by I recently spent four weeks in America. It was the first time I’d visited the US, and my first overseas trip in five years.
My first port of call was Boston. I loved Boston. It gave me a feeling of happiness that has been all too rare and fleeting for me in the last what seems like forever. At times I was overwhelmed by how happy I was there, whether I was at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, or looking at the glass flowers at Harvard, or at Fenway Park, or eating a clam chowder, or having yet another Sam Adams (I did the brewery tour), or just on the subway with all the buskers… I went out to Cape Cod – a 90-minute trip on the fast ferry – and it was a glorious day for it. All my photos of Boston got nuked when I tried to copy them onto my cousin’s computer. This was quite upsetting because Boston made me happier than I’d been since probably 2002. (That in itself upset me because I’m talking about a normal level of happiness for a few days, not any sort of mania, and I should get to feel that more than once every 13 years, and not have to travel 9000 miles to feel it.) It felt great to land there a second time, and take that subway ride to my hostel which seemed so familiar, but then having to fly home after just one more full day there, gosh. I had eight days there by myself, and it was great having the time just to observe such a beautiful city, not having to think about where I need to be next and at what time. Boston will always be a special place to me now. I don’t think I could live there though – it ain’t cheap!
I saw my cousin and his Italian fiancée near Albany in upstate New York. Such a pretty part of the country. We did some tramping in the Adirondack mountains. When we got to the top of one of the many peaks there, it just felt great to be alive. I wish I’d done more of that kind of thing rather than seeing cities. I also saw Lake Placid which played host to two winter Olympics.
I loved travelling on the trains. I did three train trips: Boston to Albany (5 hours), New York to Chicago (21 hours!) and Memphis to Hammond, Louisiana, as part of a tour (7 hours) and they were all very enjoyable. The train from Memphis was a double-decker and had an observation car. They were as slow as anything but that didn’t matter. You get tons of leg room and it’s just so much more comfortable than a bus, let alone a plane.
The tennis was great, if a bit hot. I saw some really good matches over two days. I think I saw eleven hours of it on one day. So I’ve now been to all the grand slams and have achieved a goal! I’d say that the best match I saw was Gasquet against Kokkinakis. The Aussie led by two sets to one but retired with leg cramps in the fifth set and probably should have thrown in the towel earlier.
I realised that don’t like really big cities that much (I might have known that already, but this trip just confirmed it). New York just didn’t do it for me (the highlight of my time there was seeing Chicago, the musical, on Broadway). As for the city of Chicago, it definitely appealed to me, mainly because it looked absolutely stunning, but I didn’t spend long enough there to really get to know it. My hotel room was on the 11th floor and gave me a magnificent view of Lake Michigan. I hope I can go back to Chicago one day.