How Do You Like Them Apples?

Back from the whirlwind road trip to Baaaston and vacationing from the vacation.  It was a great trip, but in my attempt to keep it a fairly compact weekend, we tried to squeeze too much sightseeing into too little time, and had to trim out some of the stuff we'd wanted to do.  Amongst the cull list were a side stop at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, walking tours of Harvard and MIT campuses, and, though never formally planned, but a 'time filler' if we had some down time, a tour of the Sam Adams Brewery.  I've learned my lesson.

We did get to see and tour Fenway which, for anyone that knows me, was the biggest check-box on the list.  We opted to just do the short, 15 minute tour of the park, as stage crew were in the midst of converting the field for the weekend Foo Fighters concerts.

This was likely the closest I'll ever get to 'backstage at a rock show'.  We lucked out in that it was the mini-tour guide's last shift of the day, and our group got an extra 10-15 minutes to explore, which you'd think would be a lot of time, but didn't feel like it, which was a common theme for the weekend.

Apparently the tarps laid on the outfield were breathable so as not to kill the grass, and the stage set-up was fully expected to ruin the turf in centre field, but there was no sacrificing the infield turf. There were no fewer than 6 people tasked with guarding the barriers around the infield during the show.

There was still plenty of baseball history on display.  It would seem old teams with winning histories get a bit of a track record of having had some good players, managers, and staff around them.

...and this was just one of the walls of Hall of Fame plaques.


After the Fenway tour Friday, we grabbed some pints in South End, where our friends have a place, and waited to meet up with them for dinner, drinks, and to crash for the night.  It was a great area, and the pub-bistro we ended up at had a fantastic selection of craft beers, albeit at some inflated prices.  The inflated craft beer prices actually were another theme of the trip.  Americans apparently just call any old glass full of beer 'a pint'.  So, whereas if I go out at home to a place with craft taps I can expect to spend $5.50 to $7.50 CAD for a roughly 500 mL draught pint, whereas prices in Boston started at roughly $8.75 CAD and escalated quickly, and were for 330 mL 'pints'.  I mean seriously, USA, you're the ones that insist on using the damned imperial system, at least know its defined volumes.

Beer prices aside, tapas dinner at Toro was fantastic.

The next morning, our hosts took us on a walking tour that covered almost the entirety of Boston proper, including a trip up to the upper floors of the John Hancock tower.  Glass reflections didn't play nicely with the camera, but the view would have been tough to capture well anyway.

Boston was surprisingly walkable, granted, we did spend 5 blister inducing hours walking at a quick pace to try to see everything.

Apparently John Hancock liked to leave his mark everywhere, what a dick.

After the walking tour, we parted way with our friends, and checked in to our hotel on the Cambridge side of the Charles for a power nap before walking back over to Fenway for the Saturday Foo show.  The show was totally worth the blister tearing walk, with locals The Mighty Mighty Bosstones opening in a high energy set from the band excited to play 'the park they grew up in' for the first time.  The Foo Fighters were awesome, playing a full 2 hours and forty minutes straight, with some great on-stage banter, and crowd banter from Dave, with the sports-minded Bostonians frequently giving long loud 'Fooooooo' calls (think 'booo').  Highlights for me were an acoustic cover of 'My Hero', and a cover of 'Under Pressure' which they've been doing semi-regularly, from what I've seen, on this tour.  The extended riffing during the solo section of 'Outside' off of Sonic Highways was also great, with Dave never really achieving the all out guitar solo he seemed to be going for, and joking after the song, "Gimme a break, I'm a drummer".



On Sunday morning, being a bit exhausted from a few days of driving and hiking around, we decided to sleep in and get on the road for home a bit early, at the expense of some of the other things we'd wanted to squeeze in to the trip.  A decision that turned out for the best, hitting two different 2 hour traffic jams on the ideal 9 hour drive home.  Amazingly, the border crossing was one of the faster ones I've ever experienced.

And so, after getting in late, both of us today are taking vacation from vacation, before getting back to the grind.