Pilgrims, Rain and a visit from Phil

Phil arrived on Thursday evening for teh weekend. Being the dutiful girlfriend I made my way on the bus up to Boston and sat in the airport for 2 hours waiting for his plane to land - the difficulty of th American public transport system meant a two hour wait. Unfortunatly in this two hour period I have managed to loose my camera and with it all my Nepal photos... The irony is I was getting worried about not having backed up that I was taking the camera to Boston to find a photo shop that would accept my 8GB card as no shops on the Cape had the equipment. After much tears and ringing every lost and found office in Boston I've accepted that the camera and more importantly my photos are gone. Luckily I have a CD of Australia photos up until the last week of Sydney and there were other people in Nepal who I can steal from. So really all thats lost is a fantastic shot of Mount Everest that I was planning to enlarge and frame and my photos of New York...



Aside from loosing my camera on the way between the Cape and Boston I visited the Plimouth Plantation which is a replica 1627 village representing the colony from the MayFlower. As well as the period role play actors in the pilgrims village there are Wampanoag people the native American tribe who origionally settled the New England area. I spent a very enjoyable afternoon learning about the Wmapanoag people - i was shocked to learn that there are only 2 museums in the US that have Native Americans as staff to talk about their own culture, all other museums about the native Americans have non-native American curators! It was also interesting to find out about the share arrangements that let the Mayflower and other Plymouh pilgroms sail out. Its quite incredible to think that in 1627 North America was really sparesly populated (1/2 colonies) and yet by 1700 the population had exploded and its easy to find evidence of proper houses from that time all around New England.

The next days we explored Boston (in the rain), which is a great city, our tour was helped by Phils old boss who showed us round the best parts and then showed us an amazing bar at the top of a sky scrapper with amazing views of the city. We then spent a rainy weekend on the Cape, exploring the old towns and looking in art galleries.

Today I made it to Washington DC - after a flight which was delayed by boston storms for 6 hours... had a great time exploring Capitol hill, the Library of Congress and the Mall. Tomorrow I do more museums and then head to Gerogetown for the day on Thursday.