Woke up this morning after a really rough night, this cold has gone to my chest and I am unable to stop coughing. I went to the chemist to get some drugs but there are so few active ingredients allowed that they are almost placebos.

We are booked into two tours today with free tours by foot. The first is the historical freedom trail and our tour guide is Brian, a passionate history buff with a flair for the dramatic. So much of the formative events of America's politics originated here - the rise against the British, the Boston massacre, the ride of Paul revere. The puritanists settled here from England seeking freedom to practice their austere variation of reformist religion. The ideas behind the declaration of independence originated here, and three of the signatures on that document were buried in a local cemetary.

The walk took us through the boston common (a big park originally a common area to graze livestock), to the gold domed old state building, various churches that played different roles in history, a graveyard , the site of the boston massacre and Faneuil hall. All very interesting and entertaining.

There is a food hall behind Faneuil hall on the waterfront (a glorified foodcourt) and lots of shops and tourist attractions like a permanent one direction shop.

We don't have much time for lunch so we take a punt on the union square oyster restaurant - the oldest continuously running restaurant in America. The food and service are ordinary, but my soup does what it needs to do!

The next tour of northend (little Italy) starts where the other ended - we have Melanie as our guide, and unfortunately she is not as good with the crowd control or encyclopedia knowledge that Brian was. We still get an interesting history of the area, and we are still following the freedom trail - to Paul reveres house and the church where they signaled with lanterns, and another graveyard.

The Italian atmosphere is authentic, but the food has become Americanized - would you like pasta with that? I was hoping for a nice aperitif session but this was unknown (not in Italy!!) so we popped into a coffee shop to have a cannoli for Sonya, as its her baby shower today. Dinner is at a modern Italian restaurant following the European model, and we end up having a simple but delicious dinner of veal with capers and lemon juice with vegetables.

We did a little bit of shopping in the area and walk the streets some more for photos. We have an early night as we are both unwell.