Boston Bake

Greetings my winged pretties!  Having spent most of the week away with a broken phone charger, I’ve come back to a veritable tsunami of messages, emails and the like so please bear with me as I catch up with those and your blogs as well.  There’s so much to do I feel like I need another holiday already and I am tempted…

anyway, first to this trip!

Arriving after the usual long odyssey – which included a flight over Boston to NY to get a connecting flight back because we will do anything to save a little money – arriving was fantastic until confronted by a room that distinctly lacked air con, just a fan that sounded like an aeroplane ready to take off (a feature of many holidays it seems).  The only redeeming features were the courtesy bag of pretzels from Delta airlines which I found from the beginning of the day with the phrase ‘one salty snack for one sweet ride’ and a bed, a glorious bunk bed.

Boston is a pleasant city, very laid back because of the heat 30C (86F) to start our holidays, which was overly hot for this pasty skinned European.  Yet the inverse is true for the traffic which takes every opportunity to hurry each other along and I even spied a lone car presumably pipping itself on an empty stretch of road, honesty it was like being in a different country or something!

It’s also a small city which is great as it was only 2.5 Kilometres from our hostel through the city centre and out to the coast.  In between were plenty of restful places to relax and refresh and many places to eat as well.  As a consequence, there was much to see and do within easy walking distance and not once did we need to take transport apart from the torrid day we did the Freedom Trail.

The trail was the first major activity of the holiday and my, was it hot, hardly a breeze to speak of but we decided to wander the trail ourselves rather than go for the guided tour bit.  It has its good and bad points, I enjoyed seeing various bits of the city I never would have been to plus venturing into some places of historical value but that was outdone by the busy nature of the trail on a lot of narrow streets, gruelling heat and nowhere for a drink after the first half.  It was more of a trial than a trail.

We got to the end though and even forked out for the obligatory overpriced bottles of juice at the USS Constitution Museum (the ship being launched in 1797 and famously fighting the British in what was effectively another front in the Napoleonic Wars) before magically finding a taxi and begging a lift back to Boston common for a massive lemonade with real lemons and everything!  We were to spend plenty of time around the parks fending off the heat with shady trees.

Food wise, I never got the hotdog from a vendor that I so coveted but due to my inability to queue or my fullness after hogging the majority of a bag of popcorn through The Conjuring 2 (a film set in England which we chose to watch over there, the irony wasn’t lost on us) I failed miserably but it is an excuse to go back, one of many I hasten to add.

Other food highlights included a $47 dollar steak which was absolutely fantastic and well worth every penny.  We had Sushi as well, which was served in massive portions and was a challenge for my first time, one day I will try it again in a more manageable dose.  To offset that challenge, we found a pub with nice staff, to call a local and spent much time on the Jukebox putting on plenty of good music including Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, David Bowie and so forth for which we were complimented.

We did some of the tourist traps which is something that is always begrudgingly done but as Cheers had beer, it was bearable (beerable), I even sat in Norm’s chair but I was saddened to find out that nobody knew my name and wasn’t really bothered that I came, I tried not to seem too disappointed by this.  There was a Good balance between the tourist and non touristy bits and plenty of local businesses thriving, it seems to be a healthy city.

I was extremely happy to see steam coming from grates as that is really American to me, thanks to Hollywood,  Sadly I missed a great swathe of the football which culminated in falling asleep to England’s loss last night to Iceland, before a massive eleven and a half hours sleep.  Typical!  I did stare at Baseball with uncomprehending eyes for a bit but it was all a bit slow and people watching always intrigues me, especially when in a different culture.

There was a strange aversion to our accents, on reflection it could just be our pace of speaking and obscure colloquialisms that pepper our every day chatter, which admittedly confused anybody we spent more than half a minute talking to and utterly bamboozled fellow blogger Morgan whom we shared a couple of days with, more of which in a further post.

It’s been a fascinating trip as ever with many varied delights,  other highlights yet to come include plenty of books and buildings, some places outside Boston and with any luck a little insight into this small part of the US.  For now though, I shall wander outside and enjoy the rain for a time before it becomes too much of a crushing weather habit as it inevitably will!

Plenty of use water wisely signs were liberally dotted about, usually next to water features which seemed like a bit of a mockery to this good advice but there you go.

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