Blogs from Boston, Massachusetts, United States, North America - page 22

It's been a full on a few days. I would never have enough time to write about every detail. Instead I am going to make some comments about my observations. 1. The USA needs to reign in capitalism. - Now I know this is a fairly big call. However, if I was forced to visit one more shop at one more monument/museum/building, I was going to scream. Something Americans seem to fail to understand is that not everyone wants to buy stuff, ALL the time. I don't mind the presence of merchandise shops. I, in fact, bought the odd thing from the odd shop. However, making someone stop on a floor of a building specificially so they have to walk through a shop is OUT OF CONTROL (i'm talking to you Empire State Building and Top ... read more

Today, we woke up with no real plans to do anything. We were up at around 8am again to be ready in time to have breakfast, and we headed down to the dining room at about 9:15. We both had cereal today (Craig took a couple of his lactase pills so that he could have the milk) and some orange juice. On the way back to the room in the elevator, we noticed on the events calendar that there was a free event taking place today in Harvard Square, celebrating 'Oktoberfest'. We had heard of this before; it's basically a traditionally German beer festival that is held in the first week of October. We're not too sure on the history of why it's celebrated, and how it's spread to cities such as Boston, but as it ... read more

We're pretty late in posting this blog entry due to a long day travelling yesterday and an early night prior to that! Thursday was our last full day in San Francisco, and as we had a ticket each left in our CityPasses for the Exploratorium (basically a big, interactive science museum), this is where we spent most of it! We were up at around 9am, and were ready and out for about 11am. We went to get some breakfast/dinner from Carl's Jr. before walking up towards Chinatown to the number 30 bus stop. Just as we got there, a bus was at the stop, but it looked a little full and there was another bus right behind it, so we got on that one instead. Unfortunately, it turns out that this was the one that only ... read more

We aren't actually conducting a competition to determine the best waterfalls in the world. We haven't checked out Venezuela's contender – the Angel Falls – yet. But we are prepared to say now that Iguazu in Argentina and Brazil leads the pack. Victoria – Mosi-Oa-Tunya – on the border of Zaqmbia and Zimbabwe is at least number 2 and a powerful challenger for number 1. Niagara, for our money, probably comes in at number 3. The 'probably' is there just because our research hasn't yet been exhaustive but we have seen a few of the other contenders and we would put Niagara above them. All subjective of course. The decision to travel north from Richmond, Virginia to have a look at Niagara was influenced as much by the opportunity to see if the 'fall colour' had ... read more

Alex gave us a lift to the coach station again where we boarded our coach to Boston! Was a relatively short journey and when we arrived we had to get a subway then a bus to our hostel. We had tried to get some couchsurfing in Boston but after applying to about 10 people with no luck, we needed a hostel and therefore booked the only one available which was a bit out of downtown. Apparently September is one of the busiest months in Boston, with Labour Day weekend and all the college students returning so the HI hostel and a few others in the centre were all booked up. After reading reviews about how far out this hostel was, we were happily suprised with the short 10 minute subway ride from downtown followed by a ... read more