We set a new record for being ready on the coach on time, and big surprise, we had to wait for Barbara so she got clapped and whistled as she finally came on board a few minutes late. Barb is being badly affected by pollen and has been taking antihistamines to try and cope.

We set off for a leisurely journey through the countryside to Niagara Falls. We stopped along the way at Table Rock to hear the thunder of the falls and have our photo taken in front of the Niagara Falls Flower clock.

We arrived at Niagara Falls around lunchtime and Barb took us to the Duty Free shop where we were issued with a Bus number (ours was 10). The idea is that you can buy whatever you want now, and then tomorrow morning before we cross the border the coach will call by and pick up our goods. Many people took advantage of this, including Russ who found another jacket as a souvenir. It is also not polar fleece, we might add.

Barb then directed us across to catch the Maid of the Mist boat ride, which is included in our tour package. You will get wet! The access dock is 14 stories down from the surface of the roadway. They work the elevators in shifts with one side going down and the other side going up.

Once we arrived at the dock level we were issued with our ponchos. I am very glad to say that it was very large on me and I could shelter my camera under the poncho without getting anything wet other than my glasses and face. It was very cold.

Niagara Falls is in two sections. One part of the falls is on the US side of the river and this section is higher than the main area, but is also not as stable with many rock falls, so you can’t get as close to them as you can the Canadian section. It is in this section of the river that the falls split into a smaller section which is called the Bridal Veil.

The Maid of the Mist then ventures further along the river until you get within 50 meters of the thundering power of the Canadian section of Niagara Falls. It is very noisy and very windy with a lot of spray being directed against you. You can feel the engines of the boat shuddering through the deck to hold its place against the might of the torrent.

Many of the photos from this distance are just misty blurs. And if your camera is not waterproof then you would be extremely silly to leave it open to the elements for very long. The Maid of the Mist journey takes about 20 minutes. You can upgrade your ticket and take the cable car across the whirlpool section of the river and falls, and then do a guided walk behind the falls if you are so inclined. Neither Russ nor I wanted to do this.

We then had several hours in town while Barbara and Roger took the coach to the hotel and offloaded our luggage.

I need to mention at this point that Niagara Falls is not anything like I had imagined it would be. It is very much commercialised and tackier than Las Vegas – I kid you not. There are children’s rides and ghoulish spectres all along the main drag, interspersed with souvenir shops everywhere you look. I hated it, and so did most of the rest on the coach. They even were stupid enough to build a candy shop right on the edge of the viewing area and you can’t get a decent shot of the falls because this building is in the way.

They then confounded the issue and built not one, but TWO casinos along the strip area, and the iniquitous Starbucks. This section of Niagara Falls is a nightmare.

We went along to a designated viewing platform area where I went to stand on the seat to get a shot of the falls and almost broke my leg. I did succeed in bruising my shin rather convincingly, and it was quite swollen, stiff and tender. I had not packed any arnica…..

We went to Starbucks after that, which had a souvenir shop attached, and got ourselves a hot chocolate to go with our bananas and yoghurt. Russ had his phone with him so could read his book, but I had foolishly decided to be unencumbered with only my camera and had nothing else – no phone, no e-book, nothing. So I went exploring, which included the souvenir shop. They had a polar fleece jacket, but nothing in Russ’s size. However, the lady was very friendly and suggested that some of the other shops might still have their polar fleece out (as it was still cooler than some other places) and suggested that they might even have something in Russ’ size.

So, I went back and collected Russ and we set off on our hunt. We were eventually successful and he now has his polar fleece jacket. He won’t have to go back to Canada for a very long time.

The bus finally picked us up in the park, where Russ got some great shots of the squirrels. The hotel was a surprise, considering what we had seen in town, and was much better than we had expected.

We had time for Russ to do a bit of meditation before we collected in the foyer for our visit to Oh Canada Eh! Dinner show. We had some idea of what to expect from our previous tour in Canada where we had attended a dinner show at Kamloops and enjoyed it very much.

Both Barbara and Roger were attending the show as they had come to know several of the owners over the years, and had always been greatly entertained by the show whenever they had attended it. Roger had a particular soft spot for Klondike Kitty, one of the characters in the show, who is a bit of a vamp.

The meal was good, the actors were great and the show was hilarious. It is made us of skits about Canada’s history etc. The inventors of Trivial Pursuit wee Canadians and the show was based on the pie chart beginning with History and working its way through Arts and Entertainment, Sports etc. The main character is a French Canadian, and we have a Mountie, a hockey player, a lovelorn miner and the three girls who star in varying places. They all have lovely voices and the songs featured were made famous by Canadians or written by them. We were entertained by Shania Twain songs, Rosemary, I Love You, the Yodelling song from the same movie, “I’ll Be Calling You.ou.ou.ou.ou”, Ann Murray to name but a few.

We watched Roger wipe ears away from his eyes during one particular section with Klondike Kitty who played members of the audience off against each other, and then had to wipe ears from our own eyes when she proceeded to ogle them one again while singing another song. All in all, we had a most entertaining evening and meal before returning back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep and an even earlier than usual start to the day.

I woke up about 7:30am and read quietly until Russ surfaced about 8:30am. When we collected our room keys last night we had been provided with breakfast vouchers in the hotel for both mornings. With some trepidation we ventured to the restaurant.

I had a bowl of decent muesli and Russ ………you know. We also had a lovely pot of tea, so the meal was pleasant and only cost us $11.00 each.

After breakfast we took our time preparing to walk downtown and visit the Eaton Shopping Centre. This is the premier shopping mall for Toronto, and although it is big it does not come close to Chadstone. There is a collection of shops, some of which are the expensive ones and others with reasonable prices. I found a beautiful jacket but it was $295.00 – you know, champagne taste and beer barrel budget – besides which, I couldn’t justify buying another jacket when I don’t need it (unfortunately). Russ says the credit card is generally safe when I shop as I am too practical.

Anyway, we wandered around for a while. The weather is drizzling and very humid, so I am glad we were not going on the harbour. We did get Russ his Canada jacket, but it was not the one he really liked which we were unable to find in Toronto. They have already geared up for the summer season here and the jacket he wanted was heavy polar fleece.

I got a lovely set of ear-rings as my souvenir so am slowly adding to my collection.

We bought some fruit on the way back to the hotel, and Russ finally found some decent tea bags. Russ is doing his meditation while I write in the diary, and we will take our excess luggage back to the post office a bit later and send it on home so we can make weight for our domestic flight from New York to San Diego.

Tomorrow we have a little sleep-in (15 minutes) and Barbara has already warned us that we have an extra early rise the following day when we leave Niagara Falls for Lancaster in the US. She has intimated that crossing back into the States may be a verrrrrrry lengthy experience and we are to be prepared to be kind and cheerful while we go through our paces. It may turn out that we go through fairly easily, but at least she has warned us it may be otherwise.

We decided not to take part in the Dinner tonight at the CN Tower so will get an early night once more and hopefully, be prepared for tomorrow.

Went back to the post office and bought a box for the items to be shipped home. Once we put the items inside and addressed the box it was back into line to wait for our turn again. The box costs $6.00, and the postage for the box was $96.00. It will still be worth it not to have to pay excess on the airline. We may also arrive home before it does as the lady said it is expected to take 4 – 6 weeks by surface mail.

We went looking for a geo-cache on the way back to the hotel. There were a lot of people around (muggles) while we were looking and they started to yell ‘getting warmer’ half way through the search. We all ended up laughing and they said they have assisted many a person to locate the geo cache as it is a micro-cache and is magnetic. Russ finally located it and we signed the book before returning to the hotel. We will go out later and get some tea.

We had our bags packed and outside the door by 7:15am and then went for our walk to the pub again. They have hot oatmeal in a bowl with brown sugar and hot milk. It was yummy and set me up for the day of travelling. Russ had his usual breakfast – French toast covered in maple syrup with pats of butter.

The whirlies were not quite so pronounced this morning but still providing a warning to take it easy.

The bus trip today is along the St Lawrence River and we have a stop at Ivy Lea to take a tour of the Thousand Islands, from which the salad dressing gets its name and origin. Belts of resistant rock are exposed in several areas of the river, such as the famous Thousand Islands section. This narrow gulf of Lake Ontario is studded with islands which are known for their tranquil beauty.

The St. Lawrence River is among the world’s greatest river systems and has the highest annual discharge of any Canadian river at 447 cubic kilometres (km) per year. No other river in the world discharges more water into the Atlantic Ocean and only the Mississippi River has a greater discharge in North America. The river is the chief outlet of the Great Lakes and travels more than 1200 km. It flows from the northeast end of Lake Ontario past Montreal to Quebec City where it forms the huge Gulf of St. Lawrence estuary. The entire St. Lawrence River System, including the Great Lakes, spans a distance of around 3200 km and drains an area of approximately one million square kilometres. It provides 16% of the world’s fresh water supply.

The border between Canada and the US runs down the middle of the river, which means that some of the islands are Canadian and the others are American. The section of the St Lawrence River at Ivy Lea hosts the world’s smallest international bridge at just three metres long. It goes from one island with one house to a small island without residents. Many of the houses in this area are holiday homes.

The Canadian gentleman who owns the island with the bridge has been heard to comment that when he argues with his wife he crosses the border until things die down once again. The only things visible on the US Island is an old telegraph pole, no longer in service.

Many of the inhabited islands are supplied with electricity and phone lines through cables under the water.

We had a beautiful morning for the river cruise and the sights are very interesting. Hope the photos turn out okay. One of the islands on the American side of the river was the home of George Boldt, a Prussian immigrant who made good in the hotel industry and ended up as general manager of the Waldorf Astoria in New York. It was his chef who made the Thousand Island dressing so famous, and George Boldt was the first man to make room service a part of the hotel business which is so big today.

Boldt Castle, located on Heart Island in the Thousand Islands of the Saint Lawrence River, along the northern border of New York State, is a major landmark and tourist attraction in its region. Heart Island is part of the Town of Alexandria, in Jefferson County.

In 1900 the Boldts launched an ambitious construction campaign to build a huge masonry structure, one of the largest private homes in America. They engaged the architectural firm G. W. & W. D. Hewitt and hundreds of workers for a six-story “castle”, a major international landmark. In addition, four other masonry structures on the island are architecturally notable. Equally distinctive is a huge yacht house on a neighboring island where the Boldts had another summer home and a vast estate, incorporating farms, canals, a golf course, tennis courts, stables, and a polo field.

The construction of Boldt Castle ceased abruptly in early 1904 after the death of Boldt’s wife, Louise Kehrer Boldt. For 73 years, the castle and other stone structures were left exposed to the harsh winter weather and occasional vandals.

The Thousand Islands Bridge Authority acquired Heart Island and the nearby yacht house in 1977, for one dollar, under the agreement that all revenues obtained from the castle operation would be applied towards restoration, so that the island would be preserved for the enjoyment of future generations.

In the two decades after acquiring the property, the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority spent some fifteen million dollars for restoration and improvements here, and work continues annually. The initial goal of the restoration of Heart Island was not to finish what had not been completed, but to restore the island to the state it was in when construction was halted. Improvements have gone beyond that stage, however; a stained glass dome, marble floor, and grand staircase woodwork, for instance, now seen in the main hall, were not original but are modern innovations.

We didn’t get to visit inside the castle but were very impressed with the structure itself.

The St Lawrence River is very deep in many places, but around the islands themselves the water becomes much shallower and is so clear you can see the bottom as you cruise along.

After the river cruise we had a short coach ride to the town of Kingston where we stopped for lunch. It can be very annoying trying to shop for a particular item in Canada and the US as they do things differently than Australia and you can find yourself floundering because you have no idea where to shop for a particular item. Some drug stores are supermarkets and others are only pharmacy. Some convenience stores only carry certain items and others carry a greater range. One thing they don’t carry in large numbers is a variety of tea. Russ is having a lot of trouble getting plain black tea. We will see how we go tomorrow.

The afternoon coach run was fairly lengthy and Barbara played the dvd Fly Home something or other with Anna Pacquin about the Canada geese she led to the migration. I had my eyes closed for most of the time and Russ had his ears in.

We had an afternoon rest stop about two hours from Toronto and arrived safely about 5:15pm. This is the one city where you do not have to use an authorised local guide so Barbara provided us with a commentary while Roger drove around the main area of the city. This city is not quaint in any way, shape or form, and has very tall skyscrapers along the skyline.

We had a photo stop at the Municipal Building before we continued on our way and finally arrived at the Best Western Primrose Hotel about 5:30pm. Our room is quite roomy and has a fridge but no electric jug, just the coffee maker machine.

Russ desperately needed to do some meditation so I read quietly while he did so. We then wandered down to the Restaurant, where the meals were moderately priced, and Russ had a steak while I had chicken fettucine.

We get to sleep in properly tomorrow morning as Russ and I have not put our names down to do the Toronto Harbour Cruise. The weather is supposed to be grey and overcast with showers and even colder for our visit to Niagara Falls later in the week.

We only have two weeks left of our journey, and have decided it might be a good idea to find a post office tomorrow and send some stuff home, rather than wait for Washington DC.

Woke up with only a touch of the whirlies this morning but will need to take it easy for the day so it doesn’t get worse and spoil the holiday.

Today we were allowed to sleep in – for 15 minutes. Bags were to be outside the doors at 7:15am and the bus was to leave at 8:15am. Already spoke about breakfast so we will not venture into that territory any further!

Today is the second shortest hop between places so we are expected to arrive in Ottawa about 10:30am. I kept my eyes closed for most of the journey which helped considerably, and Russ informed Barbara I would need to stay at the hotel and not join in the gallivanting around the city that was to take place. We are staying at the Hotel Cartier Place.

I was in luck and our room had already been prepared so they let me go straight up and put myself to bed, Russ joined the rest of the group and went on their local tour.

The rooms are actually suites. Isn’t it a pain when the best accommodation you find is in places where you will only be staying for one night? In our suite we have a kitchen, stove, dishwasher, microwave and fridge. We have a sitting room and a dining area. We have seats and a table on our balcony, and a television in both the sitting room and the bedroom. Mind you, I don’t believe we have turned a TV on so far unless it was to find out the services provided in the hotel. There is even a Laundromat on our floor!

Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. Other cities were larger than here but Queen Victoria felt that they were also too close to water supplies by which the United States could cause more trouble for England, so Ottawa it was.

During the Second World War Queen Julienne of Holland and her daughters were given refuse in Canada Once the war had ended and she returned to her own country she sent Canada 20,000 tulip bulbs as a thank you gift. Holland has continued this practice every year since then, and you can see tulips everywhere you go. Ottawa hosts a Tulip Festival every year.

Ottawa is the site of the Parliament Hill, the Canadian Mint and the Rideau Canal which was cut to gain access to Lake Ontario. It also has a hexagonal National Arts Centre, the Canadian Museum of Civilization and many stately residences and embassies.

A brief indication of distances travelled along this tour:

New York City to Boston               348km

Boston to Quebec City                   639km

Quebec City to Montreal              253km

Montreal to Ottawa                        200km

Ottawa to Toronto                          454km

Toronto to Niagara Falls                130km

Niagara Falls to Lancaster             555km

Lancaster to Washington DC       196km

Washington DC to New York       364km

Russ arrived back from the city guided tour about 2:00pm and had a banana for me. He was unable to find any shop that sold yoghurt, and almost got lost, which is unreal for him as he has a fantastic nose for distances and headings.

Whilst I had my banana Russ headed off to do his meditation.

Whilst in Montreal we went geo-caching and found one on our way to the diner where we had tea that night. There is another geo-cache just a block or two away from our hotel here in Ottawa and we will have a look for it this afternoon whilst finding somewhere to eat.

The token left in the geo-cache that Russ located in Paris has already been in several places throughout France and is now in Germany.

Unless you like eating a big breakfast then you are a whole lot of outta luck for choices in the hotels we have stayed at in both US and Canada, and that would be me. By the way, Lyn, your little brother will not need any French toast for at least a year as he has had it smothered in maple syrup every morning!

We were all ready for the bus to pull out before the required 8:00am so both Barbara and Roger were very pleased. We had a quick stop mid-morning for elevenses and Russ and I walked to Tim Horton’s for hot chocolate.

Tim Horton was a very successful hockey player in Canada some years ago whose family are restaurateurs. He agreed for his name to be used by the family and they opened up a donut shop. They even serve the centre pieces that were cut out to make the hole in the donut dough and sell them as Tim’s bits. The hot chocolate was good.

When we arrived in Montreal (pronounced Mon-ray-al, an adaptation of Mount Royal which is the remaining hill in the area), we were dropped off at the waterfront in the old city area and left to go for a walk and get some lunch. In many places here you cannot get your hotel room until after 4:00pm.

We walked around much of the old city (miles of it) while locating a shop that sold yoghurt. We had our bananas from yesterday to complete the meal.

While we wandered around Barbara and Roger delivered our luggage to the Best Western Ville-Marie and came back to pick us up for our guided tour of the city, both old and new. Our local tour guide was Dennis, but in keeping with the previous ‘E’s’ we dropped the ‘D’.

Montreal is very different to Quebec and many more people here speak English. They are also nowhere near as snobbish as those in Quebec. The weather has been very warm for this time of the year and we are all wearing t-shirts.

Montreal is one of Canada’s largest cities. It was home to Expo ’67 and the 1976 Summer Olympics. Montreal has won several UN awards for their attempts to include the historical with the modern and to link them together as the new is being built.

The Montreal World Trade Centre is one such place. The inside wall on the left hand side as you enter the atrium is part of the original wall which encircled the city many hundreds of years ago. It was built to keep out the native Indians who lived on Mount Royal at that time, and later, the American who were at war with mother Britain. Our local tour included St Joseph’s Oratory, the lookout atop Mount Royal, Notre Dame Church (where past President Pierre Trudeau was married, and buried some years later), and the Seminary of St Sulpice which was built by the first missionary settlers.

We had to drive a bit out of the way to get to our hotel in Montreal because of road work constructions, but when we finally got there it was worth the wait. We stayed at Best Western Ville-Marie, and there was enough room in the bedroom to swing a horse, and enough in the bathroom to swing a cat.

I had a touch of the whirlies tonight so I have taken my tablets and gone to bed early, 7:00pm. Hope it improves tomorrow. We had room service for our evening meal so I didn’t need to do anymore walking.

However, a simple steak with only French fries, a chicken kebab with roast potato, and a crepe cost $80.00. It was made worse the next morning when breakfast (Russ had Canadian with pancakes and French toast, and I had All Bran – which tasted like sawdust – not that I am in the habit of eating sawdust, plus two cups of tea) when we were given a bill for $40.00. We are on a diet for the rest of the day.

Breakfast was an all you can eat buffet of pancakes with maple syrup, bacon, scrambled eggs, sausages, ham, baked beans and chips – and everyone hoed in. Our guide through the distillery was Dianne. She was very grateful to have a small group for once as the tapping of the maple trees has just finished and she has had all day groups for three weeks straight. As she does the cooking for breakfast, lunch and dinner you can well understand that she is very tired. Also a very knowledgeable lady when it comes to explaining the process of maple sap collection.

Sap from the maple trees is collected during winter when the snow covers the roots of the trees. Many of the maple syrup farms now harvest with the plastic piping system instead, however at the Sugar Shack they harvest the old fashioned way with tap and bucket from a naturally grown maple thicket that has been in operation for 300 years. The workers on snowmobiles visit each tree each day and collect the sap water into drums and take it back for distillation. It takes 40 litres of maple water to produce 1 litre of maple syrup.

We then made our purchases at the Souvenir Shop before we returned to the hotel to collect those few people who chose not to attend the breakfast. We the travelled to the city centre where we picked up our local tour guide, Eric.

Barbara assures us it is purely coincidental that our local tour guides have all been males whose names begin with the letter ‘E’ – Eddie in New York, Elliot in Boston, Eric in Quebec.

French is spoken in Quebec. They only occasionally condescend to speak English if they have to do so. Other provinces in Eastern Canada are bi-lingual and English is taught in schools along with French.

Barbara has also warned us not to buy too much in Quebec as items here are more expensive than other places in Canada. It must be that the French believe they are superior or something.

Eric took us through the old city which is the only walled city still in operation north of Mexico. It really is a pretty place. The weather is superb, an even the Australians (myself included) are in t-shirts today as the temperature is 24 degrees and there is hardly a murmur of wind.

We were left to meander the streets of the city for a couple of hours after the guided tour ended, and Russ and I went for a walk and bought our hot chocolate at Starbucks before sitting in their eating area in two very comfortable chairs and reading our books. Russ ended up falling asleep.

Around 2:00pm we wandered down to the Tourist Information area to use their facilities as Starbucks was closed due to renovations, before sitting in the sunshine in the park area and waiting for Roger and the bus to arrive at 2:30pm.

We arrived back at the hotel about 3:00pm and Russ is meditating while I downloaded the cameras and batch converted the photos ready for upload later today.

Tomorrow we leave at 8:00am for Montreal.

We had breakfast after we had put our luggage outside the room’s door for pick-up to the coach. Roger said we had recorded a first by all being on board the coach and ready to roll with two minutes to spare this morning.

It did not take us long to get out of Boston as traffic was light so early on a Saturday morning. The passing scenery is lovely and Barbara has taken the opportunity of a captured audience by passing round some literature on the customs of pilgrims and the area we are passing through.

Franconia Notch State Park which opened yesterday, was our morning stop. It is very picturesque and I hope the photos come out well.

It is now later in the afternoon and I have had a very productive time aboard the coach which comes equipped with power points every second seat. I have completed my batch conversions of photos from RAW to JPEG and they are now ready for uploading as soon as we get good internet connection.

During the time on board we have stopped for lunch at Bath in New Hampshire. Unfortunately any opportunity to photo the covered bridge was undone when we arrived to find they are in the process of maintenance before the summer proper and it is closed and covered with poly tarps.

We had a large ice cream each for lunch from the Top of the Pops Ice cream store. It is filled with autographed memorabilia from many of the legends of the past, including the guitar that Paul McCartney played at the Cavern in Liverpool.

After that we continued until we came to the Duty Free shop on the US side of the US Canadian Border post and I purchased a beautiful bracelet. I only went into the store to use the loo (and that’s the story I’m sticking with).

We then travelled a few hundred metres and we had to stop once again to clear the Canadian Border and Customs. We were led off the coach by Barbara and Roger came last. We were not able to enter the coach again until the last person with Roger had entered the building from the opposite door.

Barbara said we had created a world record in that the entire coach load of 44 passengers and her and Roger had passed through the Customs building in eleven minutes. She also told us to expect great delays in a week’s time when we try to re-enter the US from the Canadian side.

We arrived in Quebec (pronounced Kebec, believe it or not) around 6:00pm as predicted by Roger and we are staying for two nights at the Universel Hotel (French spelling), which is about 10 kilometres from the city centre. It is a pretty spot and there is a supermarket around the corner with food stores so we are set for tea tonight and tomorrow night as Russ and I have decided not to go for a cocktail at the Chateau Frontenac (big surprise there!) before tea at a French Canadian Restaurant where they will probably have snails on the menu.

We met probably half the bus at the supermarket, including Roger and Barbara after we had bought tea at the French Italian place. Russ had Spaghetti Carbonara and I had Chicken La Cacciatore. There make it in front of you and it was interesting to watch. It also didn’t take very long.

We stocked up on some yoghurt, water, biscuits and tea bags as we have a coffee maker in our room. If you take out the plastic bit that holds the coffee grounds (as it makes the water taste like old coffee) you can make a half way decent cup of tea.

We had an early night as we are going to have breakfast at a maple syrup distillery tomorrow morning called the Sugar Shack, and have to be in the bus by 7:30am. And Collingwood won!

We discovered last night that the air conditioner in our room does not work so this morning, as we headed out for our tour of Boston, we reported it at the desk.  The staff could not have been more helpful. The young lady promised to have the electrician look at it while we were away and asked us to check in with her when we got back for the report. She also indicated that if they were not able to re-set it they would relocate us to another room.

The hotel is a four star hotel and the accommodation is lovely. It is unique in that there are no outside windows in the rooms. The rooms are centred round an inside quadrangle and the window in the room looks out onto a carpeted relaxation area.

Boston is a busy city, and unlike New York, most of it was not planned. The streets wind through the city and we had to leave the coach in order to see the areas of interest. Boston is the place where Paul Revere completed his successful night ride telling the outlying areas that ‘The British are coming!’

Our local tour guide this morning was Elliot. We walked a fair distance while he recited the points of historical interest. We visited the church which was the headquarters of the Sons of Liberty, and where the two lanterns were displayed in the steeple to let other outlying areas now that the British would be coming by sea. As per Longfellow’s poem ‘One by Land, two by sea.’

We entered the church and sat down in the historical pews which are enclosed by wooded sides with a door for entry and exit. It was explained to us by Hayley that the sides were built around the family pew so that a hot brick or two could be used on the floor to allow the family members to stay warm during the cold winter times. We also were visited by the black cat that does not belong to the church but obviously thinks the church belongs to him. He was in excellent conditions and just made himself at home, even going so far as to walk along the top of some of the pew enclosures to get where he wanted to go when people were in his way.

We finished out walking and coach tour around lunch time and were dropped off at Faneuil Hall and the Quincy Market. We grabbed a bite to eat and some fruit before we sat in the sunshine. Although the weather has been sunny the wind is very cold.

Russ has decided that taking his waterproof is a much better way to keep the wind off him as his big coat is too thick and he gets hot, but only wearing the sleeveless vest is too cold. After a pleasant time in the sunshine while many a graduation ceremony took place around the square we decided to grab a hot drink and make our way back to the pickup point for the coach.

Russ has found Starbuck’s Hot Chocolate and there will be no going back.

Russ found a Victoria’s Secret in the market and I got 7 tubes of body cream for $32.00. Now I have to carry it with me until we get to Washington and send a lot of stuff home so we can make our luggage limit for the US domestic flight from New York to San Diego later.

Roger could not get a park at the spot we had been informed would be the pick-up spot at 2:00pm so he had to travel round the block again. Just as he has manoeuvred into an area in the next block one of the coaches where we were standing decided to leave. We stood in the street in the parking area until Roger could arrive and then climbed back on board.

Some of the tour passengers had decided to stay in the general area and make their way to the Cruise spot later in the afternoon. The rest of us returned to the Holiday Inn for an hour or so of rest and relaxation. Russ did his meditation and I read a book with the timer on in my phone in case I succumbed to sleep also.

We checked in at the Reception about the air conditioner and were informed that it had been re-set and should now be working, which it was.

We were back on board the coach by 3:40 and on our way back into the city for our Harbour Cruise. We had both picked up our coats for this one as the wind chill factor late in the afternoon would be extreme.

The Harbour cruise was lovely – cold, but lovely. The sun was heading towards the horizon and the light was excellent, so I hope some of the photos turn out well. We passed the USS Constitution which is a three mast warships and is still sailed today out into the harbour during 4^th July celebrations, surrounded by all sorts of water craft including the fire tenders who shoot red, white and blue coloured water into the air. The day is shared by thousands annually. The USS Constitution is sometimes referred to as ‘Old Ironsides’ because it is built of old oak and the planks are 20 inches thick. During a naval engagement the cannon balls bounced off her sides.

Once we had all assembled back in the coach after our harbour cruise we headed off for our evening dinner at Uno’s where we were presented with our own Boston Lobster. Each person eating the lobster is provided with a plastic bib (a necessity), a nut cracker, a claw fork, two napkins and a packaged wet one for after.

The entrée was clam chowder served in a mug and we sat with two Australians from Wollongong – Jenny and Des. They had steak and chicken when we had the lobster and made our mess. The dessert was a brownie with cream and ice-cream. Overall the evening was good.

We bussed back to the hotel to pack our bags for tomorrow. Bags are to be out by 7:00am and the coach is due to leave by 8:00am.

We had to cram things into our suitcases as we now had extra souvenirs to cart from place to place.

However, we had completed breakfast and taken our hand luggage down to the lobby in plenty of time. There are 44 of us on the motor coach. Our tour director is Barbara, and our motor coach operator (not allowed to call them bus drivers anymore) is Roger.

We are 1 Dutch passport, 1 Singapore, 1 Malaysia, 2 Canada, 2 Israel, 7 United States, 13 British and 17 Australians. We picked up a tour guide for our coach trip around New York (part of the tour itself) whose name was Eddie. He was entertaining but spent far too much time telling us who lived where with whom and singing (not that he had a bad voice….) and not enough time on some of the more interesting historical facts.

However, he did come up with an interesting snippet now and then:

Donald Trump – puts his name on all his erections!

The Insonia Hotel – the owner did not want to pay any fire insurance when he built the building and to be able to construct without the insurance he had to build the walls two feet thick throughout – interior as well as exterior, floors included. Many musicians have taken up residence in there for that exact reason. They can practice at any time of the day or night and cannot be heard by others outside the apartment sometimes in other rooms within the apartment.

The Dakota Building where John Lennon was killed. Yoko Ono still lives there and now owns another five apartments. They sell from 2.5 million each. Many have as much as five bedrooms with ensuites in some of them. Lauren Bacall and Roberta Flack still live in the Dakota.

Times Square – the advertiser’s paradise. It is actually a city by-law that each building that fronts Times Square must display advertising on 18% of that outside surface. It also brings in as much as $55 million dollars per year to the advertiser.

Madison Square Garden – is a circle.

Bowling Green Park is the oldest park in New York City dating back to the 1600s.

Battery Park is also called Castle Clinton and has nothing to do with Bill. It dates back to George Clinton who was the 4^th Vice President of the United States.

7296 children have been killed by guns since the 2010 political campaign.

The bus travelled west of the East River (actually a tidal estuary) and was going north on South Street.

We then travelled to the 9/11 Memorial but the bus tour did not visit it. Eddie took them to a place where they could look down on it from the 2^nd floor of a building. Russ and I stayed in the coach and talked with Roger.

If only we had known ………. We stopped at Grand Central Station for lunch and had an hour to wander around to our heart’s content. I am still mourning the loss of the Central Park opportunity.

Back on the coach (without Eddie now) we headed out of New York. We were expected to take about five and a half hours to reach Boston, depending on the traffic, but it actually took us until 7:00pm to reach our hotel – the Brookline Holiday Inn. We had a rest stop during the afternoon thank goodness, and were able to use the facilities and grab a drink.

Once we got to the hotel we were given our keys and had a welcome drink of punch with biscuits waiting for us. We were given the list of optional excursions that would be available on this tour and tonight we are expected to see Barbara and pay for them.

Russ and I opted for Room Service, and as we are in Boston, I had clam chowder. It was almost as good as the bench pin chowder we had in Russell, New Zealand, and that is really saying something. Russ had a steak and he said it was delicious. I then went out to pay Barbara while Russ got ready for bed, and somewhere I lost my key card for the room.

Well, I am riding in the motor coach on the way from Boston to Quebec so I have a chance to catch up on the diary.

Back in New York – we had a nice breakfast after a good night’s sleep and walked to the first available pick up point for the bus. We saw lots of interesting things and stopped off at the new World Trade Centre and Ground Zero which is now called 9/11 Memorial. We had to go to one place to get the ticket (free but you are asked for a contribution and $5.00 per person is the expected amount, and if there were two of you and you contributed the $10.00 then you got a wrist band with the 9/11 Memorial written on it) before we then had to walk about a mile and queue up to get inside the memorial area.

We had to have our tickets ready while we meandered through the line and then we had to take off our coats, belts, take out pones out of our bags, and all of this had to be put into the plastic trays and go through the scanner while we walked through magnometers – once again.

We spent a good hour at the site taking pictures and walking around reading the names of those who were killed in the plane crashes along with those first responders that lost their lives trying to help people from the collapsing buildings. Our guide this morning on the bus said that the entire area for approximately four blocks in every direction were literally covered in thick, white dust as though it had snowed in this one place.

There are two ponds with spectacular water features – one the North and one the South – and these are constructed exactly on the spots of the original towers that collapsed, so you can get a good idea of the size of the ponds. There are lawn areas surrounding both ponds and reflections seats throughout the park area. In the background is the construction site for the new World Trade Centre.

We then caught the bus after we grabbed some items for lunch from Duane Reade, which is a kinda little supermarket with a pharmacy on site. Food is relatively cheap here. We got a good lunch with croissant, yoghurt and fruit for $6.00 total, which we ate on the bus while going to Grand Central Station. We were starting to push for time at this point and it didn’t look like I was going to get back to Central Park.

Grand Central Station is a grand old dame. It is interesting that in the 70s the builders of New York were in the process of ‘modernising’ the city and wanted to tear down many of the older building and replace them with glass tower monstrosities. Jackie Kennedy Onassis led the charge for thought and reason and many who were horrified at the idea of losing iconic sites joined with her, and they saved the day. The builders were allowed to renovate inside but had to keep certain features and all the facades. Grand Central Station was one of these locations.

However, in this case they were not allowed to change the insides. The public raised over $20 million dollars to have the whole station cleaned up. They left a small patch of roof area one foot by two feet uncleaned so that you can see what it had looked like before the cleaning. The roof is so high that the uncleaned area looks like a dirty spot from the floor area, but the effect is just the same.

The roof of Grand Central is domed and is covered with the zodiac star chart and could not be seen before the cleaning. When it was first completed it was discovered that the star chart was back to front. The owners of the station at that time ended up by saying it had been deliberate and was the world as seen from God’s perspective. See – New York – the land of the advertiser. They can sell anything!

The station is on three levels. When you enter the station you are on the main concourse. If you go downstairs you get to the bathroom facilities and a whole lot of food stores and other shops. If you go upstairs it is to the banking area.

By the time we had taken all the appropriate photos and left the station it was time to head back to the hotel – no time for Central Park and all those flowers and trees in bloom.

We walked for miles once again during the course of the day so Russ was badly in need of his meditation, and I just needed the rest. We then walked back to W 50^th Street and 9^th Avenue where we found Gossip – a bar and restaurant. Russ ordered Spaghetti Marinara and I had fish and chips and ordered them as entrees. For once we thoroughly enjoyed our meal and ate everything.

Early start tomorrow morning. Bags out at 6:30AM (dear heaven!) and leave at 7:45am for our trip around the city.

Russ and I have both decided that New York is a friendly place and, although it would be expensive to live here, it is a nice place.