It wasn't all bad... 11 new experiences of 2016

2016 was a bit of a rubbish year in lots of ways, but rather than mull over the increasingly terrible collective decisions the world seems to be making, or the long list of famous people who passed away last year, I have decided to focus on the good stuff. And for me there was a lot of good stuff. This post is about all the things I did for the very first time last year. A lot of this happened on our big holiday in pre-Trump North America, so I'm going to start there...

1) Went to Canada
There are loads of things I did for the first time in on our road trip to the USA and Canada, in terms of visiting places I'd not been to before (like Niagara Falls, or the Baseball Hall of Fame), but I'm going to lump all of those things in under this heading.

2) Ate fried pickles
Just one of the new culinary experiences of our road trip. We also ate at a Vegan Diner and on another occasion had poutine. But fried pickles were the new food of the year.

3) Went to a Baseball match on a giveaway night
'Star Wars night' made seeing the Boston Red Sox even more special. We also saw a baseball game in Toronto, with the Rodgers Stadium dome closed - the first time I'd ever seen baseball "indoors".

4) Saw a moose
OK, it was in a zoo, but it counts.

5) Checked into a hotel then checked straight back out again
The lowlight of our road trip was a disastrous hotel booking in Albany, New York. But it was a totally new experience for me.

So, enough about our road trip, here are some other things.

6) Saw Shrewsbury Town finally beat Cardiff City in Cardiff. 
It had been a long time coming, but I was finally present (in one of Cardiff's record lowest crowds at their new stadium) to see Shrewsbury beat them.

7) Got on a plane unaccompanied
I went to a conference in Glasgow and flew there from Bristol. It was the first time I had ever travelled by plane on my own, having always had Cathy, or family, or colleagues with me on previous flights.

8) Saw Celtic play
A childhood ambition ticked off

9) Went to Spain
Again, this was for a work conference. I took plenty of photos of Valencia by night. I loved it.

10) Rode through a bus wash
Seriously, this was one of the best things I did last year.

11) Going to a cartoon festival
I love cartoons and one of our favourite cartoonists was at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, we decided we had to go. We met her again a few weeks later, in her studio in Massachusetts.

How to eat a fried pickle

Taking a little break from the holiday postings, here's a tip I learned the hard way.

First up, what do I mean by pickles? In America (and Canada too it seems) these are cucumbers that have been pickled in dill and brine. Unlike in the UK where 'gherkins' are usually pickled in sweet vinegar. They are often quartered length ways to make 'pickle spears'. Order a sandwich in any decent deli and you will be offered a pickle spear with it.

Fried pickles are pickle spears dipped in batter and deep fried. They are served hot.

This! This is a fried pickle.

Here's what I've learned. When a bowl of freshly fried pickles is brought to your table, the temptation is to dive right in and start eating them. Particularly if they have arrived as a starter and you're ravenous.

DON'T DO THIS!! Because pickles are basically mainly water. And when you fry them their constituent water heats up quite hot. Biting into them is basically like biting into solid hot water. This can scald the roof of your mouth. Spitting them back out into your hand will then scald your hand.

Regardless how hungry you are, let the fried pickles rest a while before you tuck in. A few minutes is all it takes for them to cool slightly to a more manageable and palatable temperature.

That's all you need to know. Enjoy responsibly.

USA & Canada 2016 - To Canada! Exploring Kingston, Ontario.

We left Cooperstown in the rain. I think this was the first time I had driven in America while it was raining. A short while into our trip we discovered that the bottle of lemonade we had put in the fridge of our hotel room had semi-frozen. We discovered this the explosive way, when Cathy opened it and the remaining unfrozen liquid rapidly left the bottle. We pulled over to clean up. I thought the bottle had become over-pressurised somehow and didn't realise it was frozen. So as Cathy had dried off and settled down, I thought I could open it gently and we'd be OK.

This didn't work and I managed to soak Cathy with lemonade all over again.

After 'The Lemonade Incident' the journey was without much incident. We stopped at a services plaza as we headed North. It was called Mapleview. It didn't look like much from the outside. Inside it was classic American diner with great food.

We carried on North. The landscape got quite wild and eerie towards the border. There were still farms, but they were more spread out. We were heading for the border crossing in the Thousand Islands, a scenic region in the St Lawrence river, that, yes, did provide the name for Thousand Island Dressing.

It's become customary on Facebook for people returning to Wales to post their pictures of the Severn Crossing. But there are bridges and there are bridges.

This one went on and on.

After the border checkpoint we passed the 1000 Islands Tower, where you can apparently get amazing views up and down the river.

And then another bridge and we were in mainland Canada.

Next stop was Kingston, Ontario, where we were staying for the next couple of nights. After a very brief stop to take some photos downtown (more on that later), we found our motel. It looked like a motel in a movie.

When we checked in the guy on the desk was very excited to hear we were from Cardiff because he was a huge Doctor Who fan. He even rolled up his sleeve to show us his TARDIS tattoo.

Kingston was the first capital of the united Canada, but people were afraid it was too close to those rebellious Americans to the South, so they moved the parliament to Ottawa. They'd already built the parliament building in Kingston, so the town has ended up with this massive municipal building right in the centre.

The town is on the shore of Lake Ontario, which looks like the sea. Cathy got to pretend she was on a boat.

Meanwhile I found a massive train to look at.

There is a real mix of interesting buildings.

And, of course, very different flags everywhere.

Kingston has lots of museums. I felt we should go to at least one while we were there. We chose one of the smallest - the old pumping station.

Mainly because I heard it had a big model railway display. It did.

At Harper's Burger Bar we had another encounter with fried pickles. I'm not sure why I look so startled by it.

We also got the opportunity to try a fabled Tim Horton's doughnut. Tim Horton was an ice hockey player who set up a coffee and doughnut shop after he retired from hockey. We saw Tim Horton's everywhere we went in Canada. They do good doughnuts. I recommend the Maple Dip.

Next up: the real reason we went to Kingston.

USA & Canada 2016 - Exploring West Massachusetts

We drove West from Boston along one of the smaller highways. For a lot of our day that meant driving past scenes like this.

One of the reasons we went on a road less travelled was because we wanted to visit Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. Seeing the Loggerheads on the sign of this junk shop made me feel at home.

The welcoming sign about parking would have gone down a treat in the original Shropshire as well.

Like the original Shrewsbury, the Massachusetts version has some historical old buildings.

And a historical past, commemorated on various plaques.

The final place we stopped in Shrewsbury was a mall down the road that had an International House of Pancakes (IHOP). I have a lot of fondness for IHOP but didn't really like the look of their new pancakes.

Further on from Shrewsbury is Northampton, where we had arranged to visit the studio of one of our favouritre cartoonists, Hilary Price. (We had met her back in April when she visited Shrewsbury UK for the cartoon festival.)

As we left I took a pic of this panel from one of her cartoons about relationships. This is me and Cathy. I often seem to be grabbed to look at 'bugs' or whatever.

We then went South to Springfield. One the way we stopped at the Dinosaur Footprints park, which is just off the road. I am being a dinosaur in this picture. (That's our hire car behind us)

My hand in a dino footprint. Dinosaur footprints are the state fossil of Masschusetts.

One of Springfield's claims to fame is that it is where Dr Seuss, author of The Cat and the Hat and many other books, grew up. We went to the Dr Seuss Memorial Garden to see the bronze statues of many of his most famous characters. We met The Cat in the Hat...

...the Lorax...

Horton, who famously heard a Who (this picture id just his trunk!)...

...and several other characters.

We then drove along Mulberry Street, where Dr Seuss's grandparents lived and the name of the street on which he set his very first book.

The final stop on our mini tour of the area was The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Eric Carle is the author of The Hungry Caterpillar, and several other picture books. I have to admit I gained a new appreciation for his work from our visit to 'The Carle' as they call it. It was a fab museum and we could have spent a lot longer there.

Outside, Cathy saw a bug (not an iridescent one, but close!)

Inside there are some bespoke huge colour pieces by Eric Carle.

And some great exhibitions.

We then went to a nearby farmers deli for lunch. We had spicy dill pickle flavour potato chips. They were indeed spicy!

And then we moved on, leaving Massachusetts and entering New York State, making our way towards a site of pilgrimage for hundreds of thousands of people.

USA & Canada 2016 - More bits from Boston

You can't really do a city in an extended weekend and Boston is several pretty big places rolled into one. But we did manage to do more than the Freedom Trail and watching the Red Sox. Here are 5 more things we experienced.

1) The Mapparium at the Mary Baker Eddy Library. This was unique and very cool. In the 1930s the Christian Science church erected a hollow stained glass globe that you can walk through. It's several metres across. Illuminated from the outside you can see all the continents, even if the old colonial and communist borders no longer exist. Well worth a visit.

The big Christian Science church on the plaza is the epicentre for the organisation as well. It's an impressive building.

2) Harvard. We went for a wander around the famous university campus.

But the main reason we went all the way out there was to visit the Curious George Shop on Harvard Square. It was something Cathy had wanted to do since seeing it on her first trip to Boston 11 years previously. So we ticked that off the list!

3) Went to a Vegan Diner. Walking away from Harvard on Massachusetts Avenue we went to Veggie Galaxy.

We got talking to the waitress there who described it as a "diner for fat vegans." Here's one of them waiting for his vegan pancakes.

4) "Let's go to the mall!" It was raining one day so we went for a drive to an out of town mall in Braintree, to the South of Boston. It had a Lego Shop. It would have been rude not to go in.

Big shout out to Dave who works there, who was ace (I should have got a photo with him!). He hooked us up with some Lego Store passports. These are only used in North America and are supposed to be for kids.

5) Ate some crazy food. One evening we went to Trident Booksellers on Newbury Street. We had fried pickles as a starter...

... and then for a "main" I had the lemon riccotta stuffed french toast off the breakfast menu. It was basically a main course of cake.

I should add a picture of where we stayed. It was the Beech Tree Inn in Brookline. A lovely B&B!

When we arrived on our very first day we spotted a chipmunk as we pulled up and parked. Before we even checked in we'd wandered around half of the exterior of the Inn trying to get a photo of him.

There's a whole load more I could say about Boston, but after some jam-packed days we were heading West to new adventures.