Boston Massachusetts

April 12, 2017 | tralev | boston |

Aosheng and I packed our bags and left the warm comforts of California to explore Boston at the tail end of their winter. We spent a few days playing tourist and then were joined by my best friends Mike and Bell that weekend where we spent the next two days being geeks at the LibrePlanet conference.

Trip Dates

March 21 - 26 2017

How We Got There

We flew direct on Jet Blue from SFO to BOS. The flight east is always significantly shorter than the flight west. On the returning flight we sat right in front of a gaggle of high school girls and directly next to a baby. It turned out to be two babies half way through the flight.

How We Got Around

Boston has a world class public transportation system with Trains, Subways, Trolleys, and Buses that can take you anywhere you need to go. We mostly rode the T everywhere except for a handful of Lyfts.

Where We Stayed

We spent the first three nights at the lovely Envoy Hotel in downtown Boston which is a part of the Autograph Collection by Marriott. We transferred to the Marriott in Kendall Square for the remainder of our trip on Friday so that we could be closer to the conference.

What We Did

We arrived in the evening. I immediately went to Dunkin Donuts at the airport to get some of their consistently mediocre coffee. I miss it a lot. We made our way to the hotel and grabbed a late dinner at the South Street Diner.

The next day, we had breakfast at the Envoy hotel and went exploring. First we went to the State Capitol, it was absolutely marvelous. Next we went to the Tea Party museum which was a bit cheesy but surprisingly entertaining. We ended the evening at a theatre and watched a production of Finish Line which is a very moving documentary play about the Boston Marathon bombing.

The following day we went to the JFK Presidential Library, the small neighboring Commonwealth museum, and ended the day spending 5 hours at the Museum of Fine Art. On Friday morning we had crab cakes, lobster rolls, and clam chowder for lunch before visiting the Institute of Contemporary Art, which we got into for free since we recently became members of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

On Friday evening Mike and Bell arrived. We met them at South Street Station and after switching hotels to Cambridge we had an amazing Italian dinner at the North End of Boston.

We spent the rest of the weekend at the LibrePlanet conference in Cambridge. We had the pleasure of meeting up with Mahmood, one of our co workers at CircleCI, for a lovely vegetarian dinner with his family. Before leaving Boston we stopped at Mike’s Pastry and had some delicious and fattening desserts.

What Was The Fuss?

America was born in Boston. Learning about the history of our nation is inspiring. There is history, culture, museums, great food, and nice people at every turn. In addition, some of the best Universities in the world are located right in Boston and the surrounding areas. It is truly a marvelous city.

The winters in Boston are brutal. Especially for us spoiled Californians. Many of the activities, including the historic walking tours are nearly impossible to do during the winter so I feel like we missed out a bit. It is most certainly a place that I would love to visit again during a warmer season.

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