Around the World with Hardy(T)Around the World with Hardy(T)I got the bus down from Bar Harbor to Boston. This was no mean acheivement in itself as the 6am departure was the first bus not only of the day, but of the season! I had to change buses in Bangor. Due to an accident in town, we (I say "we" - I was the only passenger) arrived in Bangor five minutes after the Boston bus left. I couldn't believe what happened next - the driver got back in his bus and set off down the freeway after the other bus. We finally caught it in Waterville, a good 60 or 70km down the track! Also, on the way to Boston, we passed through Portsmouth, NH, but it was nothing like home.
Boston is a great place to spend a few days and it also has an excellent HI hostel in the Fenway, just off Massachussetts Ave. It may not be the cleanest of places but it makes up for that with friendly staff, a really laid back atmos and, it organises pub crawls of a nighttime!
On my first day in Boston, I did
the tourist thing and walked part of the Freedom Trail, celebrating Paul
Revere, the Boston Tea Party and all that. I saw the Bull and Finch pub,
where TV's Cheers is filmed and then ended up in the colourful Quincy
Market. This is an excellent place to hang out. Boston's fledgling soccer
team, the New England Revolution has a stall there, as does Cheers,
but the stall that really caught my eye was one called Le Saucier: row upon
row of hot chilli relishes, fiery sauces and other devillishly hot condiments,
and featuring the magnificent 
Shelf
of Death! While I was at Quincy Market, they also had a street entertainer's
festival: clowns on stilts, unicyclists aplenty and more fire jugglers than
you could shake a (lighted) stick at. 
That
evening, Julie from the hostel led an intrepid group to an Irish pub called
the Purple Shamrock. The evening provided a wide range of experiences: I
met Kerstin from Stuttgart for the first time
and Greg from Queensland, not for the first time - we'd been in Canada together;
I drank the highly recommended Boston Ale and the not so highly recommended
raspberry beer; I joined in a hen night and slam-danced to Rancid with some
skinheads. What a night!
The next
day sees varied attempts at a hangover cure. Here's my advice: if you have
a mother of a sore head in the morning, do NOT, I repeat, do NOT, go to
the Boston Tea Party museum. You will undoubtedly be asked to play a part
in a reenactment of that famous day in 1773 when the residents of Boston,
led by Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, disguise themselves as Mohawk Indians,
board the Beaver Brig and dump $10,000 worth of tea in to the harbour, endearing
themselves no end to the British. Your part in this charade will almost
certainly involve sticking a feather on your head and shouting out some
utter claptrap about tea in a very bad nautical accent. Totally unnecessary.
By far
and away a better alternative is to jump on board a more modern seagoing
vessel and head out towards Cape Cod on a whalewatching cruise. If you can
stomach the boat's motion, the fresh sea air and excellent views will soon
clear away those alcohol induced cobwebs. Any remaining unpleasantness will
soon be forgotten when you catch your first sighting of the majestic finbacks
or playful minke whales. They are such beautiful, elegant, graceful creatures.
I could have spent hours watching them surface and dive in front of us.
Alas, the boat had to return to Boston and we had to make do with watching
Kerstin's video of them. Sadly, the next time I was to encounter a whale
was on a butcher's slab in Bodø,
Norway. How can people eat these magnificent creatures?
Rant over. Click here for witches, ivory towers and more of Paul bloody Revere...