Entries from June 2022 ↓

Ok, so I’m on the plane for (edit:most of) this post. The plane is still on the ground but we’re about to set off on our way home to Sydney, I’m pretty happy that I paid the extra for the exit row. It wasn’t cheap, but it’s nice to be able to stretch. The Dreamliner has an individual PowerPoint even for economy which is nice.

So Thursday, the journey to San Francisco and some tourism too – don’t you love time differences! It was an early start on Thursday, I had to be up at 5.15. I had booked a car for 5.45 and I’m glad I did that. It wasn’t cheap, but it was easy and reliable and got me to the airport without any fuss. I’m glad I got to the airport when I did though – not long after 6 for a 7.55(ish?) flight. The queue for bag drop was that long, I spend over 45 minutes waiting. In the end, I got to my gate about 5 minutes before boarding started. The JetBlue experience was as good as last time and we touched down in San Francisco about 15 minutes early.

After a short wait I got my luggage and managed to find my way to the pick up point for Uber. I got to the Mosser and apparently I arrived right at the shift change. After assuring them that I had paid for early check-in it was only about a 10 minute wait. The hotel room is probably the smallest room I’ve ever seen (photos to come in future post). It was fine – I wasn’t planning on spending a lot of time there, but more than one person and you’d be falling over yourself. I had a brief nap, it has been an early start and I didn’t get as much sleep as I wanted the night before.

Then it was time to head down to Pier 33 for my Alcatraz tour. Google public transport directions are pretty good in the US and somehow my iPhone had already told me about how to use Apple Wallet to pay so that was fairly straightforward. However, I freaked out a little when I re-read the Alcatraz booking on the way and realised I was supposed to be there half an hour before my ticketed time. Despite my attempt to stop the street car (read tram) I still overshot my stop by one. This lead to me running down the street and making it to pier 33 just under 10 minutes before my boarding time. I wasn’t the only one running late and we were able to board the ferry without problem.

The surprise on the ferry ride over was how foggy it was. Alcatraz seemed to be shrouded as I learned and you’ll see evidence of, this isn’t that uncommon in June in San Francisco. Alcatraz was fascinating. There were two main things I looked at. Firstly was the new exhibition about the native American / Indian occupation of Alcatraz. This was something I didn’t know about Alcatraz and it was really interesting to read their stories and understand it. The second major part was obviously Alcatraz as a prison. I did the audio cell tour which was amazing. At the end there was a museum about what a problem America has with incarceration and it’s more a recent phenomenon. There’s no solution but the statistic of 1 in 10 people being in prison at some point was astonishing.

We were told their was a possibility of views of the Golden Gate bridge but it was far to foggy. It was also getting cold so everyone sat on the inside of the ferry on the way home – the outside spots were no longer popular. By this time I was very tired – early start and time difference so I headed back to the hotel got some food (grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s this time) and went to bed, knowing I had an early start the next day too.

All good things come to an end. I’m currently sitting in LA airport, and on to my second glass of red wine! Turns out the $12 house red is probably nicer that then $19 Cab Sav! Anyway, all good things must come to an end, and this trip is almost over. All I’ve got left is a couple of hours in an airport, a 15 hour flight, a connecting flight I’ll probably miss and then it’s back to reality. At least its uni holidays.

The trip has been great, though I could have done without the spanner that COVID through into the mix. I still love travel, if anything this trip has made me want to do more. God willing, next year I might be able to do IC again. I think it will be a shorter trip, but I’ll probably throw a bit of tourism in there if I can – I hear Florida is lovely in June.

So more tourism happened – this is the Wednesday before I leave Boston. I had four tasks I wanted to achieve Wednesday morning and 3 were successful – not a bad hit rate. Printing my exit row confirmation for my flight home at the library – unsuccessful. Stamps for postcards was a success, even if I did have to say Australia 17 times. Somewhat ironic really, they’ve had very little trouble with my Australian accent the whole trip, but apparently its a problem when I say Australia! Replaced one drink with another, but still successfully brought a drink. I also successfully withdrew money from an ATM although even though it was an alliance ATM it did charge me a $6 terminal fee!?! Is that a success?

Once I got back I headed off the Harvard Square for my Harvard Tour. It was definitely worth the $20. Our tour guide Michelle was great. She has just graduated, and she really knew her stuff. Lots of factual information as well as fun, amusing stories. I had a great time and it made me want to do more uni tours in the US if I get the change. (Yale and Stanford are definitely on my list).

After this I had a dilemma, I really wanted to try Crumbl cookies, but I couldn’t justify a 2 hour round trip. (Edit: ARGHHHH – apprenly LAX internet times out after a set period and I just lost the rest of this blog post. Type t retype *rage* ☹️) Maybe next time when I have a car and COVID doesn’t rear its ugly head. I went to the Harvard Museum/Art Gallery instead, but I wasn’t really in the mood and it didn’t blow me away. I’m not sure it was worth the entry fee.

So that’s the end of Boston tourism. I headed home and ordered Uber Eats. Then it was time to pack as much as I could and get organised – I had a 5.15 wakeup time in the morning. There are pictures of Harvard too, but I’m still on my iPad. I think I’ll have to have a picture post to follow.

Yes, you read that right, though you might have to suspend your disbelief – I actually got around to doing something touristy, probably for the first time on the trip! Monday I didn’t do a lot. I walked to the local shops and bought a few thinks and also tried out a Dunkin coffee. It was actually fairly decent. I think coffee in the US is OK if you can get people to understand that yes I really do only what milk in my latte. When I first ordered she just waited and then prompted me for what I wanted the idea of only milk clearly seemed odd to her, but I guess that’s just US culture. they don’t seem to do plain coffee.

I slept in longer that I planned to on Tuesday but I decided I was still going to do what I had planned. There’s quite a few things to do in Boston so I had to pick a few. I decided to to the Freedom Trail that afternoon. There’s map of the trail here if you would like to visualise what I did. It’s cool, but also unusual – there’s a literal red line that runs along the pavement or road so you can follow the trail, and as you go along it you come to various attractions and significant locations.

I started at the Old North Church, because that’s where Google send me when I said I wanted to go to the freedom trail. I didn’t actually go into the church, because I wanted to pick and choose what I paid the entry fee for. After that there’s a big courtyard with plaques with information about significant people and spent a chunk of time reading many of those as it was quite interesting.

Next up was the Paul Revere house – I feel like that’s one of the must do locations on the trail. Sadly there’s no photography allowed inside the house, but it was still very interesting to see where he lived and learn more about his historic ride. Following the Paul Revere house it was time for coffee & a muffin!

My next stop was the old statehouse and this was really interesting. A chance to see the foundations for US independence and the original basis for the declaration of independence and the constitution. I went a little crazy at the gift shop here deciding I should probably buy some merch/gifts while I was in the US.

That concluded by tour of the freedom trail, and I headed home. However, I did buy a book at the Paul Revere house which has info about all the attractions on the freedom trail, so at least I can read about the ones that I missed. I do have some pictures, but I’m posting this on my iPad, so I’ll add a post later with some pictures. Well that’s it for Tourism101.