Today has mainly been a travelling day, we haven’t had a chance to see much other than a walk around the city centre, but there is still quite a lot to tell.
We left our hotel in New York quite early this morning as our flight to Boston was mid-morning and we didn’t want to miss it. The journey to the airport was pretty uneventful, although we did get moaned at by the staff at the local metro station for taking large bags on the train during the morning rush hour!
Our flight to Boston this morning was on an American Eagle Embraer E145, which is a plane that I don’t think I had been on before today. It has one seat on one side of the aisle, and two seats on the other. When the customer service staff at Heathrow assigned seats for all of our flights before we left the UK she asked us whether we wanted to sit next to each other, or take the single seats on the left hand side. We decided on the single seats to give us a bit of space – and also as I’ve always wanted to sit in seat 1A but it’s usually in first class.
The plane was small but comfortable and it didn’t take us long to get to Boston, although moving around both airports near huge planes like the 747 did feel very weird!
We took a taxi to the hotel, which was in Saugus a few miles out of the city. Not that far by New York standards – it’s the equivalent of having a hotel in Harlem or Brooklyn – but in a small city it did seem quite a way out. However, it was the best that our travel agent could find in our price range.
However, when we arrived at the hotel the reception had no record of our reservation. A quick bit of research and it turns out that the travel agent booked us into one hotel in a chain but gave us the details of another hotel in the chain! This wasn’t ideal, but it didn’t cause us a problem and they were able to switch things over without any problems.
We relaxed in the hotel for a little bit watching Home Improvement on TV (it was the classic episode where Tim glues his head to a desk) before taking the bus to the nearest metro station, and then heading into the city.
It was almost 4pm by the time we made it into the city so we didn’t have time for much, although being a small city you can cover quite a lot on foot in a small amount of time.
We decided to just wander around for a little bit checking out the main sights like Faneuil Hall, Boston Common, the Cheers Bar, the Old State House, and Granary Burying Ground which is home to the graves of central figures in the history of the USA such as Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock.
There wasn’t much time to some proper sightseeing, this was mainly about getting our bearings in the city as it has been a few years since my last visit, but I’m already finding the atmosphere in Boston so different to that of New York.
We’re back in the hotel now, ready for a long day of sightseeing ahead of us tomorrow. It’s a little annoying how far out our hotel is, but on the positive side we do get to see “real” America instead of just the city centre.