#13 - take Ricky to NYC (day 4)

DAY 4 - THURSDAY, MAY 17TH

I have to brag for a minute.

When Ricky and I decided that the New York thing was really going to happen, I wondered if we may be able to squeeze in a Boston day.  I went to Boston over spring break in 2008, and it's been my favorite "big city" ever since--Ricky wasn't over the moon about going (because that was one less day we'd be in NYC), but he could see how excited I was about it.  Also, I planned the whole trip, so he didn't really have a choice anyway. :)  So, I did some searching.  We were still about two months out at this point, but I discovered that Peter Pan Bus Lines (they use Greyhound buses?  I don't know how it works) offers a $1 fare from NYC to Boston (and back) if you book online a month in advance...so I set an alarm on my phone for the right day and scored two round-trip tickets for $4.50 (with tax)!  Since we took overnight buses, that $4.50 was also our NYC lodging cost for two nights.  Please, hold your applause.

(I found a better departure time through Megabus later, and their "special fare" is $2, so I wound up paying another $4 for new tickets.  Still worth it.)

So that's how we found ourselves on the 5-hour bus ride to Boston.  Our charter bus wasn't bad at all--outlets, no smell, reclining seats, etc.--or at least that's what I thought until we made a pit stop in Connecticut at 3:00 a.m..  The 20-minute pit stop on bus rides is standard, but the inability to start the bus back up again is not, which is the fate that befell our bus.  Here's a dramatic re-enactment of the situation:

*lights come on; Katie instantly awake*
Driver: Sorry, folks, but I'm not getting any power to the bus.
Groggy passenger: Wait, what?
*lower-level passengers slowly waking up*
Driver: I'm trying to get power to the bus, but it won't go over 15 mph.  We'll have to wait for the next bus.
Groggy passenger #2: When's the next bus coming?
Driver: There's one scheduled just half an hour behind us, but it's already mostly full.  It can only take 30 people.
Definitely awake, angry passenger man: 30 people?  What about everyone else?  When's the next bus after that?
Driver: ...I'm not sure.

Well, I knew the bus schedule backwards and forwards, and I knew the next bus wasn't scheduled to leave NYC until around 6:00 a.m.  I also knew that I wasn't about to toss my entire Boston schedule out the window just because my bus broke down.  As we waited, people started drifting back off to sleep--I should also note that the driver never once got on the PA system, or went up to the second level to tell those passengers what was going on.  (Now you see why my carsickness saved us from sleeping through the "not enough lifeboats" situation.  I'm glad 23 years of suffering led up to this moment.)  Ricky never woke up during the entire ordeal.  Not.  Once.  (Not for lack of me trying.)  I, on the other hand, had our bags in hand and was literally on the edge of my seat, waiting.  Every now and again someone would get off the bus to talk to the driver, then come back on.  I assumed they were all just asking the same questions: What's wrong?  When are we leaving?  etc.  About 15 minutes into waiting, though, one man got off the bus and then immediately got back on, too quickly to have had any sort of conversation with the driver.  He stood at the front of the bus and waved frantically to his family, talking to them urgently in an Eastern European language, and then gestured for them to get off of the bus.  That's was my cue--I nudged Ricky ("Mmm?" he said) and told him the other bus was here, and that we needed to get off before everyone else woke up.  And then I left.  Yes, I left my barely-awake husband on the broken-down bus, and he still hasn't let me live it down.  But, sure enough, the savior bus was parked right behind us, and I was first in what quickly became a long line.  Ricky finally toddled over ("I can't believe you left me!") and then they opened the doors and we went to find seats.

Long story short: We took the bus to Boston. Half of the bus fell behind.  We stuck to The Code.  (10 points to your house if you get the reference.)

Ricky fell back asleep practically as soon as we sat down on the new bus.

It was about 5:30 in the morning when we rolled into the South Station Transit Center, so we had a few hours to kill before anything tour-worthy opened.  It's a good thing we found the wonderful South Street Diner (open 24 hours!) fast, because it was DANG COLD.

Please ignore our horrible, horrible outfits.  There isn't exactly room for cute, warm jackets in a carry-on bag.

 It was in the high 40's and I thought my face was going to fall off.  It's amazing how quickly your blood thins out--in VA, 48 degrees was long sleeve/single-layer sweater weather.  When you move to FL, 48 degrees is wool coats and scarfs and it's-so-cold-I'm-dying weather.  It was only two blocks from the station to the diner, but Ricky and I were both shivering in long sleeves and hoodies by the time we got there.

Fortunately, they have the best hot chocolate to warm you up, and some delicious omelets.  Ricky even got to thank the Brazilian chef in Portuguese, leaving both of them looking really pleased.

Anyone who knows me well should know immediately which one of these glasses is mine.

Mustering up the courage to go back outside.

 We figured by 7:00 we had outstayed our welcome, so we traipsed back into the cold (but gradually getting warmer) morning and up to Boston Common.

Ricky being all historical and such.

 After taking pictures of monuments (shout-out to any SVU alums who acted out those monuments with me on our trip) and people-watching all the dog owners, we strolled through the Boston Public Garden (not to be confused with the Common, of course) and decided to wait out the rest of the hour duck-watching on a park bench.  There was a momma duck with the cutest gaggle of ducklings, but she kept getting harassed by male ducks that were obviously trying way too hard.  Poor lady duck.

This was right after we found a swan sitting on her nest.  So cool!

"Make Way for Ducklings...and Ricky" (Ricky didn't know I was taking this picture, which makes it funnier.)

Around 8:30, we decided to start the Freedom Trail, which is a painted and/or brick (depending on the section) red line that runs down the sidewalk through the historic parts of downtown Boston.  (Very "Wizard of Oz"-esque.)

Massachusetts State House

Park Street Church (I was too lazy to cross the street for a better picture)

Granary Burying Ground

Paul Revere is buried here, which brings us to an interesting story.  Before we left on this trip, I was talking to Kelly (the coworker who gave us a ride to the airport) about what NYC/Boston trinket I should bring back for her.  She then told me about another one of her friends who had asked her the same question before a trip to Ireland, and Kelly jokingly responded that she wanted a stick.  So, her friend sent her a series of pictures of her hand pulling a twig off of a tree, which gave Kelly a good laugh...and then the friend actually showed up back in the States with the Irish stick.  Since that form of natural memorabilia was already taken, Kelly said I could bring her back a rock.

But it couldn't be just any rock, right?

This is the Revere family tombstone.

People leave rocks and pennies on it.  I'm not sure if it's in a "respect for Paul Revere" sort of way, or in a "if you don't leave a penny, Paul Revere will haunt you" (which is what they tell you at Edgar Allan Poe's grave) way, but I decided that this was the perfect place to find a "special" rock, because yes, I'm a terrible person.  So I found another rock nearby (now pictured in the bottom left of the above picture) and performed an Indiana Jones-like swap for this one:

Ricky stood a good ten feet away the entire time, mumbling "I can't believe you're doing this," under his breath.  I did try to explain that those rocks probably just get dumped right back on the ground at the end of the week anyway (who knows what happens to the pennies!), and that I was basically doing the rock a favor by memorializing it, but apparently Ricky is held to a higher moral standard when it comes to taking stuff off of people's graves.  Go figure.

Plus, there's always the chance that Paul Revere will haunt me, which would be pretty awesome.  He could let me know when people were coming over to my house unexpectedly.

(Kelly was appropriately scandalized when I told her where her rock had come from.)

King's Chapel Burying Ground

Boston's big on old graves, which is great, because I'M big on old graves.  The signs in this graveyard are pretty candid about the fact that headstones have been unceremoniously moved around over the centuries, and that it's pretty likely that the names don't match with the bodies buried under them.  Oops.

Old South Meeting House

This is where the discussions leading up to the Boston Tea Party took place, and that school group in the picture were kids on a field trip.  Pretty normal on first glance, but this was a super cool field trip, because the class was split into two halves--the Loyalists and the Patriots, of course--and they were re-enacting the tea tax debates in the actual spot of the original tea tax debates!  SO COOL!  It made me jealous of tiny Boston children, and then I realized that I grew up in Yorktown, VA and Charleston, SC.  I mean, really. 

Old State House

Our next stop on the trail was the Old State House, where Ricky and I were each assigned the identity of a real person who lived in Revolution-era Boston.  Cool, right?  We wore the nametags as we did a self-tour of the museum, and each exhibit had questions like "How do you think your character would've felt about this?" and "Do you think this event affected the life of your character?"  It was pretty fun.  Ricky and I got really into being Loyalists.

The back of the card had more of a biography--Margaret Draper basically took over her husband's publishing house when he died and ran it like a boss, because that's how 18th century Boston women roll.  She used it to print Loyalist propaganda, but I'll forgive her since she's awesome.

Some of the tea from the Boston Tea Party, salvaged from a boot.  How awesome is that?!

John Hancock's coat!  Supposedly when he was wearing when he was sworn in as governor.  Ricky is shown here being stately.

I learned bricklaying!  +10 life points to me!

This is the balcony where the Declaration of Independence was read to the city of Boston for the first time.  The Boston Massacre took place just off to the side of the building.

The State House also had this little used bookstore in the basement, with this neat-as-a-pin lady shopkeeper who reminded me of a librarian.  You could tell she knew books.  (Basically, I want to be her when I grow up.)  They had a book from the 1500s that was only (only--ha!) $400, and I lusted after it for a while before realizing that 1) what was I going to do, pack it in my suitcase?; 2) Florida humidity would destroy it in .02 seconds; and 3) $400.

Samuel Adams (I hate society for making this awesome dude just a beer guy) statue outside of Faneuil Hall

We were running late to lunch, so we didn't pay to see Paul Revere's house, but we did take a picture in this weird park in front of this plaque that mentions him, because that's totally the same.

Old North Church, where Paul Revere looked to for the famous lantern signal.

We didn't stay for the tour, but this place is pretty cool.

We didn't see the Bunker Hill monument or the U.S.S. Constitution at the end of the trail (again, running late), but it was worth skipping them to see Chris and Melanie, two more awesome friends from South Carolina who, like Huey in NYC, just happened to be visiting Boston the same time we were visiting Boston.  It was a lot of really odd, wonderful coincidences.

Chris is in the military, and he just got stationed in Boston, so he and Mel are moving to a townhome in Bedford, Mass.  I die of jealousy every time I think about it, because Bedford is right next door to Concord, and here's what Concord has:

-Louisa May Alcott's house
-Nathaniel Hawthorne's house
-Ralph Waldo Emerson's house
-Old North Bridge battle site (first battle of the Revolution)
-Author's Ridge, where the Alcotts/Emersons/Hawthornes/Thoreaus are buried
-Walden Pond

Can you see why I'm dying from jealously?  SO MANY FEELINGS.

The American Renaissance authors (see above) are my very, very favorites.  Being in their homes was like going to Disney World for the first time.  (I can't believe it's been over four years since we went, Sara George-Kreider!!  Remember the grand piano in the Old Manse?  And Sophia's glass etchings?)  We didn't have time to bus/train out there from Boston this trip, but I fully intend on blatantly extorting Chris and Melanie for visiting privileges sometime soon, because this is what you can do when your friends move to a cool place.  (Hint hint, everyone: I live in South Florida now.  South Florida is a cool place.  Also, I like Elizabeth best because she came to visit me, even though my town is actually pretty boring and old persony.)

And...back on topic.  Anyway, lunch.  I was originally going to suggest Legal Seafood (SO GOOD), but then I remember that Melanie doesn't like seafood, so I basically googled "best pizza place in Boston" and the wonders of the internet led me to Regina Pizzeria.  It was delicious!  Ricky and I had some sort of spinachy white pizza that was really good, even though halfway through the pizza I realized I really wanted tomato sauce.  (I hate it when that happens.)  In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that the service wasn't very good (our waitress was pretty abrasive), and the bathroom was terrible (when you have to give instructions to the girl next in line on how to use the stall, you know it's bad), but the yummy pizza was worthy of all its internet praise.

You'll notice that there aren't any pictures to document our rendezvous with Melanie and Chris, because we didn't take any at lunch.  (We also didn't take any with Huey and Gabe.  I'm so bad at proving I have friends.) Melanie did have the presence of mind to take a picture of the four of us at the metro station, so at least we got that one...and all the bad, self-timed attempts before the kindly Boston gentleman offered to take one for us.  Thanks, Boston man.

After we said our goodbyes, Mel and Chris were off to the science museum, and Ricky and I hopped on the T out to Fenway to tour Fenway Park.  We didn't exactly know how to get there past the metro stop, so we crashed the Boston University Barnes and Noble to get directions and walked a few blocks down to the stadium. 

We made a loop around the entire stadium looking for where to buy tickets for the tour, and finally figured out where we were supposed to go.  Our tour guide was so fun!  He had the best Boston accent and knew some great stories about the stadium.

When I took this picture, we were sitting in the 1934 wooden grandstand seats that they've restored and kept in the stadium (the seats in the picture are the newer plastic kind).  Fenway's got this amazing historical charm that I've never felt in a baseball stadium before!  I love that we got to visit on its 100th anniversary year, and I love that it's still around to visit.  It's such a neat place.  I told Ricky--the life-long Yankees fan--that the Red Sox were growing on me.  He told me he wanted a divorce.

Too bad, Ricky--you're stuck with me.  

On top of the Green Monster (that huge green wall in the first picture).

Our guide took us into the press box and we each sat the in the seat of a press correspondent.  MLB.com is considered higher-ranking than other sports press, so I got a better seat!  Score!

My press box view.

Senior correspondent for MLB.com?  Don't mind if I do.

The red seat marks the farthest home run ever hit in Fenway Park.  

Yes, that is a Babe Ruth signature.  Ricky geeked out a little.

The tour was AWESOME.  (I only wish we could've gone onto the field!  They were getting it ready for a game.)  Ricky and I both enjoyed it a lot, and we definitely felt like we got our money's worth for the tour tickets ($12 each).  We ended our Fenway excursion with a trip to the choke-on-your-food-expensive stadium store, where Ricky added a "100th anniversary" baseball to his collection.  I definitely recommend visiting the stadium if you're ever in Boston, and I'm not even a big baseball fan.

99% of the trip up until this point had been smooth sailing--we got on the rescue bus, we hadn't gotten lost, we had made it to every place on the schedule, etc.--but our post-Fenway excursion wasn't such a fun experience.  The plan was to go to the Isabella Gardner Art Museum, which I LOVE (and which is super cheap for students!), and it should've just been a 20-minute walk from Fenway.  Well, my map app of Boston apparently needs some updating, because I couldn't find any nearby streets on the thing.  I figured we'd be ok if we followed the river walk...and we would've been, if we had been walking the right direction. Ricky was chatting with his dad while we were walking, leaving me to navigate, and anyone who has ever traveled with me knows this is the #1 Big Mistake of Traveling with Katie.  We wound up going west instead of east, which I realized much too late, and anyone who has ever traveled with me ALSO knows that I turn from mild-mannered Bruce Banner into the Hulk when I don't know where I'm going.  (Sorry, anyone who's ever traveled with me.)  Fortunately, Ricky and I don't get travel-crazy (that is totally a thing and you know it) about the same things, so he was able to take over and quickly reroute us to the nearest T station to head into Cambridge.

(And that is why I preach the gospel of "go on a big trip with someone before you marry him/her" to everyone, because you have to find someone who can diffuse your particular version of travel-crazy if they're going to be your travel partner for the rest of your life.)

We decided to skip the Gardner Museum (sigh) in order to make the next place on our schedule: the Harvard-Smithsonian Observatory.  Again, the directions were incredibly vague, and I was frustrated by walking miles from the T stop with no sign of the place, but Ricky stopped into the Harvard campus police station and asked for better directions, because he's a rational person.  And we found it!

The Observatory

I was ravenously hungry, which was contributing to my Hulking Out, so once we found the place, I went to find an eating establishment.  I awkwardly passed by a frat/sorority/something party on one of the dorm quads, and awkwardly walked through some residential streets with people on their lawns giving me odd looks, and finally stumbled across Wrapro Falafel and Grille on Mass. Ave.  I don't know if it was just because I was really hungry or what, but that food was dang good.  It was all I could do to walk the food back to Ricky at the observatory without scarfing it all down.

Once I was properly fed and back to normal, it was time for the lecture!  Every third Thursday of the month, Harvard hosts a free astronomy lecture for the public.  There were a ton of people there, which I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting the space to be so small.

In the lecture room.

The lecture was on the Venus transit, and it was fascinating.  The bad part was that it wasn't quite fascinating enough to combat the low lighting and the night spent sleeping on the bus, and Ricky had to elbow me in the ribs every minute to keep me awake.  How embarrassing is that?  Take it from someone who lived it: It's pretty embarrassing.  I felt like I still learned some things, but if I could do it over again, I would've skipped the lecture and continued the trek to the Gardner Museum instead.

After the lecture, they took us up to the roof for stargazing, which was the part I was really looking forward to.  Unfortunately, there was already a huge mass of people using the telescopes (apparently you can just come for the stargazing portion and skip the lecture) and we only got to see the ice caps of Mars before deciding it probably wasn't worth it to wait in line anymore.  (We were holding out for the rings of Saturn.  Oh well!)

A very poor view of the Boston from the roof of the observatory.

We took the T back to downtown Boston and made it back to South Station without a hitch.  Our bus was leaving around 1:30 a.m., so we had a lot of time to kill, and Ricky chose to kill his with sleeping.  I chose to kill it with making sure our stuff didn't get stolen.  But first, we got french fries from the McDonald's near the bus terminal, and they were delicious.

After hours of sitting in the cold, cold terminal hallway, we made it on the bus to find ourselves sitting in front of two ridiculously ignorant college boys.  I pitied and loathed them simultaneously, because they would not shut up, and they just sounded so stupid.  F-bombs and lurid accounts of sexual conquests (UGH) at normal volume on a bus full of sleeping people?  I mean, honestly.  At one point I turned around and asked them to keep it down, and that worked for about 30 seconds.  Highlights of their conversation included hot girls they should've slept with in 8th grade (true story), one congratulating the other on maintaining a 2.0 GPA, and discussions about basically every part of the female anatomy except the brain.  Real winners, those two.  Eventually I just put in earbuds, cranked up the Titanic soundtrack, and fell asleep.  (Poor Ricky wasn't so lucky--he slept terribly.  I'm surprised those boys were still alive when I woke up, to be honest.)

Friday turned out to be the best day of the entire trip!  Stay tuned for that post.

A NOTE: If you're ever in Boston, you have to go to Mike's Pastry.  We ran out of time before lunch to go, and then I forgot about it, and I'm still kicking myself.  This place is a must-go.

ANOTHER NOTE: Sara George-Kreider, I missed you so much on this trip!!  I was so sad I was there on a Thursday and not a Saturday and that you're a grown up with a job.  Next time I promise to hitchhike to Vermont if necessary.