Another state that like Connecticut challenges the spellchecker, Massachusetts spans the northern borders of Connecticut and Rhode Island before spilling out into Cape Cod Bay. In truth it warrants a separate article, as there's just so much to cover. Boston, Salem, Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, Plymouth, The Berkshires and Harvard University are all here. Famous names like Herman Melville, Louisa M. Alcott, the Kennedys, Jack Kerouac, Norman Rockwell and Paul Revere are all associated with the state and it was here in 1620 that the first Pilgrims came ashore from the Mayflower creating a new nation and a second excuse for Americans to eat turkey in the space of two months. It has a historic pedigree that's difficult to ignore.

To the north of Boston, Salem is famous for just one thing in despite nearly 400 years of history, the witch trials of 1692 when 20 people, all but one of them women, were hanged for witchcraft. Much of its modern day tourism is geared to cashing in on the trials but in addition to the Salem Witch Museum, Witch Dungeon Museum and Salem Wax Museum of Witches and Seafarers there's the Peabody Essex Museum, full of the souvenirs brought home by generations of travelling New Englanders and the House of the Seven Gables, where Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote his book of the same name.