Fenway Boston, Massachusetts

We took the Greyhound Bus for the four hour journey up the east coast. Contrary to everything we'd expected about the Greyhound it turned out to be cleaner and have a foot extra leg room than BA ecconomy class. it is with much relief we get out of the station and manage to breathe clean air and actually see the sky that is not obscured by skyscrapers.

The first impression of Boston is how clean it is, followed by how English the place feels.

Boston is the oldest city in modern America, but this means that the oldest buildings are around 200 years old. The people are genuinely friendly and interested in you - this takes a lot of getting used to. Even the street bum's seem a class above from their east coast neighbours: one has a sign that reads 'NEED MONEY FOR BEER AND DRUGS' while another drinking from a paper bag at half nine in the morning shouts at me "I would have kept the wig on if i was you baldy!"

Geoff lives in an area called Fenway at the back of the Red Sox stadium, which is one of the posher parts of Boston. Brilliantly Geoff is back in the U.K for the first few day we are here so we have to make are own way around. There are a few cracking bar's around the area including the Boston Beer works which becomes our local. Sandra's drink of choice in here is a blueberry ale - which is essentially a lager with a handfull of blue berries dunked in - like the mueller fruit corners of beers. We also have to produce ID's in most of the bars we go into and still nobody can understand a word of my accent.

The next day we go to downtown Boston and buy some more cheap shoes. Walking around the city it's hard not to notice all the buildings used in the back drop of the film The Departed. We also visit the Holocaust memorial which is a series of glass towers with POW numbers and quotes set into the glass panels, you can walk through the towers as spoke streams out of the grill on the sidewalk. It is extremely moving and only diminshed by the fact that someone has allowed a Circus(!?) to set up over the road. Only in America....

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