Into New England for the first time

We began the day as we had yesterday: I awoke at 5.15, which is great as it means I'm acclimatised to the time difference as this is the normal time I wake at home. I caught up with my e-mails, showered and went to Mass in Our Saviour's.
I met Drew in Blooms for breakfast, after all the meat last night I decided to have a lighter breakfast so opted for the Eggs Benedict not something I've eaten before, but lighter than the usual breakfast. That being said this also came with the usual fried potatoes. I realise I do the potatoes a disservice in earlier blog posts, they are in fact potatoes, green pepper, chopped finely, and onions fried, they are really nice. I also had Orange Juice and Coffee. Drew had the same breakfast as yesterday.
We went back to the room and finished our packing. We are now travelling with one case of clean clothes and another of dirty until our first laundrette of the hols I expect that will be tomorrow or possibly the day after. This seems to work well as a way of managing our clothes and avoids us having to carry the case with dirty clothes in and out of the hotels.
We checked out at 9.40 and walked the three blocks to Hertz to pick up the hire car. The pickup was pretty painless, having booked the car back last December all we need to do was show my license and credit card and do the same for Drew. Interestingly, though we always remember to take the paper part of the licence we are never asked for them.

Ten minutes after arriving we were walking to the car. In preparation for us buying a hybrid car ourselves we had decided to book a hybrid for this holiday. We had booked a Nissan Altima, and that is what we got. Of course the Altima is much bigger than the Jazz we drive at home, so will take a little getting used to.
Now to the first day of our travels. The route we took is here it looks like this on Google Maps



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Welcome to Connecticut

We left Hertz at 10.04 and I drove out of New York and on the way to Connecticut. The road from NY to Stanford, CT was very busy, but traffic was quieter after Stanford. Drew took a photo of the WWE HQ in Stanford, he says he failed the entrance criteria! We stopped at the state welcome centre, but there was not much suggestion of things to see, so we moved on to Massachusetts. We stopped for lunch in East Springfield, the only eating place was called an Ihop, an unusual chain restaurant that we'd never come across before. One of the most unusual things was a version of half and half, you could have a starter with half of a main course sandwich. I had loaded potato with bacon, cheese and sour cream soup!! Yes soup, it was as if someone had taken a baked potato with the trimmings and put it in a blender! This was served with half a round of bread made into a sandwich of pot roast beef (Roast Beef in UK English) Drew had Caesar salad and half a round of turkey and cheese sandwich.

Drew took over the driving at this point and we headed back to the I95 towards Vermont. The Vermont Welcome Centre was a much more professional affair it included a wide range of resources for visitors, and the best toilets we have seen so far. We drove on up the River Connecticut Valley - this was beautiful with wooded hills on both sides of the road. Vermont's hills are iconic with Holiday Inn making their snow season famous, at this time of the year there is no hint of snow, but the trees and hills are still spectacular. We arrived at the Holiday Inn Express in White River Junction at seven minutes past five. Another fab day of the holiday.