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Wednesday 24 September 2014

Hello, Holidays | A remarkable road trip:

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I briefly mentioned in my last (and first) Hello, Holidays post that Craig and I will be road tripping between New York City and Boston (through Pennsylvania) while we're on holiday.  Our plan was to share the driving, but sadly it would be very expensive to insure me on a hire car over there because I'm under 25.  Boo!  Poor old Craig will be stuck behind the wheel for a total of about ten hours, but - lucky for him - we're breaking it up with a few sightseeing stops and one overnight stay.

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Our first leg of the trip will come after a seven day stay in New York City, and our first task (or, I should say, Craig's first task) will be driving through Manhattan not long after morning rush hour...  So that should be fun!  After we've made it out of the city (hopefully alive) we'll head west towards the state of Pennsylvania and our first destination: Centralia.

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Anyone who has played the thriller video game series Silent Hill (or seen the films based on that series) may be interested to know that the town of Silent Hill was reportedly based on Centralia, PA.  A fire started in a coal mine below Centralia in the early 1960s, and that fire is still burning today.  As a result, the majority of the town's inhabitants had to move elsewhere and from what I can tell the area is now pretty much a ghost town, with very few buildings left standing.  Smoke rises up to street level and dangerous sinkholes have appeared as a result of the fire, which presumably inspired a lot of the landscape of the fictional Silent Hill.  However, what I've read online has assured me that it's fairly safe (and legal) to explore on foot - away from any warning signs.  Craig and I both enjoyed the games and want to pay Centralia an ideally non fatal visit, but I have already stipulated that it must be in broad daylight.  Otherwise it would be way too scary for me!

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We'll probably only spend an hour or so in Centralia before getting back on the road and heading north east towards Scranton, PA.  Any fans of The US Office will know of Scranton, but unfortunately a lot of the show's locations (including the titular office building) are actually in LA, not Scranton.  Still, a few places are really there, including the Steamtown Mall - which is apparently now home to the original 'Scranton Welcomes You' sign seen in The Office's opening credits - and Poor Richard's bar (although only the name is the same, they didn't film in the real Scranton bar).  We're also spending one night in the Lackawanna Station Hotel which was the setting (but, again, not the filming location) for an Office episode.  As you might have already guessed, the hotel is a former railway station and looks absolutely stunning inside.

A lot of people who I've told about this leg of the trip seemed a bit bemused as to why I would want to go to such a small, relatively unknown part of America.  Then again, all the Office fans that I know got really excited about the idea.  Really, I just wanted an excuse to see beautiful, autumnal scenery and Scranton happened to be on the way, but I'm looking forward to visiting the Electric City!

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Last but not least, we'll spend the majority of a day driving from Scranton to Boston, although we're actually staying just outside of the centre of Boston, in Cambridge, MA.  It's a long journey, but I'm sure there will be at least one stop off along the way to stretch our legs.  We'll be spending a few days in Boston once we get there (so Craig can relax after all that driving!) and I'm looking forward to exploring Cambridge - where Harvard University is located - as well as Boston itself.

Although we've done a lot of planning already, I'm always open to suggestions and recommendations (especially for Boston) so please let me know if you have any!

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