I had actually planned to write another entry from NYC since we were there for so long, but I'm in Philadelphia right now and since I still haven't written from Boston I thought I'd better give the second NYC a miss. Suffice to say it was amazing and it totally destroyed my Visa.

We caught a Megabus from NYC to Boston on the 4th during the day and arrived in Boston at about 2pm. Fairly uneventful drive. I made George listen to Billy Joel's "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" because it was stuck in my head, she wasn't happy with the arrangement but you live and learn. We walked from the bus station to the hostel in Boston. It was probably about a 20 minute walk which seems like a lot shorter when you're not carrying a huge backpack and a handbag (and alternating one of George's bags which is as heavy as hell). We basically collapsed when we got to the hostel and up to the 4th floor (no stairs, oh cheers). We eventually floated out to forrage for food at about 5pm. Since Georgie has already been to Boston the map wasn't entirely called for, or so we thought. It took us a while to work out which direction we had to walk up when we got out of the shopping center armed with pita and hummus.

The relatively uncrowded sidewalks and centers of Boston were like heaven after NY. As much as I enjoyed it, pushing your way through every street and tourist attraction is really exhausting after a while. Also Boston has a much more polished exterior compared with NYC's grittness. A lot of the buildings are like old school Victorian and the skyline is no where near as imposing. I guess comparing the two cities is chalk and cheese or whatever. But the point is, it was amazing to be able to move without taking out two angry people from Brooklyn with my elbows.

We met up with Steve and Jimmy that night, who coincidently happened to be in the same hostel, in the same city at the same time, and we walked to a nearby park to build my first snowman! Snowman building is one of the most physically demanding things I've ever done. That s*** does not want to stick together and you have to just keep building it up. It was heaps of fun though because Boston wasn't windy when we were there so it wasn't so cold. Until we had a snow fight and Steve hit me in the eye with a snow ball! I removed myself from the situation at that point and proceeded to watch Gyna be mauled with snow by the boys for the next hour. We went back to the hostel freezing and wet, had a shower and hit the sack.

Up early the next day. I went to the Museum of Science to see the Harry Potter exhibition which George oddly had no interest in. It was really cool though- they had heaps of costumes and props from the films and they had it set out really well, like each theme was in a different room with a different layout and music. You get sorted and stuff (Ravenclaw ftw) with what I think was the real sorting hat (because they wouldn't let it actually touch your head) and you get to laugh at how small Daniel Radcliffe used to be. I met up with George, Jimmy and Steve for lunch at the "Cheers" bar and then we went ice skating on the frog pond at Boston commons. Watching Steve (try to) ice skate may have actually made my trip. We had another night of pita and hummus after going up to the observatory to look over Boston and we were up even earlier again the next day to pack our stuff up and put it down in day storage.

We headed to Harvard (fulfilling a dream) and just took photos and walked around and stuff becauase there were no student tours or anything at this time of year (it's holidays). There's a photo of me rubbing the toe (for those of you who know what that means) and lots of photos of me under Harvard gates looking smart. We then floated around Harvard Square for a while and George finally got her fringe cut (She's been complaining for about two weeks). We floated out of Cambridge and back into Boston to the Quincy markets for lunch in the afternoon. I had pizza (enormous slices) and we got a Reeces brownie to share and got two huge cookies for the bus ride that night which I'm still full from. We cruised around the markets for a while and then got the metro down to the MFA (Museum of Fine Arts) which killed a few hours for us.

We left on the 1am bus back to NYC and then changed to a Philly bound bus in Penn Station at about 5am. I'll proceed with the Philadelphia stories in the next blog but I'd like to leave you with two parting words. Cocktail hour.

G'night Australia!