12.11am, Friday August 7, bed at Boston Mariott ....closer than necessary

I am writing in the bed that I will be sharing with my mother and sister in our little room at the Marriott. Dad is in a cot bed at our side. I guess I came home to be near my family... I use the opportunity to bond with N.

I knew that driving here and finding the hotel was going to involve my Dad stressing and my mom exacerbating his stress by trying to help. It was sweet, though, how as soon as we picked up N, Dad was more laidback, as if driving around Boston was exactly what he wanted to be doing.

The four of us spent a couple of hours walking around the park, the Beacon Hill area, and the river. Beacon Hill is lovely old brick rowhouses with bay windows, sometimes copper roofing, window boxes of geraniums and cobbled sidewalks. It is the first part of Boston I have really liked and is, of course, the most expensive bit.

We then walked to a building of art spaces and looked at the work in several studios - wire sculptures of cats, women, animals and people; oil paintings using images from old photographs; landscapes; abstract paintings. We had a nice patio meal outside at a fancier sort of restaurant than I am used to - $20-26 for mains. I had a nice plate of gnocchi with a fancy cheese I've never heard of, corn, and peas. We also shared zucchini fritters, teumpura-like ,and I had a ginger shandy - wheat ale, ginger beer, lemon and mint.

Afer filling our stomachs my family went to see Funny People. It amuses me that we go all the way to another city to watch a movie, but this is normal for us. I guess it saves trying to figure out something else we all want to do. Free Shakespeare in the park was the first suggestion but I really don't like Comedy of Errors so I voted no on that one. Funny People was very good, though - I laughed and laughed. We laughed more than the rest of the full theatre because we understood all the joking at the expense of Australians. For example, the scene where they are watching a rugby league game and Adam Sandler's character says, 'Where are the black guys?' Mom, N and I were hysterical.