So, my last post for 2009 is going to about Boston which is quite fitting because that’s exactly where we have been traveling back from today, on New Year’s Eve day.

Photos, Photos, Photos.

When?	Late Dec 2008
Why Go?	Lovely architecture, fun city, seafood!
Weather	Cold be clear (except on our last day – heavy snow!)

The Experience

Day 1

So, we had to get up at 4am in order to get in to Chinatown in Manhattan in time to catch our 6.30am bus ride to Boston with Fung Wah buses. If you’ve ever wanted to get to Boston on the cheap and don’t mind being on a bus for nearly four hours then Fung Wah are for you. Its not the only discount bus operator between Boston and New York, competitors are located just around the corner from their offices, but it was the original. Bear in mind that a cheap price tag does bring with it some drawbacks such as other bargain-hungers who are aggressive about getting on to the bus so there’s a chance you may not get on the bus, or get the seats you want, reserved ticket or not. This wasn’t so much of a problem with us on a cold wintery morning but be prepared mentally to fight for your seat in the summer or during peak times! Don’t dilly dally either with handing over your ticket because the ticket taker will not hesitate to by-pass you, after duly shouting at you, and move on to the next customer. Everyone should take the bus at least once – just to experience it.

When we got to Boston it was about 10.45 so it wasn’t too bad of an effort to get to Boston. I was a bit disoriented when we got out of the bus terminal as I was a bit groggy from napping on the bus however, to my amusement, we walked down the road and found ourselves in Chinatown! Of course.

Chinatown didn’t occupy us too long as it was probably only a couple of blocks square and didn’t take us much time to circle around and being mid-morning on a Monday it was relatively quiet. Our first stop was to grab some breakfast from a Chinese Bakery in the form of our favourite Chinese pastries. I hadn’t really done much planning on what we would do in Boston though Pat a hit list of sorts that suited me. As we had a few hours before we could check in to our hotel we decided to take a giant walk around Boston. Its not a huge city and being relatively flat, despite the number of cars about, was relatively easy to walk around. I’d spotted an interesting restaurant, The Legal Test Kitchen, in the guide book Pat had borrowed from the library so we decided to meander on the way to it. The restaurant happened to be on the other side of the city and over some river so in the end it ended up being quite the walk though still perfectly doable. Along the way we saw some very pretty buildings including the Federal Reserve building and some sort of fire station in a giant building. We also had time for a stroll along the waterfront which looked like the kind of place that would be pretty cool in summer but in the middle of winter was almost ghost-town like. The building with no doubt the best view of the ocean was the John Joseph Moakley US Courthouse. A building that cost about £130m to build. Its whole side facing the ocean was like a wall of glass.

Boston is known for its seafood and seafood we were keen to eat when we got there. I saw an entry for LTK (Legal Test Kitchen) in our lonely planet guide and it intrigued me. It claimed that the bar/restaurant utilised innovative technology (don’t get excited about the technology bit – all I could see was that they had a mobile credit card device!) and was at the forefront of some creative cuisine. This is the place where they test food for Legal Seafoods – another chain of restaurants. Our meal at LTK started with some sort of white bean pesto dip with some warmed buns which was very yummy.

For my meal I opted for one of the specials of the day which was a Lobster Macaroni and Cheese dish. The thing with specials is that the price always ends up being a surprise and surprised I was with the price – £25 for mac and cheese! Admittedly there were some reasonable chunks of lobster and it was pretty delicious but it wasn’t exactly an American-sized portion – I wouldn’t have thought I had more than half a lobster in the dish and with lobsters being in quite abundance this season it was a little over priced.

After lunch we continued our walk though this time heading to our hotel. We were hoping to see The Boston Tea Party Ship and Museum …. but it wasn’t there! Apparently it is being renovated or whatever you call it when you take a whole ship away and refurbish. So, we continued on to our hotel.

On the way we noted that many places still had their Christmas decorations up including The Union Oyster House (which is an Oyster Bar which has been designated a National Historic Monument for being the oldest restaurant in the USA) which had a Christmas tree decorated with stuffed lobsters! So funny.

Our hotel room, The Onyx Hotel, was expensive (though not any more than any other hotel in Boston at this time of year.) It was actually quite a funky hotel and it proved to be a dog-friendly place as well which was demonstrated by the food/water dishes at the front door accompanied by a little welcome card (with photo welcoming the next dog to arrive), and dog-sitting and dog-walking services. I also love the fact that the room provided leopard print PJs and bathrobes for guests! Oh oh oh and an ipod docking radio.

The best thing about Boston is that you can just go exploring and will probably find yourself running into one sort of attraction or another. Without even looking at a map we found the State House just near our hotel. If you want to go inside this beautiful building there are regular free tours. It’s a nice building and we got to see the Senate and House of Rep rooms where we also came across one of the outgoing senators.

Leaving the State House we found ourselves in Boston Common, one of the oldest parks in the US. Its 50 acres in size but a lot smaller than I imagined it to be. As is common at this time of year an ice rink had been set up in the park which was kind of fun to watch for a while. We kept on walking and after walking through what seemed to be the main central shopping district we somehow ended up in Chinatown again without realising it! By then it was dinner time so we headed over to Quincy Market which, coincidentally, happened to be on the way back to our hotel. Quincy Market is a building in a shopping area called Faneuil Hall Marketplace. It used to house groceries but now seems to mainly house loads of food stalls and a couple of restaurants including … Wagamama!! I had to go to Wagamama just to check it out and yes – its pretty much exactly the same as what you get in London. There is heaps of buzz in this area and though it mainly attracts tourists does attract quite a few of the locals too.

Day 2

Day 2 dawned bright and blue for us. Happy days! As it was such a nice day it made it perfect to go up the Prudential Tower for views over Boston. After grabbing a quick pastry for breakfast from the local Au Bon Pain we slowly meandered over to what I think was the Back Bay area through Boston Common and through the adjacent Public Gardens (just about half the size of Boston Common.) Pat had actually been to Boston on a short visit before and stayed in the Back Bay area. He could even point out the exact room he stayed in!

We spent about an hour up in the Prudential Tower. We probably would have been quicker but the free audio guide was actually quite good (I liked listening to the kid’s version) and since the day was so magnificent we really admired the views. You could even see clear across Charles River to MIT and Harvard which was going to be our next stop after grabbing some lunch and a quick trip to the Mary Baker Eddy Library.

Our fuel ended up being clam chowder in giant bread bowls. Mmm … very yummy and very filling! We were also given oyster biscuits to garnish the clam chowder but with the bread bowl seemed a little overkill with the carbs. It was yummy and because it was so thick eating the bread bowl didn’t prove to be as difficult as I thought.

You can visit the Mary Baker Eddy Library for free but the highlight of the library is the Mapparium which is a three-story tall glass globe of the world made of stained glass. You have to pay $6 to join a tour that takes you into the Mapparium and once there you get to walk on a 30 foot long bridge and view it from the inside. Wherever you stand you will be the same distance from all different points on the map and also it works as a whispering gallery so if you stand at one end of the bridge and whisper your friend can hear you at the other. Definitely a cool (and attractive) concept if a bit pricey to see. You could see though why kids would be fascinated by such an attraction.

After this quick trip to the Mary Baker Eddy Library we hiked over what I think was maybe Harvard Bridge (not to sure on this one) to visit first MIT then Harvard. I can tell you that despite it being a clear beautiful day it was darn cold and windy. At one stage I swear I could have leant into the wind and it could have held me up purely on its force alone! I was surprised that we could walk anywhere we wanted on the campus at MIT. It felt quite cool to pretend I was a uni student again. What I wanted to see really was the buildings designed by Frank Gehry, the Stata Center which took $300m to build. I’d seen them from the Prudential Tower so had a general idea of where they were but not specific enough to find it straight up so we just wandered around the campus. I’m pretty amazed we found it really! The buildings are definitely worth seeing. They were visually stunning and with the effect from the sun – truly magical.

After these buildings Harvard seemed a little boring. Though a straight line from MIT it’s quite a long walk to Harvard. Every time we came to an area which seemed like it was a little built up it was like “are we there yet?” When we did eventually arrive at Harvard I’m not sure we even found the actual campus. The closest confirmation we got was a van with the Harvard uni logo stamped on it!

Our final (proper) meal for the Boston trip was at Durgin Park. If ever there was a tourist trap this restaurant would be it though having said that it apparently attracts the locals too. Located in Faneuil Hall Marketplace this restaurant always seems to be written up in tourist guides. I wanted to go there mainly because I wanted to try Indian Pudding (molasses and cornmeal baked for hours and served with ice cream) and this was one of the best places to get it. Waitresses are supposed to be quite cranky (kind of like the reputation that Wong Kei has in Chinatown London) but ours was quite friendly and very quick. She was clearly a marvel at juggling several diners at once! When we got to Durgin Park there were giant carcasses on display downstairs. This was disturbing to the extent that it seemed a bit smelly (and not in a good way!) The restaurant is actually upstairs though so at least the smell didn’t permeate too much during our meal. Meat seems to dominate the menu but there is also plenty of fresh seafood on offer. Pat had a seafood basket but he couldn’t “see his food” through all the fries on his plate! I almost had no room for dessert but just had to have the New England classic Indian pudding. Oh boy – this is one dessert that was even too sweet for me to finish! It was interesting to say the least.

Day 3

Day 3 saw us back on the Fung Wah bus to New York. I was hoping to get back early enough to maybe see about heading in with my younger cousin to spend New Year’s evening in Times Square (I know I swore off it last time but thought it would be nice to spend it with my cousin and her friends but it ended up taking us nearly seven hours to get back to Manhattan because the weather decided to throw down some snow on us! I was very hungry even though I hads me some pizza for breakfast before getting on the bus …

Fung Wah drivers have a bit of a bad reputation but I reckon our bus driver did very well to get us back safely and relatively quickly in the conditions (I looked out the front of the bus at one stage and couldn’t see a thing!)

Final Words

Boston is a beautiful city and from what I’ve seen in the last couple of days seems like a totably livable city. Its not the biggest city in the world but certainly is charming enough. The fact its a university city also gives it an extra little bit of character and probably makes it a fun place in the evening during university times.