again and currently is happily living in the wonderful world of windows mobile. All other gadgets recovered too and our travels re-entered the 21st century.

After a nice cheap night's stay in our second Motel we headed the next day to Kennedy country and the delights of Cape Cod and Hyannis. This was a little bit more like it. The coastal scenery around these parts is pretty nice and Gladys took us to some interesting sights in this our fourth state on this trip so far - Massachusetts. One place of interest was the John F Kennedy museum in Hyannis, where the Kennedy historical magic came to life. Another, for lunch, was Baxter's fish & chips - not quite UK 'chippy' standard, but very enjoyable even so.

Our evening's resting place and third Motel was an Econolodge. We got to use another wrongly priced voucher and it was a bed for the night, but everything felt 'Econo' from the sheets on the bed to the lack of anything that might be called breakfast. Their name said it all.

The next day we took the long way through Massachusetts past Plymouth and Weymouth and generally in the direction of Boston, the goal being to get close to New Hampshire in preparation for a couple of meets there the next day. The more we traveled through this collection of states, the more we realised why its known as "New England". Forgetting its historical background and architecture, its clearly to make limeys like me feel at home with all the the English town names. Old England is trying to reciprocate by having a similar number of US fast food outlets in its towns.

The Dodge(y) car had been complaining of "low tire" soon after leaving Connecticut. However, since none of the tyres seemed low in either tread or pressure and it had CT plates I guessed it was just feeling a little homesick. It was not until we tried to pull away from the lights near Mattapan on the outskirts of Boston, that its true Dodge-yness became apparent. The hydraulics gave up and the car refused to go any further. I managed to keep the beast rolling to the kerb with sympathetic blaring horns from the other road users letting me know their concern. We phoned Budget's roadside assistance on our $19 pay as you go US phone and almost used up all the $10 free credit trying to explain our predicament and then, after 2 hours of kerbside waiting, phoned again to see what was going on. In total we waited 3 hours for a replacement car to arrive from the airport a few miles way. Gridlock on the highway was the excuse.

Interestingly for a country obsessed with being a terrorist target, we never saw one police car in the whole 3 hours we were waiting. I was convinced a couple of gun totting sheriffs would be upon us within a few minutes. Seemingly they were busy looking after the gridlock-causing road works on the highway.

Our replacement car was a very brown coloured Kia. It presumably was a republican sympathiser, since it had a definite pull to the right. We had to keep persuading it that middle of the road was best.

Another night, another nondescript, wrongly discounted Motel. So nondescript, that writing this 3 weeks later I can't remember where it was. All I recall is that it met our budgetary "rules".

The next day we headed into New Hampshire or "New Hamster", as my friend Annie who we were destined to meet, lovingly calls it. First stop though was Pembroke for a visit to another (usually) Zurich-based friend. Isn't Pembroke in Wales ? - were we actually in New United Kingdom instead ?

We had a great lunch and dip in the swimming pool with Kristen and her lovely daughter in rural Pembroke. Its always nice to see where someone grew up and this was an old farm house which had references dating back to 1776.

After a few hours of fun there, Gladys expertly guided us the 1 hour drive from Pembroke to Newmarket. We were back in (New) England - but minus the race horses. We met back up with our American-Swiss friends from Zurich, Annie & Rolf, plus some of Rolf's Swiss family and Elaine who, as next door neighbour had very kindly offered to put us up for the weekend. One of the great things about New England that we have enjoyed in our travels is the availability of good small brewery beers and we tried a few of these whilst Rolf cooked a great Barbecue.

The next day, we headed for the sights of "New Hamster" and went for a wander around Portsmouth, which like its UK namesake has a bit of a naval dockyard. It also has a few historical buildings and a route to visit them, known as the Harbour Trail, and some nice waterfront restaurants, one of which we visited for lunch. It also has a nice micro Brewery, with Restaurant that we wanted to visit - but missed out on in the end.

One thing we wanted to do was to buy a few bottles of wine for Elaine and Annie & Rolf as a thank you for looking after us. So after lunch, we drove over the Memorial Bridge, which spans the Piscataqua River, in search of a Liquor store - something seemingly notable by its absence in NH. Crossing the bridge also allowed us to tick off the next New England State, Maine, but didn't help is to find any wine. We headed back to NH and set Gladys on the task of finding a state Liquor store. Maybe she is teetotal, but she guided us to a dead end in a residential estate with a view through the woods of what could have been the liquor store - but certainly had no access to it. We gave up and headed in search of a Mall - a slightly easier task - in the hope that we might find somewhere selling wine. It worked and we found some great wines at prices that would be unheard of in Switzerland.

Monday morning we got in the car and pointed Gladys in the direction of the Budget Car Rental place in Boston Logan Airport, to make our early afternoon flight to Toronto. We left plenty of time. Despite this almost being a domestic flight to Canada, we were in the US and after our JFK experiences we knew it could take a while. Plus, effectively we were returning two rental cars (the Dodge(y) and the Kia) and this was bound to create extra paperwork. It didn't and we breezed through Budget's Car Rental Return. Boston was also easier to get through than JFK and we made it to the Air Canada lounge with time to spare.

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Photos

Yale: Peabody Museum of Natural History
Has a great mural of Dinosaur evolution as well as 'life size' recreations of Dinosaur skeletons

Portsmouth, NH: Memorial Bridge
...gateway to Maine

Comments

[anonymous]

new hamster ???