Stuff I've seen - Boston Edition

The lobster tank at the Supermarket

Random chocolate

more random chocolate

I can't believe in this day and age they still have segregated crosswalks...

Another photo for my manhole covers of the world gallery.

Ken eats diner food.

Stuff I've eaten - Boston Edition

We begin this installment with a Trio of American garbage, because, well, when in Rome...

Melted cheese coated in Doritos crumbs

Freeze dried marshmallow should not be a thing.

I blame Ken.

Orange Mocha Frappachino!

The official Sandwich of the Boston RedSox, the lobster BLT.

 We went to P F Chang's one night. I ordered the egg drop soup. It comes in two serving sizes, cup and bowl. I ordered the bowl. When an American warns you that something is a lot of food, they aren't fucking around.

That's not a bowl...

This is a bowl!

The "chicken lettuce wraps" or San Choy Bao for those countires
not afraid of other countries wierdo talk.

 Ken is obsessed with Diners. In my opinion they're just shitty American brunch that is available all day, with bottomless shitty coffee.

I had a lobster egg white omelette. 

 And finally we get to the meal we ate to get our Chowdah on.

New England clam chowder

Entree shellfish, with entree lobster.

My main course lobster.

Dessert was a boston cake.

Edit: Breakfast while waiting for the bus the next morning, so technically still in Boston (I tend to cheat a bit with these and hold them over until the next city)

Lobster croissant

The Freedom Trail

Or as Ken calls it, the French Trail.

Boston has a red brick path that takes you on a walk through the city past various historical sites.

The start of the Red brick trail

Massachusetts State House

There are a number of graveyards along the walk

Several churches too. In this one families would buy box seats.

There appeared to be a certain amount of
"my pew is better than yours" going on.

Following the trail isn't always easy.

Boston certainly knows how to take care of it's historic landmarks.
This is the first public school in America.

It is now a steak house.

This is a bookstore that published the works of some of America's
most important early authors.

It now serves tacos.

Sadly the quincy market that is in this old building is a glorified food court.

Paul Revere's house

The USS Constitution.

The Bunker Hill monument. It contains ~295 steps.

I climbed to the top.

Who brought this guy?

The view was nice though.

I may have taken in too much sun.

So, after our 10+ km walk through the city, we retired to the hotel for a brief rest before heading out for dinner, having realised we were potentially leaving Boston tomorrow and had neglected to eat any Chowder thus far...

In which Amtrak attempt to ruin everything

The next leg of the trip involved catching a train to Portland and then a bus to Rockland.

I got an email from Amtrak telling me that the train we were due to catch on Wednesday has been cancelled due to scheduled track maintenance. (That's a whole two days notice).

We're flying back to Boston from Rockland, so first step, I check the airline we're flying with to see if they can get us there. No joy, flights are sold out.

I check bus lines. I can get some random busline to Rockland, or I can get greyhound to Portland for less than half that price. I order the greyhound tickets and collect them from the station. At the station the Amtrak ticket representative tells me he is unable to refund the train portion of the journey as the computer wont let him, and that I should call the call center as they have a greater ability to do stuff. I call them and after spending 15 minutes on hold am imformed that I can't be refunded just the train portion, and that due to legislative requirements or some such garbage, Amtrak can't provide me a bus ticket without a corresponding train journey, so even if I do nothing with regard to the tickets the bus ticket is no longer valid since the train has been cancelled. So I now have a useless greyhound bus ticket to portland, since I no longer have any way of getting to rockland from portland, and am forced to buy the random busline ticket.

I'm glad I was able to waste a day in Boston sorting this shit out. Hopefully I can actually get to Rockland, since as far as I can tell, having a ticket for the bus doesn't actually guarantee a seat. Yay!

On the plus side, we did spend the day walking around Boston, which is a nice looking city.

It has a lot of old buildings which gives it a more European feel than the other US cities I've seen.

And then Ken was deported.

This morning we departed Toronto for Boston, thus ending the Canadian leg of our tour.

As such we needed to go through US customs and immigration. I went through the brief chat with the agent where they take a scan of your fingerprints and ask you about the purpose of your trip, and was ushered off to put my bag through the scanner and so forth. I waited for Ken to appear. And waited. And waited.

After it became apparent that he had either been denied entry into the US, or border security were enjoying the cavity searches so much that they were finishing off a smoke before going in for round 3, I sent him a message and abandoned him to his fate.

Turns out he had been pulled aside for being shifty looking and scanned for explosives. By way of apologising for assuming he was a terrorist or something, he got fast tracked through a separate bag screening area and had abandoned me to my fate 5 minutes ago.

We met up at the gate and drank Canadian chain coffee and waited to board the flight.

Coming into Boston. The flight was delayed slightly due to weather.

Somewhere.

Hotel corridor.

More hotel corridor.

The girls staying just down the hall from us.

The room.

The view is okay, but not brilliant.

What am I saying, you can see a castle from here.