Boston

I caught the train from Penn Station NYC to Boston yesterday (Sunday).  For a country that put a man on the moon they really have trouble running a decent public transport system.  The station and waiting area at Penn Station was a nightmare, lots of people standing around looking at destination boards that made no sense or lacked information.  A bloke standing next to me with his wife looked at the board and looked at me and said "mate, do you have any idea how this works"?.  My response was "mate, I have no idea".  He and his wife were fellow Australians and were off to Washington DC. 


Anyway more about the trip to Boston later but first a catch up on NYC.  Saturday loomed hot and humid, so what else was different.  I intended to walk to Times Square (as I hadn't really spent any time in that area) have a look around and make my way back to Bryant Park for lunch and then walk back to my hotel and maybe do some shopping on the way.  I got distracted from these plans a bit as when I got to 6th Avenue (the Avenue of the Americas) I found that the entire street was closed off from about 38th street north to 57th street near central park.  The entire street had been turned into a massive street market with lots of food stalls, junky market stalls and buskers.  One of the food stalls was selling deep fried Oreo cookies, which I now regret that I didn't try.  The market was good fun and it seemed strange walking up and down 6th Ave without any cars on it.


Now a bit about Times Square, it is tacky, not dangerous but tacky.  There are lots of people dressed in cartoon character costumes (often looking pretty grubby) trying to charge the tourists to have their photo taken with them.  There are also all the touts flogging the tickets for the tourist buses and almost coming to blows over it. I was also a bit surprised to see some semi naked men and women (a bit like the ones we saw in Fremont St in Vegas) also posing for photos with the tourists for a fee of course.  I did get my face on the big screen at times square and got a photo of my face on the big screen, so that was good.  Maybe you need to go to Times Square of a night time to get the full benefit.


As I had been to a proper restaurant for dinner last night and had a decent lunch at Bryant Park through the day I decided to go to a local Irish bar for dinner, so I ended up in Foxy John's Irish Bar in 47th street.  I was chatting to the young Irish barman and we swapped Vegas stories although his was much better than any of mine.  His father who lives in Ireland decided to celebrate his 60th birthday with a couple of mates in Vegas so my young barman friend and a couple of his mates decided that they would join his dad in Vegas for the celebrations.  My new young friend arrived in Vegas a couple of days before his dad arrived and one day woke up in hospital with a punctured and collapsed lung.  He claimed that he did not know what had happened, but he was hospitalized for, I think he said, 9 days.  We swapped morphine stories and agreed it is a marvelous thing and nearly as good as Guinness.  After 9 days in hospital he discharged himself to return to NYC and off course due to the collapsed lung he couldn't fly.  It took him 5 days to travel by train from Vegas to NYC with Amtrak.  I didn't have a Vegas story to match that. 


So this brings us back to Penn Station and my impending Amtrak journey.  It is well known that rail travel in the USA is the poor relation and the infrastructure has been allowed to deteriorate.  Consider this, the distance from NYC to Boston is about 200 miles (300kms) and the rail journey takes about 4.5hours.  In Europe this rail journey would take 2 hours.  Enough of the criticism, once you get through the madness of Penn Station and get on the train things start to improve.  The train was roomy and comfortable (in business class at least).  I had a surprising pleasant lunch of a turkey BLT wrap, cinnamon bun and a Coors beer whilst watching the green countryside pass by.  The train passed through some pretty little coastal towns and coastal regions.  It was sad to see a lot of the towns were surrounded by disused and abandoned factories but the same thing is happening in a lot of small towns in good ol Aus.


I am staying at the Harborside Inn in Boston.  It is a really nice, reasonably new hotel near the waterfront area and is a prize winning conversion of an old warehouse.  I am quite spoilt for choice for bars and restaurants as the hotel is near the Quincy market and Feneuil hall tourist areas as well as the attractions of the waterfront. 


There is a drink with my name on it in a bar somewhere so this will have to do for now.  More to follow about Boston shortly.