Boston is an oasis in the desert, a place where the larger proportion of people are loving, rational and happy. – Julia Ward Howe
After quitting my job and dropping out of Grad School in September (sorry Mom) for the first time in probably my entire life I seemed to have an abundance of free time on my hands. Fortunately the music festival Riot Fest was the weekend after I had decided to make a huge life altering change to keep me distracted/busy. However, I quickly realized that after the weekend all of my friends would go back to being fully functioning “adults” and working forty business hours a week while I slept until one P.M. and decided whether or not I was going to shower today or binge watch Netflix. It was during the weekend that one of my closest friends mentioned that he and two other friends were going to Boston, Massachusetts for the following weekend. I expressed much interest in joining them and just like every other trip I impulsively decided to fly to Boston. (no job, no school, no responsibilities – what the fuck else is there to do but travel?)
The week dragged on (time goes very, very slow when one is unemployed) and when Friday approached I was ecstatic, ready to visit a city I had never been and to engage in some tasteless fun with three friends. After a few drinks at the airport we boarded our flight around 9 o’clock at night. We arrived in Boston around midnight, picked up the rent a car and drove to Peabody, Massachusetts where our hotel was. We stayed at the Marriott. I am pretty sure there is only one Marriott in Peabody because there is seriously nothing around this city.. so that is the one we stayed at. We arrived right during “last call” for the hotel bar. I remember reading something about Massachusetts having very odd liquor laws. Well we didn’t really think we would get fucked the way we did. Not only were all of the bars closed but no where near us was selling liquor past 12:30. If we wanted to drink we would have to drive 30 minutes to Boston, and 30 minutes back after.. and one of us would have to be the designated driver so that would not really work out. Being from Chicago this was all new to us, we have bars that are open until five AM and I am pretty sure I have never had a problem getting ahold of liquor when I wanted it. We were all distraught. The hotel staff thought it was hilarious.. we could’t even buy hotel wine. Fuck it we thought – let’s just go somewhere to eat. WELL the nearest “restaurants”that were still open consisted of a Taco Bell, an IHOP or Dennys. Personally, I would have been happy to grab a cheesy gordita crunch, and we all had our sights set on IHOP but SOMEHOW we ended up at the last fucking place on earth I will ever eat again. Denny’s. As expected the food was less than enjoyable and we were all awaiting the food poisoning that we had just objectified ourselves to. We headed back to the hotel and decided to call it a night and just wake up early.
The following day we woke up around eight and headed into Salem. We walked around Salem, checked out a record store and an old cemetery. If you do not know much about Salem MA I hope you at least know that it was where the Salem Witch Trials took place – and if you do not know what those were then you’re probably too fucking young to be reading this blog, go watch some channel eleven pbs shit. ANYWHO. We walked around the little town of Salem for a bit and checked out a few souvenir shops then hopped back in the car so we could return it to the rental place and spend the next night in Boston. After we returned the car we took a boat-taxi from where the airport was into the city of Boston. It was very pretty and although it was a bit pricey it was worth it because we had the chance to get a different look at the city. Once we arrived we grabbed some booze from a nearby 7/11 and poured it into Big Gulp cups (classy) and began to explore the city. Mind you it was maybe two in the afternoon. We checked into another Marriott hotel and grabbed lunch/dinner at the Corner Tavern on Marlborough Street. I had a beer with the pulled pork sliders, which were delicious but I could not eat all of them. Once we had finished eating we visited Fenway Park and popped into a few bars in the area. This area reminded me a lot of Wrigleyville in Chicago – so if you are familiar with one then you are (now) familiar with the other in my opinion. A few drinks and a lot of wandering around later we found ourselves visiting the Harvard campus. My uncle is a Harvard alumni and it was interesting to see such a noteworthy school in person. It was a beautiful campus and all but not nearly as memorable as where we ended up next. At this point it was probably nine or ten at night and we had been solidly drinking for a few hours. One of my friends mentioned a bar he had heard of before, Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a restaurant and bar located in Harvard Square. It is like three floors and they give you legit BOWLS of alcohol. There was loud music and dancing and it was just a really cool place with a fun, carefree atmosphere. A few hours later we returned to our hotel where we hung out for a few hours and eventually went to sleep around three AM. Which would not have been too bad had our flight out the next morning been later than seven AM.
I’ll tell you one thing if anything I learned from this trip, being hungover for a flight is bad enough but having a hangover on a flight where it seems the captain is AIMING to hit turbulence just fucking sucks.
The people of Boston are friendly and the scenery and city itself is beautiful. We had a fun time but I definitely would love to visit Boston again because I feel like the city has so much to offer and although we had seen and done a lot in our short visit, I may need to see it again – perhaps a bit more sober 😉
Runaway Blond 