Geo: 46.8266, -71.3024It was an easy 3 hour drive up to Quebec, where the pine trees begin to take over from deciduous fall colours. We're now in hotels for 10 days and on our own. Time to spread out a bit, more reading and exploring, probably determined to some extent by variable weather. The dominance of French speakers, French signage and culture seems somehow misplaced in this huge American continent, but history tells you otherwise. The Quebecois language is, however, fairly impenetrable, with a strong accent and local vocabulary. They think French French rather posh. Communicating in English is a fail safe!our small hotel was walking distance from the old town and surrounded by useful shops and resturants. We followed the hotelier's advice for resturants, not knowing any better, and had two great American brunches and ... read more

Geo: 44.4222, -78.2734Took us six hours or so to drive here yesterday including crossing the border into Canada and visiting Niagara-on-the-Lake. This is a pretty old town situated where the Niagara river flows into Lake Ontario. It was called Newark, and was the capital town, until the British got nervous of the closeness of the French and moved the capital to Toronto (which was called York back then) and the French promptly sacked Newark and burnt it down. So the British came back and rebuilt it and its now a pretty, touristy town with lots of old buildings.Anyway, Liz's uncle lives in a modern condo in the little town of Lakefield a few miles from Peterborough, north west of Toronto.The area doesn't possess a wealth of things worth seeing but we went to see the Lift ... read more

Geo: 44.1897, -73.7864Putnam Camp was established way back in the late 19th century by a bunch of sophisticated city folk who wanted an escape back to nature where they could pursue intellectual matters, read, play games and hike up the surrounding mountains. One of the founders was the brother of Henry James and was an early adopter of the methods of Freud and, indeed, when Freud and Jung visited the USA they went to stay at Putnam. Freud said that these Americans like to think they are roughing it but actually had all modern conveniences. Well by todays standards the conveniences aren't so modern. There is no TV, no mobile phone reception, no internet (whether or not to provide wi-fi is a hot topic of debate), heating is by wood burning stoves (there was snow on ... read more

Geo: 42.5224, -70.8958First priority next day was to get Peter's phone equipped with a USA simcard to avoid paying O2 £6 a megabyte for data, sounds simple but involved long phone calls and a trip to a T-Mobile store. Following which we set off for Fenway Park (the Boston RedSox venue) to make a start on Barny's shopping list - only to start off in the wrong direction resulting in a ride on the Metro (T) to get back to where we needed to be. Then we walked further to get a bite to eat at the cafe in the Isabella Gardner Museum but then, daunted at the prospect of paying $15 ($10) each to get in we crossed to the Fine Art Museum where Annies membership card got us in free. Principal interest was the ... read more

Geo: 41.0245, 28.9881Having decided to fly it made yesterday a really easy day. Slow start, train to the airport, 1 hour flight to Istanbul, into Sultanahmet by train and tram. So I made up for it today by starting fairly early and rushing all over the place. First to the Museum of Innocence, for those that know nothing of it this is the museum of the story of the book same name in English), the museum of the infatuation in the book written by. Orhan Pamuk (winner Nobel prize for literature) and if you haven't read the book then there isn't much point going to the museum. Of course if you haven't read the book then you have to and then you have to go to the museum. Simple. And then you would appreciate the exhibition ... read more