Kind of surreal to be at the Blue Lagoon in the morning and then dazzled by the lights of Niagara Falls at midnight. The marvels of modern day travel...

Another brilliant flight by Icelandic air had us in Toronto where the immigration guy held up the line to talk cricket with us. A couple of hours later (but actually around 4am in Iceland) the marvelous tack of Niagara was upon us. Im not even ashamed to admit how excited I was to see all the signs of the western world I know and love. The falls were pretty all lit up too.

By the light of day the falls were impressive but not breathtaking like Africa's Victoria Falls. We did the obligatory maid of the mist boat trip with hundreds of Asian tourists all jostling for prime photo spot. I almost thrust one overboard when she shoved her camera in my face and then dared complain about the picture I took (in my defense conditions were not ideal). Do I look like a professional photographer?

Onwards to Toronto! The area around Niagara is actually really beautiful so we took a little detour to the Icehouse and it's delicious ice wine. It's the home of wine slushies, sounds kind of gross, but actually amazing. So good a bottle is making its way to Australia.

As people had told me Toronto is just a big city. Turns out a big city with the main freeway closed for maintenance (though we saw NO workers) is a nightmare to drive in. Happy days.

The Toronto film festival was wrapping up the weekend we were there. I'd been stalking who was in attendance via the Internet but no dice. The lovely Jenna from our Scandy tour was kind enough to take us around town for a colourful city tour; "that's just a big f@cking building", and a lovely dinner to top things off.

Things took on a European flavor as we headed to French Canada. Was a long flat drive to Quebec City with a GPS from the 70's which wasn't entirely up to date with all the new highways. We saved the profanities for another day. I was on Moose patrol, once again the sneaky b*****s were hiding. Our greatest disappointment of the day came as slowly all the radio stations turned French on us. Not sure what we were expecting. The highlight was realizing I'd booked us into a 4 star hotel! Was right on top of the old town by the famous fairmont chateau. Bingo.

The old town of Quebec City is gorgeous; old buildings, narrow windy cobbled streets. Fabulous for aimless wandering. Completely charming and wow do they do some good food, especially dessert. When in Rome...

Montreal was our next destination, here is where the gps totally died. Again we checked ourselves and remained calm while driving around for an hour to find the hotel. Very grown up of us. The city itself is quite big and has a few different areas, the Latin Quarter being my favorite. What we saw of it was very cool but unfortunately that wasn't much due to constant driving rain. Emmett was at his happiest while we walked around for an hour and a half trying to find dinner in these less than perfect weather conditions.

Greyhound had us across the border and in Boston. What a fantastic city it is! Pretty expensive so we stayed in a hostel, turned out to be much nicer than many hotels I've stayed at.

The city is based around Boston Common, a huge park where people were playing baseball, socializing with dogs, running and smoking pot. Great for people watching. The people incidentally all seem to be super fit, attractive and friendly. I'd love to live there but would have to take up running.

Other than wandering we had some fabulous pizza (figs by Todd English, apparently a celebrity chef) and checked out the bar Cheers was based on. Being Boston is the home of American independence we got some history in too with the aqua duck tour where learnt about the Boston tea party and all it entailed, not tea and cakes as one could assume.

On our way out of Boston we popped into Harvard. Was great wandering around, don't judge me but all I could think about was Rory from Gilmour Girls (my mums fault). Did make us feel a little old and stupid being surrounded by all these young future astronauts, Drs. and presidents. Should have studied harder.

From Harvard we headed for the land of old money, Hyannis Cape Cod. Not sure what I was expecting but very green with gorgeous houses nestled amongst the growth. Very cute and clearly very expensive.

After dinner the plan was to head for Newport and stop at a hotel along the way. Being I'd driven a good chunk of America before I knew there were cheap motels everywhere. Turns out everywhere bar the stretch between Hyannis and Newport. Pushing midnight we finally found a rundown excuse for a motel. The lady at the desk looked straight out of one of those Walmart pictures. She proceeded to tell me the rooms are all smoking; "I'm a smoker and even i wouldn't stay here". What a saleswomen. Needless to say we pushed on.

Newport is an island and as soon as you cross the bridge you can smell money. The houses are huge, beautiful wooden ones painted in all different hues, and even bigger stone and brick numbers. By the look of the harbors everyone in town owns a boat and they don't do small boats.

The next stop on the way to New York was another gorgeous little coastal town, Mystic. Looks like a movie set. Plenty of the older folk wandering around and we could definitely see the appeal. If I was of the yachting type kicking back in the area in my twilight years would be nothing short of amazing.

Now here's where things got a little tricky. No gps units had been available in Boston so we were flying solo. Up to this point we'd been fine, but heading into New York without isn't ideal. Especially with no real map. Then we hit traffic, multiple lanes of it that didn't seem to be going anywhere. Lucky this was in the Bronx so Emmett could enjoy my rendition of J'Lo's 'Jenny from the Block' (don't be fooled by the rocks that I've got....). Id like to say my superior navigational skills got us to our hotel, but I would be lying. I had us heading over the George Washington bridge to New Jersey. Whoops. We finally made it to one of the best places in the world, Manhattan. A taxi and a run had us at a limo ready to attend a Yankees game.....which I'll tell you about another day :)