The birthplace of Cheers…the bar

When it came time to leave beautiful Quebec City, we struck upon the small problem that EVERYWHERE IN CANADA WAS BOOKED OUT FOR THE WEEKEND, and consequently we had no-where to go…but down south. incidentally, spending Canada day in Quebec, no-one even seemed to notice it occurred. St Jean Baptiste day though….big nationalist party!
So to till time, we just bussed around Canada for the day, heading down to Ottawa with the intention of leaving our bags at the station and checking out the town for the evening. But when we arrived, we discovered we really were not fussed, so just sat in the canteen for a few hours and played cards. We managed to get ourselves on the bus to Boston (why not, with a couple of days to kill, lets check it out eh?) and gosh, was that a bus trip.
Now americans, just to preface this, I don’t mind Americans, in fact I like quite a few of them. (and in the case of joyce absolutely adore). HOWEVER, this was the bus trip from hell…the moment we crossed into the States.
Firstly, getting Sarah to do a border crossing at 2am…I’m hardly at my sharpest. So the first indication I’m a terrorist, I kept telling that my date to fly out of New York, was three days previously. Apparently, the difference between the 6th of June and 6th of July, is quite big. Whatever. Plus I have a massive bag, so I must be hiding weapons of mass destruction…in my sleeping mat. Having to do a full bag search was not what I was interested in at 2am. In fact when the guard told me to open my bag, I believe I answered with “fine, but if you want it open, you have to help me close it again”. Which he had too…as after my bag search I was unable to jam it all back it. I had messily shoved (I mean packed) with precision and skill, and you can’t just open it up and expect it to close itself.
God knows why, but he didn’t say anything to my washing bag, which had a very large quantity of white powder in a zip-locked bag with no markings…he must have just known it was washing powder.
Then, to add insult to injury, he charged me USD$6 for a three month tourist visa…even though I already have a year long visa! What is with that country? I can only stay for three months at a time, have to leave and re-enter EVEN THOUGH I PAID STUPID AMOUNTS OF MONEY TO BE ALLOWED THERE FOR A YEAR.

So, as you can see, America and I got off on the wrong foot. And then we changed to the greyhound. Please refer to Tom’s blog for a description of that awful bus. Ikes.

However, Boston surprised me. The public transport, cheap and easy to use, the people friendly, the city, pretty and also walkable, which is very unusual. We had two nights booked in Boston, and we jammed a fair bit into those days. Firstly, we headed out to the Samuel Adams Brewery, for our free brewery tour. Not amazingly keen on all of their beers, but it’s the closest they have to boutique beer, and I’ll admit the Summer ale is really quite tasty. That was a good tour, except for the young guy who overfilled his beer, and proceeded to slurp it off the table. That was our cue to depart.

Boston Heritage weekend celebrations...right

Later that day we headed down to the local park, which was full of community gardens. That was one of the real highlights, these gorgeous little gardens, complete with tables and chairs, and it was obvious people took real pride in their gardens. It was really lovely to see that in the middle of the city.

The other big thing we did was headed out to Harvard. So yes mum, I went to Harvard. Hehehehe. The campus there is massive and every building covered in Ivy. Funnily enough where that ‘Ivy League’ stuff all comes from. I didn’t realise but it was the first University in the US. My favourite though, for sure the number of bookstores. Oh, an absolute dream.

But the best thing about Boston, we met some fantastic people. From the guy in the pizza shop to our fellow dorm-mates, we had a ball. Our roomies was a couple from Alabama, two musicians and they were great fun to hang out with, and we got together with more people, and played cards until 2am in the morning one night. Great time. But, all good things come to an end, and it was time to go to NYC!

written by

no_fosters_thanks on June 30, 2007 from Boston, United States

from the travel blog: Canada

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