We were all very excited on Monday as we were booked onto a whale watching trip. Dougal had his first day in doggy day care at our local pet shop and we headed to Boston's waterfront to board our boat. It was a beautiful day and we had some stunning views of the Boston skyline as we headed out to sea along with the slightly unnerving experience of sailing directly underneath the airport flight path just a couple of hundred metres from the runway!

It took us about an hour and a half to reach the whale watching destination, Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. It's supposed to be one of the best whale watching areas on the east coast of the USA and the tour operators are so confident of seeing some whale action that they promise another trip for free if no whales are sighted. What they don't legislate for is a crew member being taken ill just as the passengers are told to start watching for whales. Yes - we sailed for an hour and a half for the pleasure of turning around and heading straight back to Boston with the number of whales seen standing at zero. Ah well - it was a nice day and a relaxing trip, if somewhat windy (see photos below!) and we were offered a refund or a repeat trip on another day.

So we tried again on Wednesday. Dougal had another day in doggy day care and we sailed off once again into the sunshine towards the horizon. This time we were lucky - after about half an hour of sailing around aimlessly and thinking every slight ripple in the sea was a whale about to surface we saw what we had come for - a humpback whale who was happy to put on a show for us. He was identified by the New England Aquarium expert on board with us as "Mogul" and he hung around for about 20 minutes, surfacing, spouting, breaching and diving under before we had to say our goodbyes and turn towards home. Suffice to say we sailed home rather more satisfied with our day!

 

 

 

 

In between our whale watching efforts we had a night out at the theatre. Boston has a theatre district much like a mini Broadway or West End and it seems to host many major touring Broadway productions. Before the girls and I arrived in Boston Barry booked tickets for us all to see Wicked, which the girls have been desperate to see after learning many of the songs for their singing lessons and listening to the CD in the car over and over (and over) again. So there was much excitement and anticipation on Tuesday evening as we girls put on our glad rags ready for our night out. The show was outstanding and the girls loved every minute of it. Rachel just about restrained herself from singing along and they were both transfixed throughout the show, claiming it was the best show they had ever seen. Isabel spent an enormous amount of her pocket money on a Wicked beach towel which I'm sure shall make several appearances at Rest Bay on our return to Porthcawl.

 

 

We visited Boston's Museum of Science on Friday which is one of the city's major attractions. It has elements of Techniquest and the Natural History Museum along with a Planetarium and IMAX cinema. I think it's fair to say that we only scratched the surface in the few hours that we were there but we decided to buy an annual membership so we shall have plenty of opportunity to explore it properly. The girls enjoyed lying on a bed of nails and creating animation effects as well as tackling a variety of maths problems (Barry's favourite bit) and eating astronaut ice cream. As Arnie would say, "we'll be back".