Maine coastline pictured as we leave the US

The north American coast from Arcadia

Portland, Maine was our last port of call in the United States of America. I was beginning to see a difference in lifestyle and accent in the people of the American east coast. New Yorkers talk fast, most of the time. The life-style is busy, busy, busy, but they do like to chat to English visitors. And particularly, they like it, if those English visitors don't use the same expressions as they do, but present their own form of the English language. The pace of life in Newport was slow, the people we chatted to, had more time and spoke a little slower. In Boston, there is a distinctive almost Anglicized drawl and again, a slower and more deliberate way of speaking. In Portland, as I have mentioned before, I came across the most carefully articulated American accent, a pleasure to listen to. Before we made for St John, New Brunswick, in Canada, we took the remainder of our American dollars out of our purses and replaced them with Canadian. I was very excited about my first steps on Canadian soil.