Pahk Yah Cah in Hahvahd Yahd

Daniel is devastated. We've been in the US of A for roughly 36 hours now, and we haven't come across one McDonalds. Not one. He's questioning whether we're actually in America or not, and I think he has a point. Boston is decidedly less "American" than we assumed it would be - we think this comes down to the fact that we're staying in Back Bay and have only been frequenting the tourist areas (i.e. Beacon Hill), which overlap with the old and expensive areas. There's a lot of money in Boston, but the Bostonians seem to know what to do with it. Even the matte black Aston Martin racing down a main street didn't seem as nouveau riche as it perhaps should have... The houses are spectacular, (most) people are dressed like they stepped out of a posh British catalogue and Daniel, by comparison, is currently dancing at the end of the bed with his boxers pulled up around his armpits. Really.

Yesterday we took it easy, wandered around to find our bearings, and ended up having Sunday Brunch on the 52nd floor of the Prudential Tower. The views were as good as you'd imagine, and the croque monsieur was even better. I promised my Mum that I wouldn't let this turn into a food blog, but I'm going to struggle with that. It's just that food is so ... American, and it already seems to be such a defining part of a particular location. There's a lot of it, too. Daniel is now pretending to skip with an invisible skipping rope - I don't think he realises I can see him. If yesterday is any indication, we'll be doing enough walking to (hopefully) counteract most of the calories.

For the most part, any Americans we've encountered have been extremely friendly, though it's true that their sense of humour is either lacking or incompatible with ours. Even those we came across in NEW YORK CITY, where I'm sure they're supposed to be worse than usual, were great. They’re just … abrupt. Efficious is probably the best way to put it. Within 15 minutes of getting off the plane from Tokyo we’d had 3 or 4 conversations with very friendly, very helpful people. The Customs officer told us he hated us when we specified our itinerary. On the airtrain from one terminal to another we ran into one of the air hostesses from the flight who recognised us, said hello, asked us about our holiday and proceeded to ensure that we knew where we were going and how we were getting there.

We got there alright, although by the time we checked into our hotel in Boston we'd been through 4 flights and had been in transit for roughly 42 hours. We felt pretty good, all things considering, and slept well the first night. Not so the second night - it's now 0730 and we've both been up since 0330. Never mind - we managed to use our jet lag productively and have booked tickets to the Boston Bruins (ice hockey) for tomorrow night.

We've acquired an American sim card and can thus be contacted on +18573993604. The best email address to contact us on is dskippin@gmail.com, or you can comment on these blog posts.

Today we're going to walk the Freedom Trail, then collapse in exhaustion after lunch.

Photos to come. Over and out.