Fall break adventures: Boston (October 4-6)

Next on our fall break adventure agenda was Boston, baby! I enjoyed my time there despite the average weather that persisted during our entire stay. I guess we got to experience Boston in all its inclement autumn glory? 

Boston: Day One

Our first day in Boston was pretty chilled out. Well, it took half the day to actually get there. Amy and I left our hostel in Chicago at 6:00am to catch our 10:00am flight from O'Hare International Airport to Boston. The flight was about four hours long, so even with the one hour we gained because of the time difference, we only arrived in Boston in the afternoon. It was a cold and cloudy day, the chill bit into my bones and rattled them. I couldn't believe this was Boston in early October - if it's this cold now, how cold does it get in the heart of winter? Bostonians have a pretty rotten deal, man. I do not envy those Harvard kids, eh.

After claiming our luggage we got in touch with Tom's friend Sam, an Australian exchange student studying politics at Boston College this semester. We were going to be crashing at Sam's flat during our stay in Boston. He was really helpful: he gave us detailed instructions on how to get to his place on the trains and subway, and said that he would meet us at the train stop by his house to pick us up. It took us about an hour and a half to get to the train stop near his place. We met up with him without hassle, and a Dunkin' Donut and a coffee later, we were sitting in Sam's cosy living room, complete with a hardwood floor (covet) and comfortable couches (super covet). It was 4:00pm, or thereabouts. We'd spent 10 hours travelling from Chicago to Boston. Sick.

I briefly entertained the thought of going out to explore the Boston College campus and the nearby neighbourhood, but the unfriendly weather and travel weariness chased that possibility away. Amy and I hung out at Sam's place for the evening, just having chats with Sam and his flatmates: two French exchange students (girls named Tiphaine and Noemie) and one German exchange student (a guy named Konrad), all studying at Boston College. The French girls were really friendly, they made us Irish tea and hung out with us for a while although they had assignments to do. They had such hot accents, man! They told us about life in Boston, and the differences (perhaps I should say disparities) they've noticed between France and America in terms of food and boys. It was a funny conversation.

Tom arrived at the flat at around 6:00pm. He was meant to arrive earlier but apparently his flight from Richmond had been delayed. He's not been having the best luck in terms of travelling in America so far - he's suffered loads of cancellations and delays during his travels, it's weird. And he was soaking because of the rain. At least he made it in time for the amazing dinner that Noemie made for us, man it was delicious (creamy chicken and mushrooms with white wine, yum).

After dinner, Sam, Tom, Amy and I went out to the nearby cinema to watch "Howl", a film about the poet Allen Ginsberg starring James Franco as Ginsberg. It was about Ginsberg's life, his groundbreaking and seminal Beat Generation poem "Howl" (I think the poem is about Ginsberg's take on life [both his life and life generally] and the people of his generation that meant something to him; it's graphic, suggestive and honest), and the litigation brought against the domestic publisher of the poem on the grounds of its obscenity. It was pretty arty and I enjoyed the cinematographic techniques employed in the film (black and white material, interview-type scenes with James Franco, the trial scenes in full colour, and animations depicting the images in the poem). I also learnt a bit about Allen Ginsberg which was neat, given that he's meant to be a key literary figure of the 20th Century. And I enjoyed the fact that Jon Hamm played the defence attorney, he's pretty awesome. The cinema we were in was small and snug too, very cute.

That about wraps up our first day in Boston. Lots of travelling to get there, and good times taking it easy.

Boston: Day Two

We spent our second day in Boston out and about, getting amongst the city while braving the rain and wind. We didn't really plan an itinerary or anything, so we had a flexible and day full of random activities that turned out pretty well.

Our first stop was the Trinity Church in the city. We just wanted to get out of the rain when we arrived downtown, and it was the closest touristy building we could spot. It's an Anglican church that was founded in 1733. According to the American Institute of Architects, it's one of the top 10 most important buildings in America. It was a stunning church, and its architecture, murals and stained glass window artwork were very impressive. The richness of the church's history and culture filled me with awe, and I felt moved by the love for God that the key people behind the building of the church must have been inspired by. It was a real privilege to be there.

Trinity Church in the city of Boston.

View of the ceiling from the Crossing.

The Chancel.

After a delicious lunch at Finagle-A-Bagel, we went shopping on Newbury Street (a famous shopping area of town) because Tom wanted a waterproof windbreaker and Amy wanted a warm jacket. The shops were all housed in cute as buildings, which made the experience all the more enjoyable. And unlike Chicago, we had some success in hunting down some decent gear. Win!

Newbury Street. Cute shops.

Our next stop was the Boston Public Library. You might think it weird that we deliberately took time to check out a public library, but dude, the Boston Public Library was actually pretty mint. The architecture of the building and its interior was really impressive. It put the General Library and the Davis Law Library at Auckland to shame.

The Boston Public Library.

Impressive.

Our final big activity for the day was touring Fenway Park, home to the Boston Red Sox and the oldest major league baseball stadium still in use. Our tour guide was was very enthusiastic, which helped to offset the depressing weather. I'm not a baseball fan, but learning about the history of the stadium and the Red Sox was really fun. And baseball is a huge part of American culture, you guys. I felt that I had to get amongst it. We sat in the stadium's seats as we listened to our guide, and also got to check out the Red Sox Hall of Fame and go up the Green Monster (the 11.3m high left field wall with a manual scoreboard, whose primary function is to prevent people from watching the games for free from the outside) to get awesome views of the stadium. I hope I get to catch an actual baseball game before I leave the States.

Fenway Park.

Red Sox Hall of Famers.

Tom and me.

View of the stadium from the Green Monster.

At night we returned to Sam's neighbourhood, and had a couple of beers before having dinner at a small but awesome Vietnamese place. I had pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) for the first time ever, and it was really good. It was a nice end to the day. Sam and Tom headed out for drinks after we got back to the flat, but I was knackered and elected to stay in. To this day, I don't regret that decision. 

An added bonus to the day was getting loads of happy birthday messages from people back home. Due to the time difference, it was the 6th of October in New Zealand although it was only the 5th in Boston. The Facebook wall posts, emails and texts really made my day. I'm so blessed, man! I just felt really grateful and thankful for all the love I have in my life. You know who you are. You're awesome. 

Boston: Day Three

Our third day in Boston was the day of my 23rd birthday. My Israeli exchange friend Nir gave me a happy birthday call from Charlottesville at midnight, and I think he was surprised at the fact that he had woken me up with his call, perhaps he had expected me to be partying until the early hours of the morning? Nah man, I was in bed by 11:00pm. It was really nice of him to call though, he's a great guy.

We had a pretty early start to the day, because I wanted to get a lot done that day: visit Harvard, go downtown and see all the historic buildings and check out Boston Common (the first public park in the States), have clam chowder at Quincy Market... It really sucked because we had the worst rain and wind on this day out of all the Boston days. But we still got out there and tried to see and do the most we could.

We rode the bus to Harvard and had breakfast at Leo's Place Diner, which the guy at the Harvard tour kiosk recommended to us. It was a pretty cute place, and it had pictures of all these celebrities on the walls that had been to the diner, including Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

Sneaky picturetaking.

Before doing the Harvard morning tour, we checked out a couple of the stores near the tour starting point, including Urban Outfitters. Man, I really hope that they open an Urban Outfitters chain in New Zealand, because it's the shiz. It sells stuff that hipsters would wear. I'm not embarrassed to say that I wanted to buy everything in the entire store. I exercised self-control and limited my purchases to a purple sweater. But dude, seriously, it was an amazing shop. I'm gonna have to go back there a few times before heading back home.

The Harvard tour was given by a guy called Yosef, a Harvard student majoring in history. We walked around the campus as he told us about the different buildings and fun facts about the university. To be honest, Harvard was a little underwhelming. Maybe it's because I'd built it up in my head to be this awe-inspiring place. But the central grounds at the University of Virginia are so much more beautiful than the main campus of Harvard. And the rain didn't help put the campus in a good light. It was still neat to walk around it and see it, though. And obviously the fact that it's not as aesthetically pleasing as I thought it would be doesn't detract from the university's international academic and social ranking.

Harvard students only enter through side gates.
It's bad luck to go through the main ones.

So so...?

John Harvard wasn't actually the founder of Harvard,
nor is this statue of the actual John Harvard. What?

A Harvard Law School building housing the library.
This was pretty cool, actually.

After the tour (it was advertised as free but Yosef pressured us to tip him at the end, I gave him a couple of bucks but Amy gave him twenty, I think she would've made his day) we checked out a few more shops in the neighbourhood, including the Harvard Shop. My friend and fellow US exchanger Kristy Li and I had this plan to buy Harvard t-shirts and wear it around casually, and to answer in the affirmative if people asked us, "Did you go to Harvard?" because it would technically be true. But when it actually came time for me to buy a Harvard t-shirt, I gave into common sense and decided not to get one. I mean, come on. That's a pretty lame thing to do. I'm going to stock up and proudly wear UVA stuff instead. That makes more sense. Also, I dragged Tom and Amy to the nearby comic book store because Sam told me that he got an Arrested Development t-shirt from there, but the smallest one was too big for me. Fail in both places! After the comic book store fail though, I got a happy birthday call from my mate Geoff McGrath, which was both unexpected and really awesome. 

Then we took the subway back into town and decided to walk from the subway station at Boston Common to Quincy Market to check out the city while we were at it. Big mistake. The wind and rain had gotten worse, and we were completely battered by stormy gales and a vicious deluge as we tried to navigate our way around the city. We had maps on us but for some reason we kept getting lost. It was really, really not fun. The city looked pretty bleak in the crappy weather, and I could feel myself getting a little frustrated at the situation. We managed to make our way to the Market after about 45 minutes of (what felt like) directionless wandering. Quincy Market is basically this big building full of food places and little stalls selling random merchandise. It was bustling with people, and I could smell different enticing aromas from either side as we walked down the Market. In the bathroom I discovered that my feet were bleeding from all the walking (I was stupid and didn't wear socks, nor did I have any band aids with me). Far out... The clam chowder in a breadbowl definitely picked me up, though. It was like the breadbowl chowder we had at Boudin in San Francisco during Contiki: they cut out the top and most of the middle of a gigantic round bread bun and fill it to the brim with clam chowder, and you eat the whole thing. Absolutely gorgeous.

Sanctuary.

After lunch we headed back to Sam's flat because the weather was becoming too much for us to handle. That was probably the best decision of the day. I'd fought against it, saying that if I went back to Sam's I'd probably not want to come out again, and what a waste of a day that would be. Foolish. We got back, dried off and got warm, and played 500 with Sam (a complex but fantastic card game). I reckon when I grow up, I'm going to invest in a house with a fireplace, a solid kettle and a diverse collection of teas and board games so that rainy days won't ever get me down.

In the evening we headed out with the flatties to the New England Aquarium, because they were giving university students free entry. According to the flatties, the museums and galleries around the city take turns to have "student night Wednesdays", where they let people with university student IDs in for free. Apparently the previous week it was the Museum of Fine Arts, which sounds like it would have been awesome. When we arrived at the Aquarium the line to get in was snaking for a couple of hundred metres from the front entrance. Wow. I think that capitalising on free stuff is a universal student trait. It made me chuckle as I stood in line waiting in the freezing cold: regardless of whether you're a uni student in New Zealand or in America, free stuff will always rule over your sensibilities.

The Aquarium housed loads of interesting sea creatures. My favourites were the penguins and the gigantic tortoise that was hanging out in one of the pools. Dude, wow. It smelt kinda weird around the penguin enclosures but their cuteness was adequate compensation.

The New England Aquarium.

Cute.

Wazzup?

After our trip to the Aquarium, we got together with a bunch of Sam's friends from school (who all happened to be French exchange students) and went to grab some dinner at a cute place called "21st Amendment". It was a gourmet burger place, and the food was delectable. I think it was fitting to have staple American food to celebrate my birthday in the States. It was great to hang out with a good bunch of people over a nice meal.

Me, Sam, Tom and Amy. 

The kumara chips were heavenly.

After dinner we tried to go to this bar which, according to Sam, was a pretty mint joint. But we weren't allowed in because they didn't accept IDs for foreigners that weren't passports, and not everyone had brought theirs. We ended up going back to the flat, and fighting against my innate homebodiness, I went out with the boys to a pub a few minutes' walk down the road. It was actually quite nice, and they had an impressive selection of beer. I had a glass of pilsner, and they gave it to me for free because the beer ran out before they could fill up my glass. It was totally fine though, they were only about half a centimetre from the top. Birthday beer? Yeah, birthday beer. It's funny, ever since coming to America, I've grown to really enjoy good beer and good wine. I don't know how or when it happened, but it's true. This probably sounds really silly but I now fully understand why people choose to hang out at bars, drinking. Good beer and good wine is actually quite tasty. Obviously this doesn't mean that I've started drinking heaps, it just means that I've come to appreciate good alcohol. Maybe I'm growing up? I'm still not that big a fan of red wine, but who knows, maybe I'll start to enjoy it in a couple months' time. It was good to chill out with the guys, although most of the conversation was about sports. I was a little out of my depth, but I tried to keep up as best I could. We got back to the flat at around 1:00am, and went straight to bed. 

So that was Boston. I enjoyed my time there, but not as much compared to Chicago, purely because of the weather factor. I'd really like to revisit it during a rain-free day, and see all the buildings and sights that we didn't get to see this time around, because it's meant to be a really beautiful city. While I spent my birthday getting abused by a Boston mini-storm, I felt so thankful that I was able to turn 23 in the country that has been my number one travel destination for as long as I can remember. And I also felt super thankful for all the marvellous people back home sending me birthday love, I missed my friends a lot on the day but felt warm and fuzzy thanks to all their messages. I don't know what I've done to deserve this. I'm just eternally grateful.

I had this thought on the train ride from our Chicago hostel to O'Hare on the day we left Chicago from Boston, and it seems apt to end my fall break entries with it. How lucky am I to be alive at this moment in time, when technology, information and means of transportation are so advanced that exploring new and wonderful places is child's play? If I had been born a century ago, I probably wouldn't have gone beyond the perimeters of my own hometown. But here I am, blessed with good health and adequate means to see and experience new places and new things, to meet wonderful new people, and to learn and grow from all of it. Man. It's amazing. God is good, and He loves me so much. I want to try to remember this thought and make the most of every day, particularly my time in the States. Capture this feeling of awe and wonder, and live each day with humility, thankfulness and joy. Yeah. 

Bring on Thanksgiving break! I can't wait to travel some more. I'll post an entry on Washington DC as soon as I find a decent chunk of time to sit down and write it up. Have a good one. 

G.