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Dad writes:
Classic sightseeing/roadtrip sort of day, in rather classic early-April-in-New England weather (i.e. grey, wet, windy).
Started off dragging Chloe briefly round what I must admit is a bit of a boy destination, the US Submarine Corps museum and place where the first-ever nuclear submarine, the Nautilus, is now on display.
Then to Mystic, the pleasingly-named restored/rebuilt 17th Century port town that's completely unrelated to Clint Eastwood's Mystic River.First we saw the aquarium, with everything from cute sealions to horrible scary eels - Chloe touched a shark and a stingray, and gets cross if I say they were among the world's smaller sharks and singrays.Then into the "town" itself, where the tiny handful of visitors was massively outnumbered by hordes of under-employed docents just longing to find someone, anyone, to explain things to. And then 50 miles down the motorway to Newport, which is a fab place:we started by going round the Vanderbilts' massive seaside home, which is bigger, grander and massively much more opulent than it looks in the picture, and then cruising slowly round the cliff-top area where anyone who was anyone in late 1800s New York society built a seaside mansion, and then into the centre of town to find our hotel.
When we got there, we had the unusual experience of finding a note addressed to us pinned to the front door - it explained that since we were the only guests booked in for tonight, they'd decided to transfer us to a posher hotel on the waterfront and remain closed, which seemed a bit of a win-win for all concerned. And I must say, our waterfront hotel is very pleasant.
Later, we'll go and find a restaurant, and I wouldn't mind betting there won't be more than a couple of other occupied tables. Is being so out of season fun and cool, or is it a bit lonely and odd? More fun and cool if it was a touch warmer, I'd say.
Dad writes again (next day, Tuesday 5th, from Brockton Massachusetts, but for some infuriating reason this stupid program won't let me write a new entry so I have to paste today's entry onto yesterday's:
Dad writes:
OK, weather-wise, today was a day of pretty much no redeeming features.I suppose the fanatically-positive might say that it didn't start lashing down with rain till about lunchtime, and maybe that as the rain started the ferociously cold wind died down a bit. But, honestly, let's face it, it was a horrible day.
It started badly - and too early - for Chloe, awoken by the over-exuberant party of Eastern Europeans in the next room.From 7am they were not only talking very loudly and taking numerous phones calls from Lithuania or Estonia or wherever, they were also - she swears this is true - whistling. Definitely a bad start to the day.
It did get better.We resumed where we'd left off the previous day, going round Newport's Millionaires Row, a route that makes The Bishop's Avenue look like a council estate. And we stopped again to go round yet another Vanderbilt house - this time the one built for Alva, mad Irish suffragette troublemaker.
After that and some rather limited shopping, we left Newport, which we liked, and headed down across the Massachusetts border to New Bedford, where we found an excellent whaling museum.
Whaling museums have to grapple with a bit of an inherent conflict, because on the on hand they are, as the name implies, museums about whaling, but on the other hand whaling is completely unacceptable these days so they also have to be displays about the wonderfulness of whales and the need to preserve them at all costs.
These two themes can make for an uneasy combination, rather as if our own RAF museum in North London continued to celebrate our crushing aerial defeat of the Germans while adding extra galleries singing the praises of Wagner, Beethoven and Goethe. It wouldn't really work, would it.
Anyway, we came out in lashing rain saying wouldn't it be nice if there was a cosy coffee shop right next door where we could buy a drink and a sandwich. And of course there was, absolutely next door, and it was absolutely perfect except that maybe Chloe's Tuna Melt should have been called an Unmelted Tuna and Onions since that's what it was.
And after that we drove via Plymouth, where the pilgrim fathers came ashore (but would probably have stayed aboard if it had been raining as hard as it was today) and on to our motel here in Brockton, which is extremely similar to our motel the other night in Groton.
Not the most eventful of days, and with dinner in the steakhouse on the other side of the motorway to look forward to I suspect not the memorale of evenings.
But Boston tomorrow, which will be interesting, and I need to spend a bit of time with the guidebook now to figure out what the hell we're going to do there.
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