Today is another day where is time to say goodbye to New York, and at the same time say hello to
Boston, however, we walk in a wrong direction for our bolt bus, which make us almost miss the bus. Once we arrived to Boston we got our seven-day pass for nineteen dollars (much cheaper then New York). We all take the metro to our hotel, which their metro is really easy to understand. Once we drop our luggage, we all when right out and start our day. Our original plan is to take a Black Heritage Trail and go to the Massachusetts State Library, but unfortunately they we close. So we ended up taking a free walking – in tour in State Building. After this tour, Angela did not feel so well so she ended up going back to the hotel with Judy, and the rest of us we eat and the Cheese Cake Factory, this dinner was free, all thanks to Lisa’s mom’s friend treat us for the dinner. After dinner, we want to see Boston’s night view in the Skywalk, which is in the mall that is connected to the mall, and we ended up walking all around the building to get into the mall. Once we got there, their customer service told us that there is an event happening today so is close. We were disappointed because not a lot of things had work out today, so we ended up walking around the mall and go back to our hotel. -Elsa Iao
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We took the 8:00 AM bus to Boston. This time, we did not have a break in between so it was hard midway through since we did not have the opportunity to stretch. When we arrived at South Station, we quickly bought McDonald’s for lunch before heading out to the hotel. We also bought a 7-day unlimited metro pass for the time we had in Boston. It was not our intention, but we stumbled upon the Boston State House, which was actually the state capitol building.
We stayed at the Embassy Suites near Logan Airport. It was very convenient to live nearby the metro station and the hotel, making it easier to travel around. Our original plan was to visit Boston’s famous Massachusetts State Library, Black Heritage Trail, and Skywalk Observatory, but all of them were closed. We ended up just walking around the Prudential Center and eating dinner at Cheesecake Factory there. Even though our plans did not work out too well, we had a day to relax a bit before continuing on our journey in Boston. -Diana Lin This is where the fun began. My group was left in charge of Boston, so I definitely remember the most about Boston.On another note, just a small piece of advice for those of you that ever need to take hours and hours of multiple modes of transportation. Unless you want severe neck and back pain, buy a neck pillow. I can’t confirm the effectiveness of these neck pillows in preventing pain since I’ve never tried them, but it is too late for me. For you, not so much. We arrived in Boston around 1 PM, and our schedule was extremely tight so I urged the group to a short take-out meal at the McDonalds in the bus station. I couldn’t believe my eyes—Boston had a McPick deal for $5 where you could buy two Big Macs, two Filet O’ Fish. I’m not trying to be a sellout or anything, but... Anyway, we ended up running behind schedule anyway.
The first day of Boston will probably be remembered as the day we went everywhere, but ended up going nowhere. We went to the Massachusetts State Library, Black Heritage Trail info building, and the Skywalk Observatory in Prudential Center, but all of them were either closed or inaccessible. Somewhere along the way, we ended up stumbling upon a tour of the Massachusetts State house where I learned for the first time of the Sacred Cod. I don’t remember exactly how the Sacred Cod came to be, but it currently hangs proudly over the chambers of the House of Representatives. The State House also displays original rifles from both colonists and soldiers from the British Parliament during the Battle of Lexington and Concord. It might just be me, but I get a spark of excitement when I relearn things from tours and museums that I’ve already learned from my history classes. I wouldn’t go as far as to say our first day in Boston is a tragedy, but it’s definitely disappointing. With our time constraint though, there really is no time to be disappointed. On a brighter note, one of Lisa and Danny’s mom’s friend ended up meeting us at Cheesecake Factory in Prudential Center and paid for our entire meal. On the off chance that you’re reading this, thanks for the meal! -David Yi We arrived at Boston in the afternoon and we were lost to finds the subway station which can bring us to our hotel. Subway stations are so hidden in Boston. My first impression is Boston is not a visitor friendly city. It is cold and the wind is freezing cold to me. We took half an hour to find the subway station which is right in front of us but we miss it because the entrance is part of an entrance but there are no visible signs. The metro system map are very easy to read. After we checked in and dropped off our luggage. We head out to State Building and happily to attend their tour around the building. The building is historical and the shiny gold dome was memorable. Later we tried Massachusetts State Library and Black Heritage Tour but it was close, so we decided to get dinner for the first day in Boston. We went to Cheesecake Factory, this is my first time trying out Cheesecake Factory so I am pretty excited for it. We have 12 people but it is very to get a seats for so many of us, this is different than San Francisco’s which you will need to wait for hours in order to get seats. After the dinner, we went to Prudential Center, a mall with stores to shop and there are the Skywalk which we plan to attend but we didn't get to see it because of some event. Today, we are behind schedule so we didn't get to see many things. Overall, first day was fun.
P.s. for myself: Fantastic job! You didn't eat fast food -Meifeng Deng We almost missed our bus to Boston today, but don’t worry there was McDonald’s to cheer us up. Like seriously the Chicken McNuggets is always the go to for me, but if you don’t like it, you really do need to reevaluate your whole life ... just kidding ... maybe. The weather in Boston was actually a breath of fresh air. I could breathe easily in that nice ocean cold air. IT really felt refreshing. Going on, we had a nice tour around the State Building, but after that we had series of unfortunate scheduling errors. The Black Heritage Trail, The Massachusetts State Library, and Skywalk were all closed, but the Cheesecake Factory was nice. I never actually tried it before, so it was something new. That ends our day and so far, and I started to really like Boston.
-David Trang On the Seventh day we took the bus to Boston. When we arrived at Boston we ate McDonald’s for brunch so overall we tried Washington and Boston’s McDonald’s except for New York. There wasn’t much of a difference between the different McDonalds except for the price. After this we walked to a metro station to buy bus tickets. Then we took the metro to the airport station, which is kind of like a funny name, because there are no airports around and we weren’t able to hear any airplanes take off or even see any airplanes flying around. Anyhow, after we arrived we went to check in in the embassy hotel and drop off our heavy luggage, then went to take the bus to go to the Black Heritage Trail, however, a good thing that happened was that we stumbled upon the state building and was able to get a tour in there where the most interesting thing that I learned about was the sacred codfish. We went to the Black heritage trail building, but it ended at 4 so we had to go another day. Now instead of the Black Heritage trail we went to the Massachusetts state library, but unfortunately it was also closed. So by gaining a tour we also lost a tour. By then we just decided to go eat dinner at the Cheesecake factory, because my mother’s friend was there. The last thing that we wanted to go to was the skywalk and when we went to the prudential mall and looked for the sky walk again we were told that it was closed because of a private event so today was not a very good day to do things so we just walked around the mall and went back to the hotel.
-Danny Yu Now that we have visited D.C. and New York on our trip, we have completed 2⁄3 of our journey. Today is when we welcome our third city -- Boston! So this time, we actually did not have to wake up as early as we did last time when we travelled to New York. Our bus to Boston was at 8:00 A.M. so that gave us a few extra hours to sleep in a bit more. I would say that throughout this whole bus ride I felt as if I was living in a refrigerator. I had a jacket with me, but as I cover my body, my legs felt cold, and vice versa. This was just because the air conditioner was too strong. Near the middle of the bus ride, I was somewhat looking forward to the moment where I can take a break from sitting and stand up to stretch my legs. As I waited from 10:00 A.M. to 10:15, from 10:15 to 10:30, and finally from 10:30 to until about 11:00 A.M., I have come to realize that there is no break for this bus ride. I had no other choice but to sleep with one of my body parts in pain as well as in the cold fifty degrees-like environment. We finally arrived at Boston at around noontime. We grabbed lunch in the station, and of course, as much of a McDonald’s fan we all (or most of us) are, we have to try the McDonald’s in Boston. Truth was that there wasn’t many other food choices in the station anyways. Then we had to head to our hotel to check in, but first, we needed to find the metro station. Right when we step foot outdoor, I immediately fell in love with the weather in Boston. It is much similar to the weather in SF. Also given the fact that I was roasted in the past six days of our trip in D.C. and New York, Boston just felt as a heaven to me, in terms of its weather. Following the directions on google maps, we were heading towards the direction to the nearest metro station. We stopped at a certain area trying to figure out where the station was and finally found it as we turned around the corner and saw the station entrance. Imagine yourself standing in front of a brick building, assuming that it is just an ordinary architecture, and then as you turn around the corner, you see a very small entrance door to a metro station. In my opinion, this is a pretty interesting metro station entrance. I guess we would never have figured it out if we never turned around the corner. We bought our 7-day passes at the metro station and entered through the entrance to the metro. This is the part where I dislike Boston metro. I would describe the “doors” of the metro station entrance as two pieces of chopping boards that open on each side, and then close after you pass through the entrance. As it gives quite some time for passengers to pass the entrance, I would be traumatized every time from now on when I pass the metro station entrance. Perhaps I made it sound scarier than it actually is, it is not that bad as other people seem fine with it. It is probably just that people like me who flinch at many minor things would be scared of this entrance. We finally settled at our hotel, which is at the airport station of the metro (makes sense since we live near the Boston Logan International Airport). After resting for a while, we headed back out to continue to explore about Boston and stick to our agenda (or at least tried to stick to it, as you read on you will know why). Throughout our journey of exploration of Boston on the first day, I have discovered a several things. One thing that somewhat shocked me was the level of the platform for the green metro line. It was almost as if there were no platform levels, or well, there was a slight of a raised platform, but very little. The second thing was my astonished reaction to the building of Boston City Hall. I just wanted to say that, to be honest, I would not have been able to tell that that building I saw was City Hall if nobody informed me. Now what I found most shocking was the traffic light features they have there in Boston. Right when we were about to cross the street from where we saw City Hall, we saw that the pedestrian signal light displayed a mix of a red hand signal and a white walking man. Alright, perhaps there was some errors with the traffic system at the moment, or if not, then I hope they would fix it in the future for the better. Then after we crossed a few streets, I have come to encounter this traffic light that was swinging from side to side at the middle of an intersection. I hope it doesn’t fall in the short run and that the city would fix it in the long run. Cars who pass through this intersection, I wish you good luck. Now we have made a stop in front of the State House and saw that free public tours are offered, and that they only last for about half an hour. We decided to go on one (and this was actually one of the best decisions we have made, and you will also see why later). The tour was quite interesting and informing, but meanwhile there were certain times where I was falling asleep. To prevent myself from doing so, I did not sit down whenever there were chairs or seating areas. After the tour, we were trying to head to the Massachusetts State Library, as it was close by to the State House, or even inside the State House, according to google maps. Unfortunately, the library closes at 5:00 P.M., and we could not make it (or find it rather) on time. Our next stop would be the Black Heritage Trail that was planned to be visited earlier at 2:00 P.M. today with a tour provided, but we couldn’t make it due to the traveling time to and from the hotel, as well as the check in. This time, we found the place for the trail, but it was also closed and no tours were offered at that time. Well, after a while of exploring and walking, it is almost dinner time. We went to Cheesecake Factory for dinner and...don’t worry, at least this is open. This was actually my first time eating at Cheesecake Factory, and so new experience again. After dinner, we headed to the Prudential Center for the Skywalk Observatory to end our day. Now bad things always (or most of the time) come in a bundle. The Skywalk was also closed that day for a special event. So what we decided to do was to shop (or window shop I should say) around the mall since we were already there, before we head back to our hotel. Our first day in Boston, we basically did not do much although it felt like we did since we went to many different places. Well, at least we learned from today that many places in Boston close fairly early. I guess Bostonians have a pretty healthy lifestyle.
-Shirley Tsang We arrived at Boston!
I’m not sure whether to say we had good luck or bad luck in Boston. Everything which we planned in Boston did not happen. We tried to go to the Massachusetts State Library, Black Heritage trail tour, and the Skywalk Observatory but they were all closed. However, we were able to randomly stumble upon a walking tour of the State Building. The tour was overall amazing, being able to learn about the history and the importance of the State Building was enlightening. My favorite part of the tour was learning about the sacred cod fish. After the tour we went to eat at Cheesecake Factory and later attempted to go to the Skywalk Observatory but it was reserved for a group, so we couldn’t get it but we had free time around Prudential mall. They had a bookstore, Borders. We used to have one in San Francisco but it closed down, so I went in and spent most of my free time there exploring and reading books. -Lisa Yu I would say today, I had the toughest time in my trip because I became sick. Due to lack of sleep and rest on the bus, I had a bad headache and also suffered from a previous cold so me and one of the staff had to bring me back to the hotel so I can rest. Before I left, we went to the State Building and luckily was given a tour. We were able to visit some of the rooms and the guide told us some of the United States history and I felt as though I was taking another class again. After the tour, I used up my last energy to make it back to the hotel. Hopefully, I will feel better so I can really enjoy my time in Boston.
-Angela Iao Today I do not have my terrible stomachache with me so I had a lot of energy, ready to explore. We visited another college campus, Colombia. We weren’t able to catch a tour of the campus but we walked around it and I liked the environment of the Campus but just like George Washington University I don’t know enough about the campus to fully want to attend it. After Colombia we went to Chinatown for a MOCA tour to learn more about the Chinatown. During one location of the tour, Columbus Park reminded me Portsmouth Square Park back in San Francisco. It reminded me of Portsmouth Square mainly because of the seniors who gathered around to hang out with their fellow seniors by playing chess or card games.
After the tour we went for lunch at a restaurant in Chinatown and later walked around to buy souvenirs. We walked through Little Italy which is slowly beginning to merge into Chinatown and we visited Trinity Church, Wall Street and New York Stock Market Exchange. We also walked through Battery Park, so we can see the Statue of Liberty and we last minutely decided to take the Staten Ferry round trip to get a closer view of Statue of Liberty without having to pay. In addition we were able to get a nice view of the Brooklyn Bridge too. After the round trip with the ferry we decided to go check out New York University. There we saw a group of guys walking around proposing to girls to go to prom with them. For our final destination we went to eat dinner at Carmine’s which is located in the Theatre District. After once we go back to the hotel we packed, so we will be ready to leave tomorrow to travel to Boston! -Lisa Yu |
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March 2019
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