US / Canada / French Canada Tour 09


We had a fairly restful sleep at the Doubletree - we couldn't complain about the big room and comfy bed. However we were yet to find the prostitutes as alluded to by the tripadvisor review.

Thankfully - the Doubletree had a fitness centre (well - it had a YMCA next door that you could use). Due to the horrible amount of weight we had been stacking on in NY - we decided to hit the gym first. YMCA downtown boston - where you can hang out with all the elderly chinese women...

Don't say that Ant doesn't take me to classy places - but we went to some bakery across the street from the hotel in the Hospital lobby for some stale-ish muffins (just to undo the work from the gyme) and some weird asian-bakery-esque random bread rolls...

After that - we headed down to Boston Common - where we stumbled upon some weird Halloween Dog Fancy Dress parade thing... where there was one dog dressed up as a "BUSY BEE...!" (Where's the busy bee?! Find the busy bee! Agggh!) High-five. There was also some other Glee-like band playing some unfortunate songs (Bust a Move).

From here we made tracks to the "Freedom Trail" - a touristy trail that leads you through a lot of historic sights associated with the revolution in the States. However in true american style - a lot of people weren't walking it - rather they were getting driven around in Ducks (half bus/ half boat) and mock-federation trams. I must admit - I'm not a big American history fan - so a lot of this stuff on the trail sort of went over my head. We were also sin guidebook for Boston - so we had to resort to some free tourist map from the hotel for information on things - which wasn't very informative.

We wandered around an old grave site which had Benjamin Franklin there (another dead president or something). We did our best to avoid the screamy tourguide - dressed in ye olde hat and pantaloons (you can't buy dignity) and went to a museum where something to do with the independence of America was declared or something - someone help me out with this American history please...! I made use of the ye olde toilets (where an american was bitching about the state of the ye olde basins) and we headed out to the Market area (something else I vaguely remember from my last visit to Boston). T'was full of ye old fast food shoppes and stuff.

We continued down the Freedom Trail (wouldn't it be funny if the States became a communist country and the "Freedom Trail" would be renamed to the "Revolutionary Trail" or something?) and headed through Little Italy (which looked rather cute with cobblestone roads and touty Italian waitstaff) and headed over some bridge - when we went to the U.S.S Constitution - a still "commissioned" navy ship from the ye olde times. Getting into the ship involved almost doing a strip search by navy staff (sounds hot) and going through an ye olde giftshop (complete with such patriotic items such as Rosie the Riveter action figures (which was made by the people who make "Jesus Action Figures" and "Librarian Action Figures" - not sure if the gift shop knows about the camp kitsch appeal of Rosie the Riveter or the fact that you can find her in most gay pop shops everywhere).

Anyhow - we had to wait a little bit in a holding pen - until we were allowed to board the "commissioned" U.S.S Constitution (praise the lordah!). It sort of looked like the "Bounty's Revenge" ride from Sydney's Wonderland (you know - ye olde pirate ship) - and it had some sort of great cultural significance to the States because it had never lost a battle or something. The tour was taken by several actual US Navy people - including a woman from Mississippi who I'm sure could do a deadpan impression of Britney Spears' voice ("hey y'all - I had to poop for a week to look this hot y'all!"). God bless Britney.

We headed back to the direction of town where we stopped by the market for some ye olde fast food (pizza) and perused Borders for about an hour.

We chilled for a bit in the hotel room - catching up on some Home Land Network action and Fox News of course! We sort of left it a bit late to find some dinner because we sort of forgot we weren't in NY anymore where people eat at 11pm at night. We wandered around an alleged eat street (from Ant's recommendation) - but it was either too eccey or too crappe. We wandered around for a bit more - and found some gay clubs which looked rather ye olde tragical-ee. We wandered around a bit more thinking - shit are we going to have to have the Golden Arches - when we walked back to Chinatown and settled at a Malay/Chinese (con)fusion restaurant for some sort of mediocre Char Kway Teow which was a little suspect because it made Ant feel super queasy afterwards.

After dinner - we decided to hit the Under Club - a ritzy sort of nightclub that did a gay night once a week (Sunday night of course). It was at the basement of the Sheraton (of course!) and was quite swick but the DJ's were a little random in their choice of music. One minute - they would be playing a Beyonce crowd favourite - the next - they would be playing some gangster rap (and everyone would clear the floor) - or playing some third rate mashups with Britney Spears background music with the Killers signing "Somebody Told Me"... que? The crowd was a bit odd - very preppy but that probably has something to do with Boston being a big uni town (hello Harvard). There were also a few randoms in costume - perhaps they got the date for Halloween wrong (it is next Saturday duh!). I was a bit bored - so I headed back. Ant stayed (for a little bit) before his Char Kway Teow wanted to come back up through his mouth - and he headed back to the hotel.