So after training on Thursday I headed to the hotel in downtown Boston. Now everyone had told me how hard it is to drive in Boston, but I had no idea. I mean, this town is nuts as far as streets go. There are no blocks, there are no normal intersections with perpendicular streets meeting in an obvious way. There are small little windy roads merging at strange places and even the bigger intersections have turn only lanes for right and left turns and you don't know they are turn only lanes until it is way too late. Also, being downtown with a lot of tall buildings, I guess my GPS just didn't know where I was so I was totally lost in a city I knew nothing about and was seriously concerned about ever finding my hotel, let alone the way back to the airport to drop my car off. I almost broke down in tears like 3 times. It should have taken me 30 minutes to get to my hotel, check in and get to the airport, but it took me about 2 hours.
So I was a little frazzled when I met Jason at the airport, but we just dropped his bags at the hotel, headed up to the north end, and after some delicious wine, caprese salad and ravioli, I was feeling much better. After dinner we walked over to Mike's Pastry's - which everyone had told me to go to - and got some dessert. I had a cappuccino with a Boston Cream Puff that was soooo good and Jason had this peanut butter brownie thing that was also amazing. Good call everyone.
Friday turned colder and rainy, but we persevered and went on the Freedom Trail walk. It basically takes you all through Boston and up across the river to show you a bunch of historical sites like Paul Revere's house, this cemetery where the Boston Massacre victims are buried, the Bunker Hill memorial which is HUGE, and the church where the lanterns were set for the 'one if by land, two if by sea' warning for Paul Revere. There is so much history in that town it is amazing. In Dallas if something was built in the 1930's our first thought is to tear it down and build a McMansion. Pretty sad.
Here is another picture from the entrance to the State House. I swear I am 12 sometimes, but I thought it was funny. Just another day at work I guess...
Boston is sort of a hard city to pin down for me. Most big cities have sort of a 'feel' to them ya know? Boston is nothing like I thought it would be, plus it just doesn't feel that big or crowded like you would expect. I guess I expected that everything would be colonial buildings and everyone to be sort of snooty or something. Not sure why. But everyone in Boston was more like the polar opposite of my expectation. Some of the nicest people ever, like almost overly friendly sometimes. So that was a nice surprise, but downtown is mostly newer huge city buildings like any normal downtown in a big city. Every little ways you will see an old looking building and you point and say 'oh I bet that is something', but other than that, feels like a normal downtown. Now once you get more outside of downtown, it is a lot more like I had it pictured with nothing more than 3 stories tall in cute little colonial style. Sort of like London.
I will write more later...coming up - Fenway Park and Harvard!
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