Boston was the first of the universally known, large cities that we visited in the US. We kept up our recent trend of couch surfing, staying with a guy about our age, Aaron, originally from Alabama. This definitely made a huge difference to our stay as we all hung out together for most of the weekend and got along really well.

Aaron showed us some of the local sights including a tour of the Samuel Adams brewery which was great, probably due to the free beer. We also decided to walk along the historical route known as the Freedom Trail, which details some interesting features of Boston's history.

A definite highlight was the opportunity to "shoot some guns" American style. Sean, a friend of Aaron's, is a member of a firing range and he invited us to come and have a go after he saw our reaction when they pulled up "Guns Digest" for some light reading. Having never touched a gun before, let alone fired one, we were a little hesitant as it came to our turn to pull the trigger. We were a bit blown away (no pun intended) at the power, noise and kick back of the weapon. In the end we found it exhilarating and terrifying. We felt pretty lucky to have the opportunity and really enjoyed it, having said that, we're not planning on running out to buy a gun any time soon.