Saturday 10th September 2011

[08:12]

It's an early start this morning as we've booked tickets on the fast ferry to Nantucket island.

We were up to see the sun rise - for once it was a beautiful morning. The last couple of mornings have been misty early on, but not today. I caught sight of the early ferry leaving the port. We're booked onto the 9:10am trip.

[19:01]

We had an early breakfast sitting on the motel's sun deck. We then headed out to the marina to catch the 9:15 fast ferry to Nantucket. The ferry was fully booked and had a long queue to get on. We stayed inside on the way there. The ferry only takes a hour to travel to the island, averaging about 30mph.

Once on the island, we hired a couple of bikes and set off towards the western edge of the island. We took just over a hour to make the 6.5 miles journey. There was a specialised cycle route that followed the main road all the way along, so we didn't have to worry about traffic on the roads. Our main worry was getting out of the main town as almost all the roads were (badly) cobbled - it was pretty much impossible to cycle until we'd left the main area behind.

We finally reached Madaket, which is a tiny beach area with a very nice beach but not much else. We watched the surfers for a while then turned around to head back.

The journey back incorporated a slightly less hilly route, but even so, it was a struggle to get back into town. The weather was warm and the sky was a blazing blue all day so it really started to drain us both. Once we did reach the town, the first thing we found, after returning the bikes, was a nearby ice cream parlour! Mmmmm. So refreshing!

We had a couple of hours still to kill, so we spent it wandering around Nantucket town, looking at the shops (no prices!!) and buying a couple of bits and bobs.

At last it was time to re-board the ferry and this time we sat up on the top deck. We made sure that we sat in the centre, because once the ferry hit full speed, there was quite a bit of spray coming along the side of the boat, forcing most people to move to the centre.

It was also extremely tricky to stand up and move about with so much wind rushing over the deck as you can see from the photo below!

Eventually, we entered the Hyannis harbour and were back on dry land. First thing we did was head back to the motel where we could crash out for a while to recover.

As tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre, it's been all over the TV here. Currently, MSNBC are reshowing the events 'as live' using the original commentary shown at the time. It's eerie to see this once again, especially with the US commentary which was much more in depth than the version we saw back in 2001.

Tomorrow is also our first moving day - we are heading out of Massachusetts and into New Hampshire to go to a place called Meredith.