US / Canada / French Canada is the only Canada Tour 09

Another day in Boston - another somewhat lazy start to the day. In lazy start - I mean I hit the gyme for an hour (the Y was full of random school kids running amuck on... funnily enough.. the treadmills). We headed over la hosptiale for breakfast (again some sugary muffins and mediocre coffee).

Today - we hopped on the Boston metro for a ride out to Harvard - probably the best uni in the states, if not the universe or something. Harvard is situated to the north of Boston in the district called Cambridge (not to be confused with the uni in England like I did). As soon as you step out of the metro stop into Harvard - everything feels really different. There weren't as many homeless guys/gals on the street, and it felt a lot more WASPy (a la New Canaan). Everything was fairly tweed-like, and I can't remember the ANU having "Body Shops" in their union.

We wandered into the actual university - which feels very swish, prim and preppy (students look like they have stepped right out of a Abrecombie and Fitch catalogue or store). It was very green (huge big trees and stuff) and the buildings all looked rather ye olde. There were masses of tour groups roaming around the grounds - they put on free tour groups but you have to tip the guide at the end. We weren't being cheap skates - but Ant and I decided to skip the tour because it didn't appear as if they walked around any great distance.

Harvard seemed to make ANU look like some cheap and nasty ghetto. Apparently - tuition fees cost about USD 40K a year - so you had better have a rich mommy and/or daddy (or your own crystal meth lab) in order to pay. Harvard felt a little religous-y cause there were several ye olde churches around the place (can't remember any ye olde churches at the ANU) but they were prruwdy so I took some pics. We wandered past the ye olde Harvard Law School and the Coop bookshop (which was fairly impressive) before we both decied to head back to town via foot down the riverside.

The walk into town took a bit more than an hour and was quite enjoyable. We could see the Harvard Business School (which is on the other side of the river from the rest of Harvard), the Red Sox stadium (Boston's local famous baseball team) and Boston Uni (which is like UC compared to the ANU or something).

We had lunch at the Prudential Center - Boston's big tall building - which is ugly, world trade center ugly... According to a big billboard outside the mall underneath it - it was "New England's premier site for shopping and food" - however I think Belconnen Mall and the Tuggernong Hyperdome are probably better - which wasn't saying much for the Prudential Center. Everything felt a little quiet - like the area is suffering due to the recession in the States. None of the shops were busy and there were a few vacancies around the place. Speaking about the GFC - it sort of felt like most people in shops around NY were actually tourists not locals...

After lunch we headed down to the nearby Newbury Street - which is really Boston's premier shopping strip. It was quite picturesque, quaint and full of more upper-end concept stores. We walked past "Johnny Cupcakes" - and Ant couldn't resist himself. However upon entry - Johnny Cupcakes don't sell cupcakes rather tee-shirts and undies. It was a cute store (T-shirts displayed in fridges and cupboards) and the sign had "Zero Calories, Zero Fat" - but there were definitely a lot of confused people walking into the store.

It was quite enjoyable walking down Newbury Street - but I had to go and spoil it by buying a smoothie from Starbucks. Memo to Starbucks and Boost - you don't make a good smoothie by using a tonne of tasteless ice~! Grrrr...

Anyhows - we wandered back to the hotel and surfed the free internet where I wanted to go see "A Serious Man" - the latest by the Cohen Brothers - so we headed to the nearby AMC to the 5pm session. I really enjoyed the film (which was about a jewish guy whose wife was divorcing him) - it was very quirky but Ant thought it was a bit so-so...

After the cinema - we headed out to the Little Italy district for dinner. The restaurant we went to was fairly cute, the food was good but the service was a bit patchy (seems to be a theme of this holiday - I thought 15% tips were supposed to encourage good service?!).