Boston
(day 2)
30,000. That was the number of steps my son took
around the city today. 13.25 miles. We walked/hiked a half-marathon! I find
that pretty cool since we were in Boston; the site of the still-awesome Boston Marathon, even with the horrible events of 2013.
We started today slow to get up. There were some loud talkers in the lot next
to us, but we were tired from prior day’s activities, so we were pretty much
able to sleep through it. Since you can
hear my son from approximately three counties away when he gets going, I told
him to go ahead and be as loud as he wants when he awoke at oh, 7am. If you’re going to disrespect park rules and
keep us up until all hours, we’re definitely going to get you back in the
morning by returning the favor.
Wompatuck seems to be a very nice, large park from
what we’ve seen. Hingham is a beautiful suburb, with stately cape cod homes on
maple and gingko lined streets. A very beautiful setting for the park. The only problem was, we hardly got to see
any of it! It was misting this morning so we stuck around in the tent for a
couple of hours trying to figure what to do. Later, I decided to hit Starbucks
to upload my blog posts from 4 days before, and Jen went to a local Walmart to
gather supplies for the next leg. Somehow the directions took her to I-93
South, and she got a little freaked out thinking she might not be able to find her way back to the Starbucks.
All was well though as she was able to navigate back with the help
of our beloved google bitty. I really am
starting to like google bitty. She got
us around Boston today just fine—It’s just the way she gives directions sometimes
that make things very confusing.
On to the city we went. There was an original 80 percent chance of
rain today, which is why we ‘pre-explored' the city the day before but today’s
rain chance was only 20%. Better yet, it was only the Maine type mist that
occurred here and there. We got to town
around 11:30 wanting to see a Red Sox game.
I checked our options and we ended up walking about a mile and a half to
Fenway. It was an amazing sight to
behold. Fans everywhere, people selling tickets, scalpers, shirts, all sorts of
things I’d expect to see an hour before a baseball game. As we waited in line for what I thought would
be $12 cheapo standing room only seats (I just wanted to go inside and stay for
a few innings) I realized they were long gone. Not long after, a scalper
offered to sell us 4 seated tix for $100.
I was indecisive, as was Jen—we really didn’t want to stay for the whole game
today so much to do and a chance of rain so we passed on them and talked about it a little
while. Our loss. When we went back to try
and get them, the scalper had already sold those tickets but offered us more
expensive ones. That made our decision
easy—going to explore the city without seeing the game. Bummer, but in the long run, I thought we
made the right decision.
Not long after I was having second thoughts about
those tickets. We’re in a big city. We’re going to spend some money for things we
really want to do, so that mistake won’t be made again the next few days in
Cape Cod and NYC. It was Fenway Park for crying out loud. Oh well, we’re all over it.
So we tried to figure out the bus schedule and
drained my battery to my cellphone completely listening to google bitty. It was very confusing to try and figure out
how the whole thing worked. We walked
another 500 miles to get to MIT from Fenway, and it was meh, O.K. Do Asians own this university now? Joking.
But that’s really the only type people we saw around there. We originally wanted to go to Harvard, but
couldn’t get there and really didn’t know how.
After Avery said we ‘haven’t done anything’, I started to regret no tickets even more. We were getting a little tired by now, so I decided
we’d ride the bus, hopefully back to the Freedom Trail and get some Boston gear
from the local merchants.
On the way back downtown after our one mile $8 bus
ride, we saw a sleek Rolls Royce in front of a sweet hotel. Two blocks later, I noticed an older magnum
PI type Ferrari 308 GTS or maybe even a GTB and showed GT. His mouth dropped wide open and was just like
“whoa”. The kid is writing down the
super-cars he sees in Boston and the values. We had him total up the values for
fun today to keep him quiet for five minutes.
The kid loves his cars, and seeing these exotics helped him “love”
Boston J!
I was able to text Sheba as we made our way to the USS Constitution with a stop at the Ye Olde Union Oyster house, who was miraculously in
town for the weekend with John and her niece!
They met us for some oyster chowder and a beer
Sam Adams brewery makes just for the Union Oyster house. It uses Molasses of some type, but tasted
pretty good. As badly as I wanted to eat oysters, I refused to pay $17 for a half dozen on the half shell. I can get a WHOLE BOX of em for the price of a dozen here! No thanks.
Sheba then told us a hilarious story of her, Fiona and John in
NYC where he couldn’t get on a subway (the door shut between them and off they went) and they kept passing each other in cabs.
Jon said he saw them ride by in the cab but Sheba was oblivious (of course)
looking up at all the buildings. Better
to hear it from her.
After dinner and a quick visit, we followed the trail to the Paul Revere mall,
then walked in the mist over the old iron bridge to get to the USS
Constitution. By this time, all of our
legs were letting us know we walked a bunch and that it was time to take a pic
of the Bunker Hill monument from afar, then catch a cab back to the awaiting
Ivanka in the public parking near Boston Commons. A very busy day with some indecisiveness at
first and some angst and struggle, but ended up being a tiring excellent day. We got back to camp (I don’t think anywhere
in Hingham sells beer after 6PM on Sunday), started a fire, ate a few of our
groceries and called it a night early.
We are ALL sold on Boston, the fanfare, the architecture, the people! Love this city! Thanks Boston; we'll definitely be back!
No comments:
Post a Comment