Going Up Country

Goodbye Cape Cod! We loved the unspoilt nature of your coastlines, your clapperboard buildings and your clam chowder, but now we need to explore the area further to the north in New England.
We left the Cape in torrential rain which slowed us down even further than the conservative speed limits enforced very vigilantly by the law. To break our journey we decided to stop off at Cambridge on the outskirts of Boston, in order to visit Harvard University.

Unfortunately, two of the buildings housing art collections are closed for refurbishment until next year, but it was interesting to wander around the beautiful tree-lined grounds ( housing a large sculpture by Henry Moore and a statue of John Harvard, the university's main benefactor), and admire the different styles of architecture.

I hadn't realised until today that John Harvard was an Englishman and that he and I share the same birthday to boot!

I thought the building by Le Corbusier was exceedingly ugly, but I'm sure there are many who admire it. We lost ourselves in the Harvard University Book Store for a while and Jim supplemented his holiday reading with a book of short stories by Ian McEwan called Between the Sheets. I'm reading Crossing Over, a story set partly in New England, so much more appropriate, I think!
Before leaving Harvard Square,

we took a brief look at Christ's Church where George Washington and his wife worshipped and where Theodore Roosevelt taught Sunday school classes.

 Then it was time to make our way through Johnny Appleseed country (where they give away free apples at the rest stops, or service stations as we would call them), and hit the Mohawk Trail. Now we're talking real rural countryside. There is little except mountains, trees and the Connecticut River - spectacular scenery on an enormous scale. More of this tomorrow.

Saturday on the Cape with the "Codders"

The first chore of the day was to collect our clean clothes from the laundromat. In need of a spot of relaxation  after that, we drove to Hyannis where we boarded the Cape Cod Central Railroad train for a scenic two hour trip to Cape Cod Canal which is seven miles long, separating Cape Cod from mainland Massachusetts and was dug out of glacial rock.

We rode alongside cranberry bogs for a significant part of the journey and discovered that the word cranberry is a derivation of craneberry, so called because the flower resembles a crane.

The cranberry is an important agricultural crop in Cape Cod and it grows in sand which is irrigated by stretches of water known as kettle holes.

 The land is very marshy

 and in days gone by, when cows grazed the marshland, stone cow tunnels where built under the railway tracks that were 'one cow high by one cow wide'. In the course of our journey we saw many interesting birds such as osprey, bittern, blue herons and cormorants.but we didn't manage to photograph any as the 'engineer' had given all passengers strict instructions to keeps heads, arms and hands inside the carriage at all times! We reached Cape Cod Canal, the widest man-made canal in the world, just as a huge barge was sailing by.

 Jim's dream Dutch barge fades into insignificance by comparison! Because of tides between Cape Cod Bay and Buzzards Bay, the canal is like a river which changes direction four times a day with the tide and today it was pretty fast flowing. All in all it was quite an amazing feat of man-made engineering.

In the afternoon we decided to go to Chatham fish port to watch the boats coming in with the day's catch. We saw hundreds of dog fish being unloaded, followed by cod and then lobsters.

 Whilst this was going on, there were gulls and cormorants wheeling around and waiting for an odd morsel to escape the fishermen's'eye, but most entertaining were the seals who appeared to be putting on a show for the tourists' entertainment.

Group of seals on a sand bank

(Click on photos to enlarge)

After all this fun, we decided to sample some of the catch at the nearby Chatham Pier fish market and so we tucked into a shared lobster roll and French fries which turned out to be very, very tasty. We needed to burn off a few calories after the fishy feast, so we took the town tree trail that we missed out on last night.
Chatham has some notable trees, such as American Linden, Silver Maple, Northern Catalpa and  Chinese Elm (which is much more resistant to Dutch elm disease and the elm leaf beetle than European elms). On this walk we came to the town's grist mill

 and discovered nearby a labyrinth which was a replica of the 11 circuit medieval labyrinth found in Chartres Cathedral in France.

It is one continuous path that winds into the centre and then back out again. I was intrigued by how incredibly complex it is and would never have believed it would take roughly ten minutes to walk the whole circuit. So... at the end of all that walking we needed a drink...I shan't be at all surprised if we come home from this holiday heavier than when we came!
This is where we've been staying for the last few days.

Front view of Cranberry Inn

Rear view of Cranberry Inn

Tomorrow we are driving north again to a place called Northfield on the borders of Vermont and New Hampshire.

Whale of a time

One of us  breakfasted this morning on sweet potato pancakes with Maple syrup, strawberries and sausages,  followed by muesli .. , followed by toast. The first thing that greeted us on our adventure was a statue called "the Tourists"   Is this how others really see us?

'Tourists' by Choam Gross

Cape Cod juts out into the Atlantic like an arm flexing its biceps, and Chatham, where we are staying is at the elbow. Today we travelled up the forearm to Provincetown on the tip of the hand. It was the pilgrims' first stop in the New World before they moved on to Plymouth, but today it's a fairly seedy tourist spot and a favourite with the gay community. Our purpose in going  there was to take a three hour whale watching tour which starts from the harbour. Apparently, Provincetown is the best place for whale watching since being at the tip of a long spit, it's already forty miles out to sea. Here you can see the lighthouse with the sea on either side of the land.

On board our boat we had a lady naturalist who told us all about the whales residing in  the local waters in order to regain body fat after their long migration from the Caribbean, where they calf. 

The humpback whales don't have teeth, they have baleens which are sieving mechanisms designed to filter plankton from the water resulting in approximately 100lbs of plankton with each mouthful.

Our naturalist shows us a baleen

And then along came the whales........
At first we spotted them spouting and before long they were swimming closer and closer to the boat. A lot of them are known by name to the marine biologists and one in particular, Samara, was a bit of a scene-stealer, noseying alongside and under our boat with another whale for company.

Blowhole of the whale clearly visible

Underside of the tail fluke

Upper side of the tail fluke

Barnacles visible on the tail

A mother and calf

These are just five photos out of more than a hundred shots we got of the humpbacks. There was a sighting of a Minke whale too but unfortunately, it evaded capture on film.

The weather has been miserable all day today. We had to abandon a walk round Chatham this evening to view some interesting specimen trees because of heavy rain and poor light. Hope tomorrow will see the return of the sun.

Vineyard trip, but no wine

Gradually, we're beginning to learn a thing or two about Americans, or at least, New Englanders.
a) they seem to go a bundle on nail bars. Perhaps well manicured nails signify persons of leisure. There must be a great many such people, as there are nail bars everywhere you go.
b) their level of patriotism is a bit scary. We've seen the Stars and Stripes not just in front porches, but on road bridges, gravestones and even bikes.
c) they are incredibly polite and friendly
d) they appear from the number of places of worship, to be very religious. Even in the smallest towns there are usually churches of several denominations eg Episcopalian, Christian Scientist, Seventh Day Adventist, Baptist, RC, Congregationalist, and often they are very imposing edifices built to show off the wealth of the worshipers I should imagine.
Today we came across a group of Amish men and women who were sightseeing. I was surprised that far from setting themselves apart from non-Amish people, they were happily chatting with them.

We took a ferry today to Martha's vineyard.

Leaving Woods Hole harbour

On the boat to Martha's Vineyard

We were very glad we'd decided to take the car

Ford Taurus waiting for the ferry

as the area around Vineyard Haven where the ferry docked, was very touristy. We decide to explore the quiet, south western side of the island and ended up at a place called Aquinnah.
It was worth risking this

Deer tics in sand dunes 

for this

Just look at the colours in these cliffs!

Multi coloured clay cliffs at Aquinnah formerly known as Gay Head

and in the dunes there were masses of these tiny aster-like flowers

and hundreds of these butterflies

Am I right in thinking they are Monarchs?

Cape Cod and Beyond

This morning we opted for a free guided tour of The State House (the building with the golden dome that we walked by on The Freedom Trail yesterday.) The building served as a model for the US Capitol Building in Washington and houses the Senate Chamber and House of Representatives. There is an abundance of carved marble in the halls and and state rooms, and our informative guide told us that there was such a shortage of skilled craftsmen available at the time of building that many Italian immigrants were drafted in to carry out the work. (Yesterday we also passed through Little Italy, a neighbourhood where many Italian refugees settled in the 17th and 18th centuries.) Our guide-raconteur gave  us a full on account of the part played by the Americans in the War of Independence and the Civil War, painting them in a glowing, heroic light, of course. We saw portraits of all the past State Governors including Mitt Romney and  a statue of George Washington dressed in a toga (looking something like Frankie Howerd in Up Pompeii)  by the English sculptor Chantry. All in all it was a very enlightening tour.
The next stage in our travels involved picking up our hire car at Logan Airport. For the next two weeks or so, Jim is driving us around in a very comfortable Ford Taurus and I'll be doing the map reading. After a 90 mile journey (surprisingly argument-free), we arrived at the Cranberry Inn, Chatham, on Cape Cod, our base for the next four days. It's a small town with some typical New England clapperboard houses and very upmarket shops. Before dinner we  took a ten-minute stroll to Lighthouse Beach right on the Atlantic Ocean. The bay looked lovely in the fading light - just a few people out walking and flocks of birds flying against the wind.

After our meal we sat in rocking chairs on the porch of our hotel; two old timers relaxing at the end of a busy day.

And Moving (Not So Swiftly) On

Yesterday was a long and tiring day. We were sorry to leave Iceland, this weird and wonderful country where half the nation believes in elves,where there are annual sheep groping contests and where its capital city has a museum dedicated solely to The Penis!! There was so much more to see than we had time for, so we hope one day to make a return journey to discover the glaciers, the volcanoes, the puffins and the beautiful northern lights that were hidden by clouds all the time we were there.
Our flight to Boston was delayed by one and a half hours which meant we were waiting at the airport for three and a half hours before take off. When we reached our destination there was a further delay in disembarking due to a medical emergency on board the plane. (Jim was so relieved when the call for a doctor came over the tannoy and a young American lady sprang forward to the rescue.) However, we reached our hotel safely and retired to bed at what was 4am to us.
This morning we set off to explore Boston, ancestral home of the Kennedys and birthplace of Sylvia Plath, and it turns out to be a beautiful city with neither Red Sox or baked beans in sight. But hey, do y'all see that there blue sky?

The State House Boston Common with 23ct gold dome !

We joined The Freedom Trail on Boston Common right adjacent to our hotel and it links all the most important colonial and revolutionary era historical sites.

We learned such a lot about Boston's history and saw countless monuments to the city's great and good.

Benjamin Franklin

Paul Revere

And surprisingly, physicians have a different approach to looking after their patients in this country!

We climbed 294 steps to the top of the obelisk that commemorates the Battle of Bunker Hill (1775) that ended with a costly victory for the British against a tin pot colonial army that ran out of ammunition. What a pity the windows at the top were so dirty that the views were distorted!

After the 3 mile trail we visited the Museum of Fine Arts.

This is a stupendous place housing world class collections of American and European art as well as collections of photography, textiles, musical instruments, in fact too much to mention, from all over the world. The ceiling of the  central rotunda was painted by John Singer Sargent one of my favourite artists. Another eye-opening exhibition was by an Israeli artist named Ori Gersht. He is worth googling. His art brings a whole new meaning to old meets new.
After leaving the MFA we strolled to Boston City Library, another architectural masterpiece with more of John Singer Sargent's murals. It's the sort of place that makes you yearn to study!

Across from the library was a farmer's market where we were amazed by the variety of squashes and pumpkins, the colours of carrots (purple) and long beans (purple and cream) and the size and variety of apples.
By this time it was late afternoon so we decided to walk back to our hotel stopping on the way to look at the 19th century  brownstone houses in the cobbled streets of the neighbourhood.

 This is a conservation area where the millionaires of Boston live. I could live here! It's so, so beautiful.

(post begun Tues 25th completed Wed 26th)