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I'm not the most bar traveled person in the world. By that I mean I am no great source of knowledge about bars, pubs and the such. But I think I am qualified enough to say that American do the whole bar thing in a very different way to the way it's done in England.

In England pubs usually look a certain way (even when they try not to!), and they always smell like, well... like a pub smells. But in the States when you go out for a beer you always seem to end up in something that though it has similarities with a 'pub' is not a pub and is very much a 'bar'. Perhaps though, that's something you can only appreciate once you have visited a 'typical British pub' and some American bar like Salem Beer Works.

So at the end of my second day 'stateside' I went with my friends Anne, Jodie and Josh (Check out Josh's website) to the Salem Beer Works. This bar is the 'sister bar' to the "famous" Boston Beer Works. Famous according their own PR anyway! There I had some mad drink called a 'Bunker Hill Blueberry Ale'. With blueberry's floating around the glass it looked more a lava lamp than a beer, but actually it was a nice drink, and that coming from a guy who doesn't particularly like beer. Mind you, that actually mean that the recommendation doesn't hold much water... or beer. Hmm, lets move on.

The next day while Josh was busy being a wedding singer, Anne and I went into Boston, a city that I have come to love. I think Boston has to be the most inviting city in the world. Well at least, it is the most inviting city that I have ever been to.

Last year I described Boston as "perfect, like two and a half sugars in your tea, not too much, not too little, just right." My opinion hasn't changed. This city seems to have the perfect balance of city buzz and metropolitan cool.

Anne and I didn't have an agenda as we wandered around the city. We headed over to a coffee bar called Curious Liquids located on Beacon Hill/Beacon Street next to Mary Dyer statue (if you know where that is?). I discovered 'steamers' there. (However, in my humble opinion the steamers served at the Atomic Cafe in Beverly are better.)

We just wandered around. Boston is a great place to wander, it's a wanderers stomping ground (or is that a stompers wandering ground?). I've done a lot of wandering throughout various cities in both the States and the U.K. Boston is becoming very familiar to me, I can't get lost in the city which is a great feeling. It has now got to the point where I have a regular wandering route that takes me through Government centre then onto Boston common and into the Public Gardens. From there I head up Commonwealth Ave and across to Copley Square and one of my regular places to visit, The John Hancock Tower. At that point the wander can go pretty much anywhere. But then isn't that the point of a wander?

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