Our last full day. Sigh. Breakfast was included in our stay because we slept at Best Western. But don’t get excited dear reader, the breakfast room was dismal. Polystyrene plates and small tables. A classic sign they have no on-site restaurant but need to fulfil the need to provide breakfast. We encountered a similar situation while we were staying in New York a few years ago. And I’m expecting something similar tomorrow morning at our Boston hotel. 

Fun one for Tim, outside the hotel we saw this pickup with a snow plough on the front and thought of you. Because we figured if the UK had as much snow as they get here every winter, you’d probably have a front utility bar on your vehicles and a snow plough seems like a useful and fun addition. Who knew a personal snow plough was a thing?

From Providence, we drove to Dorchester, a far cry from the little town in Dorset we visited back in mid-July. The Nike factory store didn’t have any suitable trainers in my size. And dear reader, I wasn’t alone in being disappointed. A guy standing in the aisle next to me raised his hands in frustration and exclaimed “Why do they never have anything great in 14”. To which I replied, damn right brother. I’m with you there.

Luckily there was another Nike store en route to Boston where we could continue our search. But it too had nothing I liked, but Char found a pair of trainers. Aside from that the trip wasn’t wasted because we discovered a pumpkin spice pancake mix in Trader Joe’s, which we bought and will save for Christmas. 

Char drove us to our next stop, where I rolled the dice again and this time was lucky enough to spot a cheap pair of Nike trainers. But Liz stole the crown for the bargain of the day. She bought a beany hat for approx 80p in the sale. Which turned out to be a very good purchase due to the drop in temperature near the coast.

From there we drove to our hotel in Boston. A sad moment because it now feels like our holiday is almost over, sob. The traffic was pretty intense, but Char helped smooth our path by “checking our flank”. Do you remember helping with that in Florida Sophie & Dan? And if you’re wondering why our flank needed checking in an SUV, it wouldn’t have been necessary if the passenger side wing mirror hadn’t been held together with sticky tape at an unhelpful angle. (It was like this when we picked it up)

I’ll skip briefly over the part where we drove to the hotel, offloaded our bags, checked in and returned the car to the rental place at the airport. Our taxi from the airport to downtown Boston was driven by an animated Italian American chap. If you’ve ever seen the sitcom Friends, think Joey’s dad and you won’t be far away. He dropped us in the Boston equivalent of Fifth Avenue (a famous shopping road in New York), and we began to explore. 

The Boston skiline has many skyscrapers but not to the extent that New York is obsessed with them. But its roads are just as busy with honking horns, one-way streets and a lot of noise. The other thing we observed in our first few interactions, the accent here is very similar to New York, whereas in Buffalo and Torronto it was hardly noticeable.

Our first view of the Boston skyline

As with many coastal towns and cities, Boston has a large number of seafood restaurants. The newly engaged couple we met up Prospect Mountain the day we visited Lake George recommended we sample of our Boston’s most famous dishes a Lobster roll. Your scribe loves lobster, so I was immediately keen to partake and sample this local delicacy. And I was equally keen to further debunk the myth that all fish/shellfish are horrid, with our fish newbie. 

In one of the malls we discovered a stall selling tickets for the observation deck of The Prudential Building, a huge skyscraper near the bay which we’re told has amazing views all around Boston. Due to the time (5/6pm) we decided to skip it until the next day when it would be brighter and hopefully the views would be better. So the next thing on my list dear reader, was to sample…

…you guessed right, a Lobster Roll. And to induct our “fish newbie” into the world of tasty seafood that doesn’t have the nasty fish smell that causes an adverse reaction in some folks including Char. Luke’s Lobster was nearby, so we headed there to partake of a sample.

Char holding the Lobster Roll she’d been sampling

We ordered the small roll to share, because neither Liz or Char were confident they’d like it. But they chewed down on it and loved every bite. Tick. Job Done. I’m not sure they’d run 5K for a lobster roll, with the same gusto they’d run 5K for a month’s supply of Maltesers but it takes time to grow a mighty oak tree from an acorn so we need to be patient.

The Lobster roll was only a baby size at 6oz between three of us, so we explored a little further down the road and found somewhere for food. We thought of going into Shake Shack because they had a lovely menu but decided we have outlets of Shake Shack in the UK and we’d stick to an American menu as it was our last night here.

Margarita pizza

Fajita steak bowl with guacamole on a bed of rice

Mediterranean chicken bowl with olives and feta on a bed of rice

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Note: The last blog edition won’t be published until Thursday due to the time we’re flying.