Bus to Boston

26 December 2017

Today we said a sad goodbye to New York and Hotel Giraffe. It would take a little over an hour to fly from New York to Boston but I hate airports. For ⅔ the price of flying we took the LimoLiner bus instead. It was a 5 hour journey but it was relaxing, with leg room, wifi and landscape instead of sky for a view. Moving north through New York, it felt like we were on another tourist bus as we drove through Harlem and The Bronx but without the commentary over the top. Once we left New York suburbia, the country started having little patches of snow. And then bigger patches of snow. And then the land was carpeted by snow. Lakes were frozen in parts, then in total and finally frozen over with layers of snow on top.   

We should have been in Boston instead of New York for a White Christmas. They expected some snow but not the massive dump they received. It’s so cold Griffin wore a beanie for the first time this trip. They are saying Boston may have their coldest day EVER while we a here. I love New England housing, so combined with the snow the outskirts of Boston were so pretty I was bouncing in my seat. Meanwhile Emma was zoned out listening to her music and Griffin was laughing at Home Alone and The Big Bang Theory with his hand over his mouth.

Our host on the bus (yes, we had a host, as well as a driver), was a woman with a heavily lined face, indicating she was possibly 80 years old or more. This is not the first time we have had a much older woman waiting on us and doing a great job too. At first I was full of admiration for these women appearing to enjoy their work in these late years of life but then I wondered how much it was out of necessary. I also wondered why we don’t see many older women in the service industry in Australia.

As soon as we checked into our hotel we visited the shopping centre next door (no need to even go outside) and I bought a pair of gloves to replace the ones I lost in New York. I also bought a magazine called Southern New England HOME - it’s cheaper than buying an actual house by a long shot. We ate at another Eataly where we were supplied with two free salads because something went wrong with our order and the wait for our mains was too long in their view. Eataly is a shopping centre within a shopping centre featuring Italian food and restaurants. In this one there was a restaurant that specialised in fish (Il Pesce) and another in pizza and pasta (La Pizza and La Pasta). It was going to be an hour wait for the pizza and pasta restaurant so we went upstairs to the more upmarket restaurant (Terra). In the shopping area were 100s of cheeses and an amazing array of meats, including a fresh meat butcher. We think we should open one in Chatswood or somewhere else on the North Shore in Sydney.