So it’s a sunny though not too warm Sunday morning and we’re having breakfast in Boston, one of the oldest cities in the USA. Its city center is really interesting, as it consists of a lot of rather old buildings, next to modern ones, has a bunch of small parks, and most of the streets are old cow paths – so there aren’t as many right angles as e.g. in New York City.
Finding our way from one historic spot to the next was incredibly easy: The Freedom Trail, directing tourists from sight to sight, is a red line, sometimes made of brick stones, sometimes painted on the sidewalk. So all one has to do is keep their eyes open and follow its lead for about 5 kilometres. In theory, this could be done within 1 hour, but then again we had to stop every once in a while to warm up in souvenir shops and cafes, and of course had to take a ton of pictures.
The end of the trail is on the other side of Charles River, where we visited the Charlestown Navy Yard and of course Bunker Hill. Josef did walk up the 294 steps and had an awesome view of the city. I was too lazy, and also we were already a bit late for meeting my cousin … but YES, I regret not going up those stairs – Josef’s pictures are great 🙁
Both Jason and his room mate had to work late, so we had to kill some time after the late lunch with my cousin. We decided to go see the area around the Aquarium and check if we could still take a ferry towards Jason’s place. The last ferry had already left, so that plan did not work out, but I’m still not sure if it was a good plan at all. The distances on the ferry/bus/subway plan looked a bit strange.
The next day we left with Jason, as Harvard and MIT were on our agenda that day. There are guided tours of the campuses, done by the students. We did not manage to get one at Harvard, but the one at MIT really was nice. They give inside information on dorms, on interesting classes and degrees one can get, and also they have great stories on the pranks (or hacks, as they call it) that are played on the University on a regular basis.
One of the great things about Couchsurfing is that your hosts can tell you where and what to eat – so for lunch, Josef had a lobster roll and tried an oyster. I’m not that into Seafood and I’ve already tried to eat oysters – but they won the staring duel, I had some Clam Chowda (which was really yummy!).
After lunch, we paid a visit to the old parts of the town again, and also to the MAAH. Linking together some important places of Afro-American History, one can follow the Black Heritage trail through the MAAH’s area. In the early evening, we met with Jason to get the keys to the appartment, as the guys again had to work late. Back home, I did some reading and Josef did some sleeping. Then we finally made it to the Pub around the corner, where we also met a cousin of Roger’s, and had a great time.
Going from Boston to Montreal by car takes about 6 hours; after half of the way, we stopped at some random little town to have lunch and get water for the rest of the journey. Just outside Montreal, we stopped again for coffee (in order not to arrive too early) and went into the evening rush hour head over heels.
Funny as it is, my phone thought it would be cool to delete the rest of the directions for Annick’s place in Montreal, so I had to do the navigating with only the map data buffered on the phone.
Austrian motorway junctions are NOTHING compared to those in North America, believe me … o.0
And here are some snapshots from Boston:
