Boston - day 2
September 24th, 2006 at 1:35 amThe rest of yesterday
Just as I finished typing yesterday’s entry, I noticed that I forgot another thing in Israel (the other one is a toothbrush, which I bought yesterday) - the large memory for the camera. All I had is the 16 MB one - only enough for 18 photos or so, not enough. So, I asked the internet cafe owner how much a card costs (he had a few for sale). He said $150 - for 1 GB. That sounded a little crazy to me, so I asked if there are any large computer shops nearby. Sure, he said, there’s one about a mile away in Cambridge, right after MIT.
It wasn’t a mile, let me tell you that, more like a 3, cause it took me longer than an hour to reach. The shop was really huge with lots of stuff in it - something like our Office Depot - just all about computer gadgets. I picked a 1 GB SanDisk memory there (Secure Digital) for 50 bucks. It’s still more than it costs home, but it also fits into cellular phones that support it. Anyway, it was cheap enough and now I have 1080 photos left to shoot in the camera, yay !
I walked back to the hotel, buying some food along the way - Beef Jerkys, some cottage cheese and crackers. There’s so much snacks here to try out, I hardly get to eat normal food 
After I came to the hotel I watched some TV and crashed to sleep at about 7 PM - to overcome the jetleg.
Today, early morning
I woke up at 5:30 - lots of sleep is good against jetleg. The hotel doesn’t have a refrigerator in the room (this is the worse $150-a-night hotel I’ve seen !), but at least it has a coffee machine. So, after a 10 minute session of trying to figure out how the damn thing works, I managed to make myself coffee, which was OK (I like our simple Nescafe more), and drink it with some of the leftover food from yesterday.
At 7:00 AM I set out for my tour of Boston. The weather forecast promised clear weather in the morning and rain in the evening, so I wanted to see as much as possible before noon.
The forecast turned to be wrong - the rain was in the morning. But it wasn’t a serious rain - it was a “nerd rain” as Anna and I call them. That’s because it’s a weak rain, not because it’s raining nerds, of course (though this scenario isn’t too far fetched with 4 universities within walking distance of here, two of them being Harvard and MIT). Thankfully I had my trustworthy Kenvelo umbrella with me, so fueled up by a nice hot cup of chocolate from Dunkin Donuts (there’s a staggering amount of these shops over here - amazing. Still a tiny fraction of Starbucks, though) I kept walking in the rain, looking around the beautiful architecture here. The streets are so England-like, with nice brick houses. But from time to time there are huge steel’n glass skyscrapers - which altogether makes for a nice mixture.
City center, freedom trail
When I started approaching the city center it was already 8:30 so shops and other places started opening up. Boston has many historical attractions - it was a very important city in the first days of the United States - actually the path to US independence from Britain began in Boston (with one of the more famous events being the Boston tea party). They have it all nicely and tidily arranged by having a “freedom trail” tourists can follow. This trail is marked in red paint and bricks and you just walk it - going through most attractions.
Soon after I began the trail, I sighted paradise - a huge two story Borders bookshop. Wow, this place is amazing. It’s like a big library, with computer terminals helping to find relevant books and all. I promised myself upfront not to spend more than an hour and a half there, and buy no more than one book. This promise turned out to be a smart thing - I was very close to spending the day and ordering a special flight for shipment of books
When I got out of Borders, the rain eased a little bit and I continued following the trail, detouring from time to time to interesting alleys and parks. For instance, they have a whole district here called Lil’ Italy - with all shop and cafe names Italian. They actually also have a Chinatown here - it’s further south to the city center, so I didn’t reach it yet.
I kept following the trail, crossing the river, and going into Charlestown - a very beautiful suburb of Boston where one of the most important fights with the British was fought during the independence war. After spending some time there and eating a few raisin bagels with yoghurt, I decided to head back to the hotel, to rest a little before my meeting with Eddie in the afternoon. I reached the hotel after 2, totalling over 6 hours of walking - I have at least 20-25 kilometres of walking behind my back today, that’s for sure !
Meeting Eddie
Eddie came with his wife, their son and their son’s friend at 4:20 (They live two hours away in Connecticut - right between NY and Boston) and we headed to the city center to get some dinner. They’re very nice people and we spent a great couple of hours together. We had dinner at a pleasant Italian place and I had my first normal meal since I came here - a bolonez pasta. But hey, I love them American snacks and there’s still a lot of them to try out
I’m already getting sleepy, so after finishing this I’m heading to the hotel to read, watch TV and go to sleep. Hmm… maybe I’ll get me some ice cream on the way.
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