Zombie Pirate Ninja Monkey

New England Road Trip

I was in new England (largely) for most of last week with Nicole.  I love road trips in the US, and she had never been to America, so we hired a car and drove around a bunch of states.  As I've mentioned before, the bits of America I love the most are those parts that natives tend to find mundane or even ugly: I love milltowns and diners and motels.  These things are everyday and quotidian to a local, but what I enjoy is the jarringly alien nature of the normal.

We kept UK time, getting up at 4.30 or so and going to bed by eight each night.  This meant that we had mornings of quiet roads on which to drive to our next destination.  Having stayed in the gorgeous Nine Zero hotel on the corner of Boston Common and Tremont, we meant to spend our first full day in Boston, but in fact left after four or five hours (by which time it was still mid-morning) having walked much of the Freedom Trail, eaten breakfast in Quincy Market (virtually the only open place at that time) and watched dawn over the bay.  Then we headed north through Maine, up to within 20 miles or so of Canada, ate in a diner in Stratton, and sleeping in an absolutely excellent B&B a few hundred yards further on.  The place, which we spotted as we drove past it, was a converted barn on the very edge of Flagstaff Lake (the garden ran down to the water's edge) and was called Tranquility Lodge.  Seventy dollars for a gorgeous room with en-suite was a nice surprise: I had expected to pay upwards of $140.

Anyway, from there we headed east, via a great place in Rangely called Moosely Bagels, whose coffee was, I am told, amazing.  French toast and local maple syrup may have been cliched, but had to be done.  Then west, via a little truckstop diner called Tim's Diner in New Hampshire, to Lake Champlaine, which was beautiful.  Overnight at the fun, Victorian-themed Back Inn Time B&B recommended by the Lonely Planet Guide, then up to Canada (where the Quebecois border guard thought I was French and the US one on the way back after a couple of hours thought I was a drug smuggler), down through upstate New York via Fort Ticonderoga, then through Connecticut east to Cape Cod.  There, we walked on the beach at night, dramatically misjudging some very big waves as a storm brewed up and ending up wet as a reslt.  We stayed in the very relaxing Parsonage Inn in Orleans, out on the Cape, then got up in time to watch dawn on Nauset beach with only a few surfers and a seal for company.  I slept better that night than any other, although I think the Tranquility is the place I'd go back to first: Maine is just crying out for walking, climbing and kayaking to be done in it.

Finally, back through Rhode Island in a blatantly completist move aimed shamelessly at ticking off all the north-eastern states (I've now been to nineteen of them) and back to Boston.

A word about Air Iceland.  You may think that a four hour stopover in Keflavik is a horrible prospect.  I certainly did.  But the airport bus you for free to the Blue Lagoon, a series of natural outdoor pools where you can hire everything needed to spend an hour or two bathing in water heated by the vulcanism below.  The feeling of being outside, in water the temperature of a hot bath (you can move closer to or further away from the source of the water, if you feel that you can take water at 70-odd centigrade), while mist and drizzle fall on your face, is wonderfully relaxing.  I was mildly disappointed when it was time for the flight.