Maine, New Hampshire & Vermont (16 May 2007)

The morning started well as I drove around half of Boston trying to find someone who could replace a tyre that day. 6 hours and 3 new tyres later and with a bit of road trip re-planning, we set off towards Portland in Maine. The nice walk along the beach was less appealing when the torrential rain set in, so instead we went for bit of a culture and visited the museum of Wadsworth the poet which included a guided tour of Wadsworth’s house. The house was interesting and some parts actually reminded me of Seagull Cottage (the reason for Phil’s absence this week). The entertainment was increased by one of our fellow tourists who was a rather excitable woman who would ‘ooh and ahh’ at every little thing.

We left Portland, and despite the heavy rain and tornado warnings, the drive through New Hampshire was very beautiful and the photos really don’t do it justice. We soon made our way towards the mountains in Vermont just in time for darkness, fog and continuous rain to set in. R continually reminded me of the numerous horror movies which involved 2 girls driving in the north eastern states of the US and so we decided to make our own real-life movie which I would include in this blog post if the blog masteur was not away holidaying somewhere. I have to admit that that this drive was one of the more worrying parts of the trip and we were grateful we had 3 nice new tyres on the car and tried not to think about the fourth one which hadn’t been replaced.

At 2am we arrived at our hotel (http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/cp/1/en/hotel/LKPNY/welcome) which was in the mountains and overlooked Lake Placid. Suddenly the treacherous journey felt worth it especially as we were shown to our upgraded lake view room. Unfortunately the hotel assumed we were a lesbian couple (naturally) and upgraded our 2 bedded room to a king bed suite. When I spoke to reception, they seemed to have difficulty understanding why we wanted 2 beds, and eventually said “ohhh...we tend to make assumptions about the relationship of the guests when they check in”. Anyway, a quick room switch and we happily enjoyed the hotel which is home to the Olympic training center, has hosted the Olympics and is where the PGA players stay during the Colonial tournament. Eating lunch in the grand room overlooking the mountains we could feel our sporting prowess increase and even considered competing in the next Olympics just so we could visit the hotel again.