All Things American

Taxi!

Our quest to do All Things American continued.  Our bus was a little late arriving in at Penn Station because we had to drive through the New York Marathon.  (If only we had arrived earlier, we could have run the marathon too!)

We had too much luggage to take on the subway so we had to catch a cab to our hotel.
Once we had checked in, we headed out to explore the neighbourhood that would be our home for the next few days.

The next typically American thing we did was buy homemade brownies from a sidewalk bake-sale in the Bowery.  The kids had just made the brownies and wandered out to sell them.

Beautiful Brownies

I wonder if we will stumble upon a lemonade stand like we did last time we were in America?

Either way, what a great start to our stay in New York.  I think we are really going to love this city!
Love AJ and Milla

Boston Ducks

So after the saga of finding a place to stay in Boston, we decided to sleep in a little before heading out to explore yet another new city.

When we did go out exploring we realised just how cold it was.  You can bet that mum reminded us a million times that 'it was a good thing we went shopping in Niagara!'

Yep, it's as cold as it looks!

OK, so she was right but that is not the point.  We were glad that we were rugged up and we continued our time exploring Boston, looking for some ducks.  Just up the road from where we were staying was Boston Public Garden.  It was a great place to wander but a few too many signs telling you too keep off the grass!  Luckily there were plenty of paths to follow.

Chilling with the Mallards!

Eventually we saw some ducks.  They weren't the kind of ducks we were expecting but they were pretty cute - statues of Mrs Mallard and their ducklings Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack and Quack.  They were the characters from the book Make Way for Ducklings that was apparently written about a family of ducklings who lived in Boston.  We haven't read the book yet.  In fact we hadn't heard about it until now but having seen the statues, finding the book is something we need to do.

Once we said goodbye to the ducklings we kept on exploring, looking for more ducks.  Finally we found the ducks we were actually looking for - the Boston Ducks.  We had read about the Boston Ducks on the internet and it sounded like a fun way to see a new city without having to walk everywhere for a change.

Look, it is our Duck :-)

The Ducks were funny little amphibious vehicles that drove us around the city streets to see the sights and then, can you believe it, straight into the river!

Once we were in the river, the driver decided that he needed a break so he let me drive.  It was pretty cool driving down the Duck down the river.  Eventually we convinced Milla to take the Duck for a drive too.

Duck Driver AJ

Duck Driver Milla

Us and our duck

  
The Boston Duck Tour was a great way to get around.  It showed us some pretty cool places that we can wander back to and explore some more.

It looks like Boston will be a great place to stay.
Love AJ Pickle