#NewEngland #Fall road-trip diaries, travelling with our toddler #Travel #MondayBlogs

If you’ve been following these recent Monday blog posts you’ll know we like road-trips

Fall Colours

Catch up with some of them here;

LA and back on a packet of crisps

Building US west coastal road so we could drive on

Australia

New York

Mauritius

New Zealand

Today’s road-trip is about when we went back to the US for a 10 day Fall trip to New England with our two year old.

Our trip began with an evening arrival in Boston, Massachusetts, this time I was armed with my stroller for use in the airports, which can be taken right up to the aeroplane doors and is essential for toddler travel. Our first stop was the coastal town of Portsmouth in New Hampshire. Coming from England and seeing familiar place names out of the environment we knew them in was a little strange. We also found that New England had more toll roads than we’d experienced before in the US.

Getting our fill of the number of states in this area of the US, we went over into Maine and visited Portland, enjoying the coastal road views and taking in some shopping.

The fall colours were amazing and we took our time enjoying scenic river banks. I fell in love with the covered bridges which are a tradition of New England. Built with roofs to keep the bridges open during the winter months. Stopping off at one of the many maple syrup farm shops we were invited around their little museum and given a talk about the maple extraction process. An added bonus was the local stories of the covered bridges being “sweet-heart” bridges, a place to meet your sweet-heart out of site of prying eyes.

We headed into the White mountains and slowly drove to the top of Mount Washington on some very tight and steep roads. (Approximately a 30 drive up and a 30-45 mins drive down) There’s a cog railway train you can take up but the 3 hour round-trip time was going to be too long to entertain our toddler on. For rally enthusiasts there is a “Climb To The Clouds” racing event each July on the Mount Washington auto- road where rally drives race to the top. The record stands at 6 mins and 9 secs set in 2014.

In Conway we stopped off at the steam railway centre

Our travels took us to Vermont and Burlington, we dined in one of those old fashioned train diner cars turned into a family diner and then indulged our daughter at the Vermont Teddy Bear factory, where we took the tour and she made a bear.

We did consider heading across to Niagara Falls, but we didn’t have the time this trip. Instead we headed back towards Boston, taking in the Boston Tea Ship which amazingly our little girl remembers today.

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Next Trip – Denver, Colorado and a rocky mountain white out experience.

#NewZealand for #Christmas with a 9 month old child – #RoadTrips #Travel #MondayBlogs

Here at Amber Halls, we’re gearing up for a summer road trip to Canada, meanwhile  I’m sharing some of our other Road-Trip experiences with you.

When my friend left to live in New Zealand we had an open invite to visit. In the first few weeks of an easy pregnancy we even considered it for when I was seven months pregnant, luckily we talked ourselves out of it. So instead we booked to go for a month the following year.

Sheep

As our departure date approached, we realised travelling with a 9 month old had its own trials. (nappies, baby food, formula milk etc)

We were taking our sturdy pram to double up as a high-chair for feeding time, however it had to go in the aeroplane hold, and so we hade to carry our child around the airport for 3 hours as she was only crawling. A wilful child, she insisted on crawling around much of Heathrow in her pink baby-grow.

We booked an on-board cot and were lucky that the traveller in seat three of our line, took one look at the babe and insisted he was moved, so we had 3 seats for her to climb all over and a cot, which she refused to sleep in. Stage one – off to Kuala Lumpur and a few hours stop-over. I never found the baby changing area and looked longingly at other travellers who knew about having a stroller which they could take on-board and push their kids around in airside in the airport.

Flight two to Auckland – a bit more tricky with a child who only catnapped. Our pram arrived from the hold, damaged and spent the rest of the trip tied up with string. Spent our first few days with my friend at the house they were still building and her Pyrenean mountain dog (child-friendly it was NOT) We spent just under a week with them, acclimatising (babe slept during the day and was wakeful during the night) I recommend The Botanical Gardens in Auckland post flight as they were very peaceful after all that flying, we borrowed the car they’d shipped over from England, which after just a few days badly and embarrassingly broke down on us.

Time to leave our friends, we hired a car and set off, south, first to some glow worm caves at Waitomo  (Had to take turns as our babe was too young to go on the boats) We stayed on the shores of Lake Taupo, then, we drove up Mt Ruapehu. In Wellington we left the hire car and took the Seacat to the south island (balancing an enormous number of bags on the pram with the baby) That night we stayed near Picton, next we headed to Kaikoura for some whale watching, but found they didn’t take babies on board. So we headed south towards Christchurch then crossed the Southern Alps hoping to see Mount Cook, it was covered in cloud the day we were there)

Great scenery (yes there are sheep which you can meet on the road)  and interesting roads, single track bridges sometimes shared with train tracks, wild rivers, sun browned fields, and other times green ferns and mosses dripping with moisture, miles of traffic free roads, except for the one police speed trap which we got snapped in! Many of the motels had hot tubs, so after a day in the car we put our babe in her swim ring and let her bob about the tub with us as we relaxed. I fell in love with some of the personal mail boxes we saw. (see pictures below)

We stopped at Fox Glacier and Franz Joseph Glacier and carried our babe to the glacier foot. Then up the west coast to Westport and the Pancake Rocks, then Nelson and back to Picton and the Seacat. Time to go to Rotarua and the thermal mud areas, plus a Maori village experience. Here the babe decided she’d start walking whilst on the paths of the hot springs and only in tiny canvas slippers, “ooh ough hot”.  Christmas was spent back in Auckland with our friends, now we had a toddler, they were trying to finish outside decking and our girl was keen to show off her walking skills,  we went to the beach on Christmas Day!

The days before New Year we travelled around the Coromandel peninsula, it was lovely seeing flowers in full bloom, hay making and sunshine in what would normally be our mid-winter back home. To us the farming was of interest and I would describe it as Britain back in the 1970’s, about thirty years behind Britain.

Flights home were the same route, our baby wanted to toddle up and down the aeroplane gangway, but we coped and were even complimented by other passengers when we landed in London at how well behaved she’d been.

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Next The Fall in New England with a toddler.

Rosie’s Book Review Team #RBRT CookieBooker reviews New England Crush by Pia Fenton

Today we have a review from our Young Adult book reviewer CookieBooker, who blogs at https://cookiebookreviews.wordpress.com/

CookieBooker has been reading New England Crush by Pia Fenton

New England Crush is the second novel released by Christina Courtenay, except, this time, she is writing as Pia Fenton.

In New England Rocks, we see Rain Mackenzie transfer to a school in New England, USA. When Rain settled in and enjoyed the school, her parents decided to make her younger sister, Raven, transfer as well.

When Raven meets Dr. Alburn, a girl named Lilith is called upon to give a tour of the school and, much to Raven’s surprise, is friendly and doesn’t snap at Raven when she asks questions.

Lilith, after giving the tour, leads Raven into her homeroom (a bit like tutor in England) where she gets to meet the rest of the group, Amethyst, Demon, Shadow and Miz. The other four quickly make friends and introduce themselves. Between them, they explain the different groups (jocks, Goths etc.) until one boy catches Raven’s attention, Liam Donnelly. The only problem,  he is in a relationship with Brooke.

Once again, the portrayal of the characters is very accurate and shows how easily things can fall apart. Along with the characters, the storyline is written in such a way that you feel as if you are attending the same school and witnessing everything that happened.

The cover is clever and follows suit of New England Rock with its picture of Raven and the blue behind makes the cover eye catching again.

I would recommend this book to teenager and above for a brilliant read. Pia has done it again!

Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

Rosie’s Book Review Team #RBRT Suraya reviews Music of Souls by JJ Kendrick

Today’s review comes from book review team member Suraya, find her at http://www.thestorymint.com

Suraya chose to read and review Music of Souls by JJ Kendrick.

Here is her review.

MUSIC OF SOULS

By JJ Kendrick Three stars

The opening paragraph was descriptive and I was immediately in New England. Very nicely done.

I am not a Vampire genre fan so was looking for strong characterisation and storytelling. As I went through the novel I found myself thinking I was looking through the window of a student flat where meals were discussed and general love affairs were the preoccupation.

Jackson hated himself for what he did to Sarah (5) yet we never see that inner conflict expressed in his actions or emotions. They have fresh clothes yet drink blood which I would have thought was a messy business so why bother with fresh clothes.

The switch back in time is clearly marked and there was some change in tone and voice. I thought there could have been more of a sense of being in another century. More description of costumes and dialect.

I liked the fact that the author described smells and thought we could have had more of that type of description.

The idea that having sex with humans was like having sex with butterflies piqued my curiosity. I would have liked to see how that played out….not erotically but as an example of how the relationships between humans and vampires were handled.

This story had great possibilities that were largely unrealised such as the encounter in the bar with Elisabeth. This could have become a real game of wits. Instead she slips away and becomes the ‘first woman to ever deny’ Jackson. Jackson’s reaction is to become violent. Again we could have seen his turmoil and why rejection led to a wild frenzied attack on a red head who collapses because he has taken too much blood. There is a panicked frenzy to ‘transfuse’ her, then Sarah and Jackson make her forget how she came to be passed out on the couch and gave her a story about being in the casino. The device of giving characters the ability to wipe people’s memories is like using dreams to explain complicated storylines which are difficult to resolve. It was a shame because this one event could have opened up a story line that became more complex with rising tension that made the reader turn the pages.

This encounter appears to have no impact on Jackson apart from making him ‘curse himself’. So we get no sense of inner regret or torment that he almost killed someone and what the consequences of that might have been.

Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com