Best pizza in the US?

Oozing with olive oil, thick with chopped garlic cloves, and topped with salty clams - one of the flavours of New England. This is Pepe's famous white clam pizza from their landmark coal-fired pizzeria in the town of New Haven, Connecticut, home of Yale University. Pepe's claims to be the birthplace of American pizza and the queue usually inches along for an hour or more, but New Englanders deem it well worth the wait. We were glad to make the pitstop en route to New Jersey: the taste was a revelation. Who'd have thought you could have pizza without tomatoes? We downed the the golden, chewy pie with another local flavour: "birch beer" - white birch-flavoured soft drink - which smelt more than a little like Deep Heat.

The dinner followed a lunch of more clams, this time crunchy and fried, along with milky potato-studded chowder, onion rings and lobster rolls at the teaming Woodman's of Essex, just north of Boston.

Dive for your memory

Over the weekend we lost a great musician and song-writer, whose music is the soundtrack of my youth. Grant McLennan of The Go-Betweens died in his sleep at home in Brisbane after setting up for a party. His love songs, wistful and suffused with longing, always spoke to the bittersweet romantic in me, and music was, as now, such a vital part of my life. Nobody else could evoke growing up in sleepy sultry Queensland, alongside canefields and in bright sunshine, like he could. Each time I met Grant, in my teens and early 20s, he would give lots of his time to sign a shy girl's CD cover and answer questions about his lyrics. The last time I saw Grant he was standing on a street corner in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley, guitar case in hand, on the way home after some post-gig drinks with me and my pals. We hung out of the car window to give him a final thank-you for the music and he performed a low bow for us, smiling from ear to ear. Then the lights changed and he walked off into the midnight.

Eulogies, here and here, some from musicians but most from fans and fellow Brisbane refugees, brought tears to my eyes when I read, in the New Jersey suburbs, he had gone. Thank-you Grant.

Video: The Go-Betweens, Bye Bye Pride. Probably their best song ever. And not only does it mention Shield Street in Cairns, where I lived between the ages of 5 and 12, but the video shows lots of Sydney in the late 1980s: the Darling Harbour development, Bondi Beach and the eastern suburbs where I have made a home. Even Melbourne is in there (the Anzac Day march), where my parents are from and I spent my early childhood.


Video: The Go-Betweens, Streets of Your Town:



Update, May 12: Grant is farewelled, and it still hurts.

What would you do if you turned around/And saw me beside you/Not in a dream but in a song?

Video: The Go-Betweens, Bachelor Kisses

Maine

How have I lived so long without tasting a sweet, rich, lobster roll?

Or seeing the spectacular Maine coastline, its mussel-strewn pebble beaches, and the clusters of inlets and islets from the peaks of Acadia National Park?



We were kindly sheltered in the attic bedroom of a beautiful timber farmhouse by friends of Graham and Rainey. How can I do justice to Sarah and David, their beautiful little boy, Finn, and dog Ceilidh?

Sarah is a consummate hostess and chef, spoiling us with sumptuous meals like her rich saag paneer. David's paintings of serene interior scenes only added to the sense of home as harbour. It's an artist’s home full of good music, sparkling conversation, great food and tranquility - in a beautiful part of the world with fresh sweet air.

Bahston

A dose of beauty at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum...

and Rainey gave us a tour of firstly her favourite lunch spots (for Vietnamese sandwiches and Cuban rolls), then of Bostonian history at her Old State House Museum, and downtown Boston...

Also walked through Harvard Yard and crashed a soiree at Eliot House...

...sniffed the lilacs at Arnold Arboretum...

... and slipped into multiple food comas from the really good Italian dinners and cannoli...

Vermont

Stunning landscapes...

... great cheddars, maple syrup, maple soda, drool-worthy maple butter, apple cider doughnuts and Ben & Jerry's ice-cream...

... covered bridges...

... and cool college towns, like Burlington on Lake Champlain (pictured below, Champy the lake monster not shown). From a long choice of restaurants, we chose American Flatbread: a joyous experience. Pizzas topped with local maple-fennel sausage, cheeses and ramps (wild leeks), with a manifesto on the importance of public urban spaces tucked into each menu.

Montreal

French style...

...joie de vivre...

... promenades...

... and Eggs Benedict come on crepes.