Our hotel room in America’s Best Value (their words, not mine), was not too bad, yet not good enough for us to want to stay for three nights. However, when we got back to our Cherry Tree base, just over the river, after our first few hours in Philadelphia, we were glad to have made the trip.

We had already decided where we would visit the next day, having made a mental list from our vantage point on the 100-minute Hop-on-Hop-off bus tour. One place we were not planning on visiting was an innovation with which we were not familiar: a dog day-care centre. The guide pointed it out on the left as we went down a side-street and we saw a whole bunch of dogs (as they tend to say in these parts) looking out the window.

It would never have occurred to me to put our dogs in a day-care centre, if I had known such a thing existed. In fact, since retirement, I have been able to monitor our dogs and I know what they do all day: sleep. You have this mental image of your dog pacing up and down the house, possibly emitting the odd whine, pining for your return, while you are out. Nine times out of ten, they just sleep.

You might say they sleep content because they know we are in the house, but if you go out and then later tiptoe to the window and look through, you will see them: asleep.

Our US-based friends were familiar with the day-care concept and indeed had placed their animals in one in the past, when they both worked. Of course, you have to be earning a few bob to finance such an undertaking.

Pete and Marilyn put their cat and dog in kennels while they were away, while our two Cavalier King Charles were looked after by our daughter and our grandchildren in Spain for six weeks, which meant they cost us far less than the 1000 euros for a place in the local kennels. So in fact they had day care and continued to enjoy family surroundings. We were sent various photographs of the dogs looking a little baffled as they were being read a bedtime story by our youngest grandchild, Violet, aged nearly 2.

Marilyn delighted in the photos, because she too has a King Charles – a legacy from their visit to us in The Tarn in 2012, when she was captivated by our two.

“I am so grateful,” she told us. “Maisy has really revitalised me,” she said of her dog.

She now swears by Cavalier King Charles.

Back at the ugly hotel, we watched a little television before falling asleep reflecting that some 70 per cent of US TV advertising comprises food, over-the-counter pills and medicine to rid you of anything from cancer to a broken toe; and financial investment/insurance.

To my mind, there is nothing worse than returning from a meal out, feeling replete and then having to witness American fast-food being advertised on your television. I don’t like fast food and I have only been in the restaurant with the yellow M once in the last eight years or so and that was to avail myself of the free wi-fi. However, the dishes served in the UK look quite conservative compared to concoctions they come up with in the US.

As for health-cure adverts, the bit I enjoy is that after you have watched a line of grateful people being paraded as having received miracle cures for chronic arthritis etc, which would make even Lazarus jealous, some white-coated actor tells you most sincerely that you could be on the road to recovery in the blink of an eye. Then you are warned to check with your doctor first.

You can picture these conversations at the surgery; “Hey Doc’ you know you told me my cancer is incurable? Well, why do you say that when I can get regular doses of Aloha Snake Oil (or whatever brand name you can make up) and be cured within weeks. You never told me about that!”

I suspect they decide the doctor is old fashioned, opt not to consult him and pour dollars into purchasing Aloha Miracle Snake Oil Cure, and auto-suggestion persuades them: “there is a slight improvement”.

I wonder why people are not suspicious of a product that can cure things as diverse as arthritis and tinnitus.

Or there is the other alternative advertising approach, which we noted as we left the restaurant that lunchtime in Philly. The sign told us: “Get Big Arse slices at the BA Café.” That sign was next to a store named: Doggy Style. That sign also worked for we switched our eyes quickly to the window and perhaps were a little disappointed to note the shop sold dog food, collars, beds, leads etc.

We did not see the Liberty Bell, which was English made and cracked and may or may not have been rung on the day Independence was announced, and was adopted some 50 years later by Abolitionists who dubbed it the Liberty Bell and later by suffragettes who dubbed it the Justice Bell.

Neither did we visit the Betsy Ross house whose occupant may or may not have designed and made the first stars and stripes. There is no evidence of her doing so until the grandson, 100 years later, made the claim around the 1880s. The other point is that visiting old homes in the USA is not really an eye-opener because, in the majority of cases, they are not that old. Europeans and Americans have a different view on what constitutes old.

After our bus trip, we popped up to the large indoor market, which was quite fascinating but the only thing Pete and I purchased, much to our amazement, were two bottles of dandelion and burdock. Neither of us could recall tasting it much after we abandoned short trousers. You tended to find it on sale in Wiltshire and the west, although Corona did produce a version back in the 1940s and 1950s.

We changed hotels three times and somehow the two bottles got lost in the boot. I had to email Pete, when we were back in New York State that the two bottles tasted just as I remembered it.