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It was another early start today to catch our bus to Philadelphia. The Greyhound bus was leaving Boston at 10.15 so we left the hotel just after 9. We had decided to walk over to the bus station as it was close to where we'd been yesterday. We stopped on enroute to pickup a Subway for lunch as the bus was due to take nearly 7 hours to get to Philadelphia. We didn't have to wait too long at the bus statioj before it was time to board. The coach was fairly comfortable with onboard wifi and power points should you need them. The journey itself was fairly starightforward, with a short 10 minute stop in Hartford and a slightly longer stop in New York, though we couldn't leave the bus in either case. We eventually arrived in Philadelphia just after 5pm and quickly found our hotel which was only a short walk away. We didn't do much with the evening after our long journey ordering pizza online for tea and watching a bit of TV before calling it a night. 

After our long day yesterday, we decided to take things a bit easier today. We had a later start, grabbing Starbucks for breakfast again before leaving the hotel. We decided to spend a bit more time in the nearby parks, having only really walked through them enroute to other places the last couple of days. We started in the public gardens, sitting by the lake for a while and watching the dragonflies floating about. There was also a cormorant diving close to the edge of the lake for fish, which was interesting to watch but difficult to photograph as it was tricky to know where it was going to pop-up.

Moving on we wandered towards the Frog Pond in Boston Common, stopping off to take photos of the 'make way for ducklings statue' and also managing to get photos of a white breasted Nuthatch and a Southeastern Blue Jay on the way out.  Reaching the frog pond, there were lots of children playing in the water, Dani had a paddle and a wander but retreated after getting splashed a bit by some of the children.

We decided to have a wander down by the harbour, near the aquarium and started heading that way, stopping at Pret for some lunch and then again a bit further down the road at Tatte for some cake. We eventually reached the harbour about 4 o'clock wandering around for a couple of hours before heading back towards the hotel, stopping at Five Guys for tea. As we were walking back through Boston Common, they were just seting up for the last night of Shakespeare in the park which was due to start at 7. We nipped back to the hotel to drop some bits and then headed back to watch the play. The play finished around 9.30pm, giving us a bit of time to sort the cases out ready for our bus to Philadelphia tomorrow.  

It was an early start today, we had alarms set for 7am and were up soon after as tickets were booked 9. After checking directions again in the morning, we found that there was a partial closure on the metro so we were going to have to walk a bit further when we arrived. With this in mind, we decided to get going and grab some breakfast enroute. We took the metro from Arlington station which is close to the hotel and got off the stop before Fenway as the rest of the route was replaced by bus. We decided to walk the rest of the way as it was only supposed to take 10 minutes and we had plenty of time. We stopped at Starbucks and grabbed some Pain au chocolat's for breakfast and then headed on to Fenway park to pickup our tickets for the 9am tour. 

The tour was interesting even though some of the sports talk went over our heads, the ground has quite a bt of history and is the oldest ball park still in use dating back to 1912. The tour took us all over the ground giving us a chance to see the view from the different areas including in the media box. The whole stadium is much smaller than you might think, and you could sit pretty much anywhere and still have a good view of the game. I took quite a few photos of the ground, but unfortunately it was a bit cloudy so the sky looked a bit washed out. The tour finished up in the museum where there is lots of memorabilia including signed baseballs from each of the world series games including signatures of well known players including Babe Ruth.

Following Fenway Park, we stopped for a drink and ice-cream in McDonalds, they're running a promotion at the moment so all sizes of soft drinks are $1. After a bit of refreshment, we caught the metro over to the aquarium. We had toyed with getting the combination ticket for the whale saightseeing tours and the aquarium but the only tour tickets left were leaving at 5 and wouldn't be back until dark at 9 so we decided to stick with just the aquarium this time. The queue was pretty long, but we managed to connect to the WiFi and buy tickets online instead so skipped the queue. We came here last time we were in Boston and despite being very busy, it didn't disappoint. The highlight again had to be the penguins and the giant turtles, we managed to hit both areas during feeding, so with the giant turtles it meant they were swimming around the top of the big tank.

Feeling tired we caught the metro back past the hotel to the Cheesecake factory for dinner. It was very filling although service was a bit hit and miss. After a long day, we made it back to the hotel just after 8pm for a bit of rest. 

We were up a little later after the long day yesterday, but made use of the hotel Starbucks to grab some breakfast. Once we were ready, we set off for the information centre on Boston Common. We were initially after a map, but once there we decided to buy the Freedom Trail map for $2. The Freedom Trail takes you around all of the historic landmarks in Boston, but last time we were here in 2013, we bought trolley bus tickets, so had never actually followed it properly. The trail is clearly marked by a red brick path and can be followed for free, but the map we bought gave us some additional information about each of the stops. There were 16 stops in total, taking you across the city by foot, starting at Boston Common and ulimataely finishing at the Bunker Hill Monument.

Along the trail, we stopped off in churches and burial grounds tracing the steps of legendary American patriots including Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere. There is plenty to see and covering the whole trail took us the whole day. The real highlight was visiting USS Constitution or old iron sides as it was knicknamed due to the way cannon balls bounced off the sides. Last time we were here in 2013, we managed to see the ship sailing out into the harbour and firing cannons, we since found out this happens only 6 or 7 times a year, so this time when we visited it was docked for visitors. You go through some security and have to show photo ID before you're able to board the ship as the site is an active military base but then we were on board. We spend some time exploring the ship both above and below deck, taking a few pictures as we went before moving on to our final stop at Bunker Hill. Just before we left, we made full use of the water vapour spray they had on the way into and out of the base - it was another scorcher today and so the water spray was a welcome treat.

By the time we reached the last stop at Bunker Hill, we were feeling pretty tired so we decided to get a drink and look for somewhere to eat on the way back to the hotel. We stopped at Starbucks and making use of their WiFi, we found a place to eat close by. It was a pub and so we both got ID'd on the way in - first time in a while! I had a steak sandwich whilst Dani had a seafood sandwich, it was very nice, but feeling tired we headed back to the hotel soon after. We spent the evening catching up on some journal and photos, booking tour tickets for Fenway park tomorrow, before calling it a night. 

We had a car rental collection booked for 9am at the airport today, so after gathering our stuff we nipped down to Subway to grab some breakfast and then caught an Uber taxi to the airport. Getting the car was nice and straight forward and we were quickly on our way. We'd paid for a GPS which was handy as we stull don't have data on our phones. As it turned out getting the car from the airport was probably easier as we didn't have to navigate out of a city, instead we were quite quickly on the interstate. The journey was fairly staightforward following the same road for the majority of the trip, so cruise control came in particularly useful. About an hour in to the trip, still in Canada we got stuck in some traffic, there had been an accident and it added an hour to the journey so we crawled on for quite a while. We eventually reached the boarder crossing and as we were British, we had to go inside, so we pulled the car over to the place that had been pointed out and then looked around for how to get in to the border office, which eventually involved clambering over some rocks and going in what looks like a side door (a bit dodgy).

We had to pay $6 each for a border waiver which was duly fastened into our passports with the warning that it must be removed at the airport otherwise we may be consider illegal aliens. The border patrol officer was asking if we were going to a redsocks game whilst in Boston, but we said the only game was tonight and we didn't think we'd make it in time, he told us it was easy Boston is only 4 hours away ... famous last words.

Back on the road we seemed to be the only car traveling down the highway. Vermont was very green with lots of trees and not a lot else to see from the road. We did follow a sign for some services, but never found them, evenutally ended up at a McDonalds about 20 minutes out of the way. Had a bit of lunch and whilst there got some petrol from the petrol station next door. Continuing on the rest of the journey went fairly smoothly until we were a couple of miles out of Boston, and then we got stuck in traffic, crawling into town very slowly, adding another hour to the journey. Finding the drop off point for the car was far from simple, but after a bit of a panic we made it. We dropped the key and then walked our stuff over to the hotel, it was pretty warm and took about 20 minutes, eventually arriving about 7.30pm we were pretty shattered. We made it to a Burger King for a bit of tea, before dragging ourselves back to the hotel. We're close to Boston common and walking back through it on the way back we found hundred of people sat watching a free performance of Shakespeare's Cymbeline, apprently it's on for the next few nights, so after taking a few photos we headed back to the hotel feeling tired.