The first morning in a new city is something special.  There’s a heightened sense of awareness; a zest for adventure, and a willingness to try new things you wouldn’t normally jump on.  The logistics of getting from my hosts’ apartment to the training centre I was to patronize (this is, after all, a training trip) was something I hadn’t worked through, but Steph kindly let me use her computer to contemplate the nuances of the Boston area public transit system.

Like many old cities, Boston was layed out during a drunken Colonial orgy.  Streets intersect at angles still undiscovered in mathematics, and the proliferation of 1-way streets means that a few miles as the crow flies could result in several hundred miles driven.  The transit system takes this concoction of concrete and asphalt and makes some sense of it, and I found I could get just about anywhere in the city in reasonable time.

As much of a car snob as I am, I still enjoy riding a bus.  I departed from a station called Alewife (does this imply that one needs ale to withstand having a wife?  At this point I’m willing to agree) and rode through much of north Boston to a little ‘burb called Burlington.

Burlington seems like a fair place.  My training centre is located in a fairly “corporate” setting, next to a mall.  Yippee - five days in one of America’s most historic cities, and I get to spend many hours of that in a concrete jungle.

I’ll skip any further description of the training.  The learning itself is excellent; it’s just that I can’t stand the corporate expanses of grey carpet that comprise these buildings.

After my training I headed back down to Cambridge to take Steph and Natalie out for dinner and some drinks.  We wandered through Cambridge, and let me tell you - I could live here in a heartbeat.  Every little side street is filled with Volkswagens and Saabs and Volvos and Jaguars (back when they had two big chrome fuel doors on the top of the rear sill), and all of the houses look like they shelter intellectuals debating philosophy or physics.  There’s not a Republican in sight.

I stopped at a Middle-Eastern cafe on my way back, and witnessed a group of young women knitting and using spinning wheels.  Thank you, Cambridge, for allowing me to witness such beautiful displays of multiculturalism.

Dinner was at a Mexican restaurant whose name remains unknwon, despite the hearty culinary offerings.  Drinks at a local pub, during which I decided that cider (containing molecules of alcohol) is actually pretty tasty.

To cap off a perfectly perfect day, we exited the pub to big fluffy snowflakes falling from the heavens.  And the furnace a la Paul Revere seemed to be working that night, so I wouldn’t need a hundred comforters to keep blood circulating through my system.

Stay tuned for my next update about ripped knapsacks, finding an REI, getting to this REI, and hoofing it through half the city.

1 comment
Posted in Blog
Written on Fri, 15 February 2008 at 8:17 am
Tags: Boston, Cambridge, couchsurfing, travel
If you liked this post, then consider subscribing to our full RSS feed.