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Published: August 14th 2014
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Border Crossing
There's no welcome to the USA when entering from Canada!? Today almost ended very badly. Rather than going all the way back to Boston ready for the flight home, we thought we would stop off at Concord on the way back. I thought we were going to the small peaceful, historic town of Concord in New Hampshire. My wife thought we were going to the small, peaceful, historic town of Concord in Massachusetts. Luckily we discussed the plans for today last night and realised our misunderstanding. My wife had booked the hotel, so we set off for Concord in Massachusetts. The capital of New Hampshire will have to wait for another time.
The Concord in Massachusetts is also near a massive shopping mall apparently, so I'm not completely convinced that it actually was a misunderstanding!
We left Quebec with over six hours of driving ahead of us. Just outside Quebec it started pouring with rain and it carried-on all the way to Concord. On the one hand it made for very hard driving, but on the other hand it meant that spending the day driving wasn't wasted as we wouldn't have been able to do much anyway.
Just on the Canadian side of the border was a duty
Vermont
The Vermont state flag. free shop, so we thought we would stop for a break. I also just then remembered that we have a tradition at work of bringing back some biscuits or something similar for everyone to eat, so some Canadian maple syrup cookies seemed like a good idea (better that than the Hershey's chocolate that usually sits around uneaten).
Crossing the border back into the US was a lot quicker than it had been going in the other direction. There were still lots of questions, along similar lines to those when we entered Canada, but they were fired at us in rapid succession by the most chirpy border guard that we have yet met. She just loved our accents and had some fun with our poor daughter who wasn't going to be allowed to come into the US with us when she couldn't find the original entry stamp in the passport.
On the US side there was nothing, not even a "Welcome to the USA" sign for us to have our pictures taken with. We found a nearby information office with a "Welcome to Vermont" labelled seat of all things, which was a kind of substitute and would have to suffice.
There were lots more familiar place names as we continued our drive through New England, including Coventry, Newport, Plymouth, Chelmsford, Bedford, Bethlehem and Berlin. So whilst the familiarity of the English Shires dominated again, there was also Palestine and Germany.
We also passed within a few miles of the other Concord. Whilst it was very tempting to pay it a quick visit, we decided against it, not least because of the still pouring rain.
The car needed petrol and we needed food, so we stopped off at some services. These services had a drive through Dunkin Donuts, but we gave that a miss as drive through donuts just doesn't feel right to us. We went in and had some rolls, but also some donuts of course. The lady behind the counter asked us if we were Irish, which is a first as we're usually asked if we're Australian. I try to avoid using the phase "No worries" now when I'm in the US as that doesn't help.
We had almost slipped-up as we're still in the habit of saying "Bonjour" and "Merci", which would probably have really caused some confusion. Either that or it would just reinforce the impression that all Brits are a bit weird.
We got a bit confused at one of the toll gates and went through the electronic tag lanes by mistake. We're now in a bit of a panic trying to pay the $1 toll before we get hit with at least a $25 fine. Unfortunately we don't have a US address and we have no idea what year our car was registered, so that is proving rather difficult. We'll have to try again tomorrow when their customer service centre is open.
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