''Boston'', Eyewitness Travel Guides

Oh Doring Kindersley Eyewitness Travel Guides how I love you; let me count the ways... For familial reasons I feel compelled to say I also like Rough Guides (those souls who first realised my brother's socialising party ways could be leveraged to good commercial use as a student marketeer), but there's nothing like a good Eyewitness. Those great maps! The cool little museum guides! The photo guide to local food! (incuding my new favourite: ''a sandwich in Boston''). For the past 5 days it has been my trusty guide to this new city; indeed I have just returned from a rather tasty Korean meal courtesy of the brief but well-chosen restaurant guide at the back.

First impressions of Boston have been pretty good, although it was difficult going with such high expectations (anyone who has ever visited, without exception, has sung its praises to me for the past 2 months). Coming from Athens, the main observations are: 1) it's small. Really, really small. Like, from my hotel window I can see fields and sea. Coming from Athens, that's very small. 2) it's clean! bit Disneylandish, but that's OK with me 3) people are really friendly. Yeah, I know it's America, and I know that they want a tip, but I'll accept an ''hello, how's your day going?'' to ''Speak Greek? No? *spit*'' any day. I'm working on the 37th floor which is kind of freaky but fun; plus there's a shopping mall at the bottom of the building which is a whole other level of novelty and gloomingly bad news for my credit card. I have also found somewhere to live, which is always good news as being homeless or hotelbound is not much fun. Unfortunately I'm leaving again in 6 days for a brief European soujourn, but after that I'll be back for a while and hopefully start the settling-in process. In the meantime I shall practice my Bostonian accent - '' could you take me up Mass Ave to Haaaaa-vad please?''