After a brief interruption, I will wrap up our recent trip to the USA, for I will be busy celebrating Christmas and the New Year and have little time to write.

We happened on a chain in Pennsylvania called Friendlys, which provided us with our staple preference of hashed browns, eggs over-easy and crispy bacon. In addition, if you kept your receipt you could return the next day and enjoy a half-price breakfast.

We thought it excellent value for money and we did pop in one or two evenings for dessert, for their ice cream is extremely good. After three breakfasts there, we were a little disappointed to move on because the service from Olympia and Jess was excellent. It transpires the chain has been in severe financial trouble, fighting its way out of bankruptcy, which is disappointing because what they serve is good and most certainly value for money. We should know as we have majored in US breakfasts over the years.

Market forces have also hit Barnes and Noble and Waterstones. One of the treats in which we always indulged when visiting the USA, was a browse or two through their vast book emporiums. But the Internet and Amazon have undermined the sales of books and we saw several of these emporiums, closed and empty, while on our travels.

“I’ve chosen a good time to try and write a book,” I remarked to Ellie, looking at these empty stores.

By contrast most places we visited, the stores and businesses were advertising the fact they were looking for “help” as they call staff recruitment. I do not know the unemployment figures but certainly there are many jobs to be had in the states of New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Having switched to our far more commodious and clean Days Inn hotel, I was shown by Pete how to make waffles, which is something I had never considered as being lacking in my education, but thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I had come across a maple syrup that was described as caramel-flavoured and I became hooked on that in a matter of seconds, bringing back a couple of bottles, wrapped in my clothes.

Our friends are very into food and drink and particularly enjoy curries, which suited us down to the ground.

One of the highlights of our trip to Philadelphia was the Barnes Foundation, which was founded in 1922 by Albert C Barnes who co-developed an anti-gonorrhoea drug and had the good fortune to sell it some years before antibiotics came into vogue. He then ploughed his sizeable fortune into collecting art. The fact he made so much money, suggests there was a lot of gonorrhoea about. He regarded his art collection as educational and, rather than an ordinary museum, he limited public access to students for what is one of the biggest private collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. The legal wrangling over his legacy and dictates continued for years but now we all get to see these works.

It displays 181 Renoirs, 69 Cezannes, 59 Matisses, 46 by Picasso and many paintings by Reubens, Rousseau, Gauguin Titian, Manet, Monet and El Greco amongst many others.

When our tickets were inspected, it was explained that we could tour the galleries and then, if we so desired, go out to lunch and come back in the afternoon. Now I do enjoy touring galleries but spending a whole day seemed a little like over-kill but, after passing two or three hours there, Ellie and I admitted that the idea of going back after lunch was quite a good one. However, despite knowing each other 48 years, we did not reveal that fact to each other until back in our hotel room that night. It transpired we would have liked to have returned for a second helping for as Ellie summarised: “There is so much to take in.”

That was certainly an unexpected highlight of our 26 days in the USA and, for my tastes, far better than the Guggenheim experience. To see so many great works all in one place was a real bonus and while I appreciated that Mr Barnes had tried to tie in each painting with artefacts by the side of them or below them, creating a harmony of movement, shapes and colours, I was so busy taking in the works of art, I did not have time to contemplate the auxiliary subtleties.

We also indulged in culture of a different kind: beer-drinking. Now I wouldn’t accept the offer of a Heineken, Miller, Bud or Coors beer if it was placed on my table and I was told it was free. There are a whole bunch of other lager beers I am not involved in and it transpires, Bud, Miller, Coors and Stella are all owned by the world’s biggest brewery.

It is good to see that the development of micro-breweries has increased since we were last in the USA in 2011 and, just as they are big in the UK, you can get a variety of suitably odd-sounding beers such as Twisted Kilt; Hop Drop and Roll; Fat Tire, Dogfish Head; Palette Wrecker and the like. These are referred to as craft ales and, while a true real ale fan such as myself, should not really celebrate their emergence, they are a whole lot better than the anodyne Bud etc.

I can tell you, living in France and just having gassy lager to choose from, a pint of Smuttynose or Focal Banger, can make a welcome change. For the entirety of the trip I kept a look out for craft ales and when offered a Heineken in a Thai restaurant in Cleveland, I settled for a Coke in preference.

One of the better bars to deal in craft ales in Philly is P.O.P.E’s, which actually stands for Pub on Passyunk East. Our Garmin, Hilary, could not decant Pope’s into a set of directions and so we enquired and after 20 minutes or so going through some fascinating areas, aided by locals who helped us on the way, we finally made it to what the English would describe as a spit and sawdust alehouse, although it also served some intriguing food. We spent two later afternoons in Popes and our horizons were brighter and better for the experience.