Boston

There is nothing quite like travel to make one want to stab one's fellow man in the eye with a fork. 

What is WRONG with you people!!! At airports you all turn into drooling idiots - farting about with your bloody suitcases on wheels, bumbling about, leaving your bratty children to throw tantrums and block everyone's way. You stand at the entrance to escalators and lifts to have a bit of a chat, blithely unaware of the huge queue of tourists, furiously elbowing their way past you. You're loud. You're annoying. You stink and YOU'RE IN MY ****ING WAY YOU BUNCH OF B*STARDS!!!!

Sorry. I just had to get that out of my system. The flight from Montreal to Boston was particularly nightmarish, as it involved going via Philadelphia.  If you look at the map you'll note that Philadelphia is JUST A TAD out of the way. But that's where we ended up, at the rather cramped airport there, fighting our way, salmon-like through the throng.  When we got on the plane, it was even worse with people dicking about with their overhead lockers, screaming children (we had some little darlings behind us who kicked our seats all the way to Boston) and bloody pan pipe music as the stewardesses told us where the emergency exits were located. 

(As Brownie once said to a fellow passenger, "Sunshine, you'll know where the exit is; it'll be that gaping hole of twisted metal in the fuselage.")

So I wasn't in the best of moods on touching down at Logan Airport. However, this soon changed when we were picked up by a lovely taxi driver who seemed DELIGHTED that we had chosen to visit Boston. I have never felt so welcomed to a city, and this sort of event shapes your attitude to a place. The cab-driver spent his time proudly pointing out all the highlights of Boston and congratulated us on our location (we had chosen it because it was the cheapest - Boston is hideously expensive - but he wasn't to know that). 

We were in the area called Newberry which Caro had discovered contained all the funkiest shops (oh dear). It was also near the Prudential Center, a new complex of hotels, shops and restaurants which the taxi driver told us we had to visit. He then gave Caro a complimentary map and insisted that she follow the route he took, so that she could familiarise herself with the area. Then he turned his attention on me, and expressed the wish that I wouldn't hold The Revolution against Boston.

I thought he was joking and said I was sure that eventually the American people would realise their mistake and come back to the Colonial Bosom of Her Majesty, but he was DEAD SERIOUS. He really emphasised that The Bostonians may have held the tea party but he hoped I would still enjoy Boston. I reassured him that I would.  

To be honest, I've never really understood what all that tea-tipping nonsense was about anyway. I believe the American Revolution was something to do with taxation and Mel Gibson's kid getting shot and the right to mispronounce the word "oregano" but beyond that I'm a bit clueless. Anyway, to all you Americans out there, I don't harbour any ill feeling although you will notice that I do spell "harbour" correctly for f*ck's sake.

As an historical aside, I didn't realise that 1776 wasn't the only time the Brits and the Americans went to war. Apparently in 1812, during Napoleon's Continental System of Alliances to isolate Britain from Europe, we responded by blocking all ships into France. This included American shipping, and so they promptly invaded Canada in the War of Confusing European Alliances. 

I didn't know anything about this, but the Canadians certainly haven't forgotten and had a whole tv series about it when we were up there. As it turned out, the Brits and the Canadians successfully fought the Americans to a truce, due to the help of  native American tribes, who saw a chance to recover some of their land. 

(They didn't of course, were duped by their former allies, and the fact that they had sided with the British led to their being treated even more harshly by the Americans in their subsequent War of The Incredibly Gullible Native Americans Ha Ha Ha.)

So that's history for you.  

Boston is covered in it.  Part of this is due to the fact that local law prohibits the external alteration of any of the historic buildings.  As a result, Boston looks more like a European city than any other we had so far visited.  It really is extremely beautiful and sophisticated, with cute little pavement cafes, snug bookshops, tree-lined streets and impressive buildings everywhere you looked. There's a pleasant vibe to the place, and it occurred to me as we explored the area that this is what I had hoped to find in San Francisco, only to be disappointed.  Whereas the atmosphere in San Francisco was tense and scary, the atmosphere in Boston is laid-back, friendly and slightly intellectual.  Much like myself, darlings.

The only problem with Boston in 2001 was that it was overgoing major reconstruction work (colloquially named "The Big Dig"). And I mean MAJOR. It was like the entire city had gone on the tv show “Extreme Makeover”.  

Our taxi driver explained that their transport system was being completely overhauled; the main highway through Boston to be replaced by a tunnel that traverses the city, with the old highway to be turned into parkland. It will certainly be extremely beautiful when they've finished it, but just now Boston looks like it's being strip-mined. There are huge construction sites everywhere and a horribly ugly temporary highway that's been constructed on an overpass that crosses the city. 

"Yep, we just put up highways, then tear 'em down again," said the taxi driver. I told him that this was just showing off. The construction work was due to end two years ago and still looks nowhere near completion. 

Apparently their biggest problem was the huge rat population which didn't take too kindly to being disturbed and promptly attacked all the construction workers, leading to an unplanned rat-killing operation and the workers having to operate in rat-proof suits. We heard several different estimates, 2004, 2006 and 2007 for the new end-date and I don't know which was more accurate. All I know is that if you ARE planning to visit Boston, it's probably best to wait because Boston will look stunning once The Big Dig is over.

Our accomodation in Boston was a hostel, our first since we arrived in Hawaii. This was entirely due to financial constraints. 

As the travel guides would have it, “Boston is an affluent and costly city”.  Translation:  It’s f*cking expensive.  Even the hostel charged $87.50 for a double room, which was just two dollars short of what we had been paying in Las Vegas, and a great deal more than what we had paid in Canada.  So we were back to no tv, horrid hard beds, pillows you could spit through, and (shudder) shared bathrooms. 

Look, I don't mind sharing bathrooms with other people.  I'm not a cleanliness freak or anything.  It's just that one universal law of nature I have observed is this: You never need to go for a shit quite so desperately as when there is a queue of six girls outside the bathroom with a towel under one arm and a scarily large make-up bag under the other.  Self-control is the order of the day, if you know what I mean.  Either that, or you make friends with a bucket.