Boston Tea Party (still no decent tea however)

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Boston, well what can we say. Arrived in Boston with a strange sense of home, mainly due to the fact that it was pissing it down with rain. in fact there had been floods in the state due to the weather over the previous days.

Arrived at the hostel to find it being renovated, in fact the hostel wasn’t even open, we didn’t realise that there was now a different hostel a few doors down that was open instead. When we got there we also found it being renovated but at least it was open. There wasn't even a toaster, though that was probably a good thing as we had been living on peanut butter on toast for a while already and a change would be nice!! It was a bit cold in their but we did have nice bathrooms, though the shower curtains were see through :-s! The internet there was free (always a good bonus) but it wasn't working, typical! However, I still remembered a few things about computers and managed to get it up and running, it was pretty slow but fast enough to do our blogs, though there was always this Japanese looking guy on it. We also got 5 bucks off every night coz I got it fixed (knew he'd have his uses somewhere - Kim). Also the food we brought along with us got attacked by mice, which were running around the hostel far too often :-s

For the first couple of days we just chilled out a bit after such a busy time in Chicago, just wandering round the city and getting a feel for the place. Boston is a very British style place with great buildings and loads of history and lots of small winding roads instead of a block style layout like most American cities. But instead of doing the usual tourist thing, We decided that it was more important to watch the Di Vinci Code (well Kim thought it was more important not me, but it was an ok film, id give it a 7 out of 10!). It wasn't a bad adaptation of the book, few things missing but isn't there always. Tom Hanks as usual managed to pull off the role. They don’t have sweet popcorn in the cinemas out here so we had buttered and salted, it’s very greasy and unhealthy which suits most Americans well! We also spent far too much time in the hostel watching TV.

The next couple of days we did do the touristy thing though we spent a lot of time catching up with some sleep. On our first real day of sight seeing we walked the freedom trail which led us around all the important sites involved in the Battle for American Independence and the history of Boston itself. It was really interesting (and they really hated the British at the time, (strange how they seem to love us now) and everything is pretty biased (flag waving Americans) but they had a lot of help from the French I always say!

We headed up to the harbour where the USS constitution "old ironsides" was docked; it was one of the earliest ships of the American fleet after the war for independence and actually sunk a couple of British ships boooo! Rule Britannia! We also went onboard a US WWII destroyer the USS Cassin Young which was quite interesting as well.

On the freedom trail there were lots of very creepy looking cemeteries that were very old, lots of the tomb stones had fallen down, pretty spooky. They housed many who had died in the war for independence. The whole trail took us through little Italy and some quite scenic areas of the city where all manner of historic events from the period took place, so they could kick the evil red coats out of America! We also visited the world famous University of Harvard which seemed quite nice, we may have felt mentally insecure but luckily there were a lot of American students around!! No visit to Boston would be complete without a visit to the 'Cheers' bar from the comedy with the same name, so I had a pint of beer in there for good measure. Being sad as I am I took some napkins for mementoes at the bar. The only other significant event was getting my hair cut by a barber who had hardly teeth because he fell over in his bathroom! Boston was a really nice city however we were so burnt out from travelling that we took the time to recuperate and managed to stay off the drink(a lot of people im sure will be glad about that)!

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