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.
So I could type a post all about isolation but I figure nobody really cares and it’s not sometime I particularly want to memorialise. I think it’s pretty much the same as at home anyway except it’s more expensive and without the creature comforts. It was plenty of Uber Eats and TV along with some reading. I do find it ironic though, that my housemate ended up with COVID the same time as me despite the fact we’re on different sides of the world.
With my original plans thrown into disarray I needed to figure out how I was going to finish off my trip. I had already booked two nights in Venice Beach, LA as that was going to be then of my trip. I thought oh well. I guess I’ll just book another night, I can send a day or two on the beach and maybe actually get those OC photos I was chasing. But the more I thought about it, the more this didn’t seem like a great option. I’ve been to Venice Beach before, and OC photos are cool but highly unlikely to be the highlight of my trip.
I’ve always wanted to see San Francisco. Although I don’t have a lot of time I figured if I fly out on Thursday (early) I can get half of Thursday plus Friday and Saturday in SF. I’ve then got all day Sunday to get to LAX before I fly out at 11pm. This option made my much happier so I went with it. All my time isn’t locked down, but I’m flying across tomorrow, accomodation is booked, same place as I was staying at. All said and done flying from SFO to LAX seemed the quickest and not far off the cheapest option so I’m flying Delta down to LA late afternoon which will get me to LAX at a fairly decent time for flying back home. This gives me 2 full days and 2 more than half days in San Francisco. I’m still doing the Wine Tour on Saturday. I’ll probably do the Alcatraz Tour and check out Fisherman’s Wharf Thursday arvo. I’m still deciding if I want to do the Tech Tour of Friday or not. But I’ll figure it out and if not before hopefully do some blog posts and photos on the flight home.
Having actually done some touristy things now, look out for those in the next couple of blog posts. I’ll finish with a couple of photos of my Boston AirBnB bedroom like I said I would in a previous post. (sorry the focus is slightly out).
