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Boston, Massachusetts
After a few leaving parties and tears my Dad took myself and John down to Heathrow via White Hart Lane to pick up a few essentials and begin the first leg of our World Tour. The traffic was quite bad heading into London and it was pouring down with rain but that just made me even more excited to be beginning the trip of a lifetime. We flew Virgin Atlantic to Boston, it was a decent flight which consisted of John and I watching Bruno and The Hangover - 2 Classic films! At about 5pm local time we land in Boston! I turned on my phone while we were waiting to depart the plane only to have a text message from my ex saying sorry for the way things turned out between us and she hopes I have an amazing time. The last thing I wanted was to start this trip still having any contact with her so I had to nip it in the bud asap which I do later on! So back to Boston - With our Bible in hand "Let's Go Roadtripping USA - The Complete Coast to Coast Guide to America" We picked up our bags and began to navigate our way around the Boston underground or as the locals call it 'The T". After about 3 different trains we arrived at our destination and had a short walk to our Hostel - HI Boston Downtown. Part of the Hotel International Chain.
The place seemed nice, the reception staff were very friendly and after filling out our details and handing over our passports we headed up to our room. This was the first hostel I had ever stayed in, to be honest I think I used to be a bit of a snob when it came to hostels and thought they were all dirty, cheap and a bit s***… How my opinions have changed in the last year! Our room was small and consisted of 3 bunk beds with a separate area for bags with designated lockers. If ever you decide to go travelling always have a few padlocks on you for the lockers. We literally dropped our stuff and headed straight out as we knew we only had a few days in Boston. We decided to walk the Freedom Trail - A 2.5 mile free walk which passes all the landmarks which put Boston on the map. It's easy to navigate as you just need to follow the faded red painted line which runs along the paths and sidewalks. My first impressions of Boston were that it was a really beautiful city, very clean, amazing architecture with friendly people. After completing the Freedom Trail we just had a bit of a wonder around and bumped into this crazy guy with a portable electric guitar who told us he was going to jail tomorrow and ask us if we could look after his dog while he did his time… we explained to him that had we not been on the Great USA Roadtrip we have been more than happy to help out! I got sucked into one of the souvenir stalls and bought a grey Boston T-shirt… which actually lasted me until the last stop of the trip in Hong Kong - I miss that T-shirt!. Before heading back to our Hostel we stopped for a quick drink at a really cool sports bar called Whiskey's. One of the many things I love about the States is how friendly the majority of the people are especially if they no your not local and sure enough this guy started chatting to us over a Bud Light. He was quite fascinated with the UK Royal Family and kept saying that Prince Charles could do so much better than that dog CAR-mella as he called her. He then asked us where else we were heading in the States and began to tell us how "Crazy" Vegas was - in his own words "Oh yeah man New York is crazy! But Vegas! Wow! Vegas is like putting New York in a Washing Machine and turning it on full cycle! It's that f***ing crazy man!" We left after that Bud Light. Back at our Hostel 3 more people were in our room, a Northern lad from Middleborough called Scott who had been playing Rugby in New Zealand for the past year and some boring ginger couple. Scott asked us if he could hang out with us that night and as he had been in Boston a few days already we thought he might know a few decent places to go out boozing (I mean seeing cultural stuff!) He took us to this place called Quincy Market which was like an indoor food hall where we had some decent Chicken Baguettes for dinner. We then headed into the downtown area and got on the Sam Adams Beer. After a few different bars trying to find somewhere busy (as it was a Monday night) we found ourselves in a quirky little bar which seemed to have more people in it than the rest of the bars we'd been to combined. The bar maid was quite cute and we sat at the bar for a bit chatting to her trying to find out what the craic was for the evening. Jager Bombes began to flow and se mentioned that later on in here it was Karaoke night so we stayed put. John eventually got up and did a great rendition of Wonderwall by Oasis with myself and Scott providing backing vocals from the back of the bar. Our final destination of the evening was a bar/club called The Place - Good vibe, cheap enough drinks and lots of hot girls. From living in America previously it all came back to me how much the American girls love the "British" accent - as soon as they hear your voice they have no hesitation in asking where your from and what you're doing in their town, an instant ice breaker! After a really good first night out of the world tour we headed back to our hostel and being drunk and stupid I decided to phone my ex at 3am to make my point and make sure more importantly that she was not going to be in contact again. Words were said, there were a few tears but it did the job!
6th October 2009
9am - Monster Hangover! Headed down to the communal kitchen for breakfast felling rough as and then headed out for our first & last full day in Boston. We walked over to Fenway Park the home of the Boston Red Sox Baseball team and the oldest ground in the country. We decided to do the tour which was about $12 and took a few hours. Even though we were hungover to hell I still enjoyed the tour, they took you through the trophy museum, the press box and to the Green Monster which is the towering left field wall many aspire to hit. We did the usual tourist thing of taking as many photos as humanly possible until the tour had come to an end. After we had finished Scott had to go off to meet someone so we said bye and made our way over to Harvard the world famous university. It was alright, there were loads of tour groups there and we had a bit of a walk around but I didn't think it was anything special not compared to somewhere like Oxford at least where I spent 4 years (Brookes). We didn't do too much that night as we had a trip to NYC in the morning!
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