It's been a bit of a while since my last post but I've been busy trying to find a flat in London, but more on that later.

We went to bed on our last night in New York City with alarms set for 5am. We had tickets booked for a Boston Red Sox game and woke up in the pitch black to pack up and get back on the road to Boston.

It's a four and a half hour drive without stops so we knew we had to be up and out quickly if we wanted to make it in time for the first pitch. Getting out of Jersey City was the first challenge of the day. The roads and cramped and confusing and generally in poor condition. We went the wrong way more than once before we made our first stop; Dunkin Donuts for breakfast.

Our plan was to avoid toll roads and this seemed to be working well at first. However a few wrong turns and the GPS had rerouted us, unknowingly, through the very slightest bit of Manhattan. It wasn't until we were approaching the toll booths to cross the Hudson that we realised there was a $20 toll to access the bridge. A few more missed turns and mixed up GPS instructions and we were finally out of the NYC urban area and into the very green rolling hills of Connecticut.

The rest of the drive was fairly chilled. We travelled into Rhode Island, passing through Providence (and the Family Guy skyline), generally travelling alongside the coast. Even as we moved into Boston is wasn't until the very end that we encountered any real traffic.

We were staying with Jill, a girl that we had met in Austin and who had been keeping in touch with Todd. We drove to her huge flat and then caught the subway, or The T as it's called in Boston, in to Fenway Park for the game. It was early afternoon when we arrived, just in time for the Anthem. The Red Sox were playing the Tampa Bay Rays and there was a good home crowd. It was an awesome experience to see a game at the famous Fenway Park. Not so awesome were the equally famous Fenway Franks. I had imagined that there must have been something special about a stadium hot dog for me to have heard about it but really it had nothing going for it. It was just a crappy sausage in a bun, and nothing else.

Fenway Park

The game itself wasn't the most exciting unfortunately with very few runs scored. The Red Sox didn't do so well and the crowd lost it's enthusiasm about half way through. Still I'm glad we went.

The Red Sox didn't do so well

It was only early evening when the game ended and although we were tired there was plenty of time left to go an explore the city. We only had one night planned so we had lots to see. We started off by walking towards the city centre through the famous Back Bay.

For some reason there were bunnies frolicking in front of this church in Back Bay

The finish line of the Boston Marathon

It was a lovely evening

The Charles River

We then caught The T north to Cambridge and had a quick look around the Harvard Campus. We had a tour planned for the next day however so we didn't stay for too long.

For dinner we went to a Mexican place in Cambridge where for the first time on the trip Todd and my drivers licenses were declined as ID and we were denied margaritas. The huge burritos and nachos made up for it however. I was exhausted at this point, after a 5am start and a 5 hour drive. We finished up with a quick visit to a bar to have a Boston speciality called a Pickleback which is a shot of Whiskey followed by a shot of pickle brine. It sounds disgusting and I decided not to partake. Apparently it wasn't too bad...

Ultimate Nachos

The next morning we had to get up fairly early again in order to make it to our tour of the Harvard Campus back in Cambridge. We needn't have rushed as the guide ended up arriving about ten minutes late. Once he did arrive we spent the next two hours exploring Cambridge and Harvard University. The history of the area was very interesting as well as some of the traditions that exist. I was a bit surprised at how small Harvard was compared to the other US universities I had seen. I had imagined that it would be grand and opulent but in reality it was probably the least pretty of the many universities that I saw in North America.

Harvard University

A church on campus

After the tour and a quick visit to the Harvard shop (I didn't buy anything this time) we went back into the city centre to look for a statue of the famous basketball player Bill Russell. Russell used to be married to an Aunt of Peggy and Todd so we had to see it before we left. We finally found it outside the Boston City Hall.

We were close to the waterfront now and we couldn't leave without having had a bowl of clam chowder. The chowder came in a bread bowl and was really nice and managed to put off the weariness for another hour while we walked along the waterfront. I left the others for a minute to get a drink and by the time I found them again half my face had swelled up for some reason. Most of us went back to Jill's flat to pack up and rest while Todd and Jill went to have a quick look around MIT (the Massachusetts one, not Manukau). My face returned back to normal shortly after and we all lay down and crashed.

The waterfront

We left just as the sun was setting and luckily didn't have far to go. We were spending that night at a park just north of the city. After staying in cities for nearly a week we were out of food and other camping supplies so half of us left to go stock up with the other set up camp. Shopping ended up taking ages and I was starting to feel like I was getting something. As usual the supermarket was way too cold which probably made things worse. As you should expect by now, thunder and lightning greeted us as we left the supermarket. Luckily the rain never made it to camp.

After an exhausting and hectic week we were finally back in the woods with a few laid back days planned to recover. Which will be the topic of my next post.

I enjoyed Boston but thinking back now don't think I really took all that much in. I was too tired and had done too much to really give the city the interest that it deserved. For a town that had such a huge role in the American Revolution I did nothing to explore that history. I also realise now that we never really made into the city centre, mainly just skirted around the edges. There's no regrets though, it just means there's plenty left to see for next time.