Boston 2023 - Starting with an Overnight Flight

So funny story, Stace and I got into the habit of visiting each other and staying in each other's homes (she had 2 spare rooms so I'd usually bring up Cara and Gwen and have them in 1 room and I'd be in the other. I usually had a spare room and she'd stay in that when she came to visit, if she wasn't staying with her mom or a close, cheaper hotel). Well, after a while we both grew more into our homes and we lost room for visitors the same way we had. A couple years ago we decided to do a girl's trip to New York just for fun. Last year, we were talking about how to visit each other and determined "I guess another girl's trip is going to have to happen instead!" We talked about a few place we'd like to go and landed on Boston in the fall time (because that's just when you HAVE to go, right?). I've been so excited to go and see the trees, try new foods, and learn more about our country's history...2 out of 3 ain't bad haha (spoiler: we went too early and the trees weren't really changed yet).

Anyways, we booked our flights early and they ended up changing our flights quite a bit, so what was originally a Wednesday morning flight, because a Tuesday overnight flight so that we could sneak in some more time. While flying overnight was NOT ideal for me (I just couldn't sleep sitting up, guess I really am getting older), I was able to rest enough to get through our first day. I was happy to see the lady in the row next to us had a dog...I kept watching him to see how he handled the flight (she even gave him a little pillow to sleep on!) 

** Funny side story, when I was going through TSA in our airport I was wearing a funny saying shirt, they started to pass me through that body scan thing and the guy got distracted by my shirt they didn't scan me at first. They were about to send me away when he stopped and said "wait...did she pass?" and the lady replied "I don't know, I didn't hit the button" so they had to send me back. Good thing I'm a good sport, huh?**

Once we landed, got our bags, and got on the shuttle to our hotel (one BIG motivating factor for choosing our hotel was a shuttle from the airport to the hotel since we knew we weren't renting a car and we really didn't want to figure out transportation in a new city with our bags. The other one was we thought we were getting a breakfast, unfortunately that didn't happen) we checked in with the friendliest hotel employee on the planet! She was SO helpful in us figuring out how to get places and printed off nearby restaurants and directions to some of our destinations for our stay.

At this point we were STARVING so lunch was a must first stop. We decided to try a nearby grill place. It was pricey, but overall good. I decided right then that I was going to try new foods as much as possible while in the city. Here I tried a Cuban sandwich (pulled pork with some lunch meat and fried pickles), which was pretty good (again, I was SO hungry I might have eaten just about anything and called it good). We had decided figuring out where the subway station and getting our passes for our trip would be a good next stop. We met a very helpful transit employee who helped us get our passes and figure out where we needed to go to explore the city more (While eating, we had looked at Groupon for some cool things to do and found an Observation Deck nearby that was decently priced and looked like a good way to kick off our first day)

We got off at Boston Commons and walked that park. I was a little disappointed because I was looking forward to seeing the trees here (it's basically Central Park for Boston) and when we got to it...they were all very green still. I hoped we'd be able to stop by again on our last day and we'd actually see some color here. We headed over to the observation deck tower and found our way to the area we needed. It ended up having really cool views, a total 360 around the city. They even had little areas that had models of buildings you should be able to see out the window you were at (basically a "Where's Waldo" of the city on each side). We went through that quickly and then headed down to the gift shop (one of the best parts of being in a new city, right?)...turns out it was pretty boring and didn't have much that called to us so we passed on those.

After that, we decided renting bikes would be fun to ride around. We thought it would be fun to go through the park. So we got our bikes, rode down to Fenway Stadium (because you HAVE to see Fenway if you're in Boston, right?) and then explored more. We slowly made our way back to the park...and then found out bikes aren't allowed in the park (wah wah) so we turned those in and then walked through the park on our own. At this point we thought about heading over to Harvard since we had time to kill, but both of our phones were at 20% battery and I had forgotten to bring my extra charger and so we decided going to a new area and chancing our phones dying and not being able to figure out how to get back so easily was not worth it. So we headed back to the hotel.

I figured out quickly I needed to get an actual plug to charge my extra charger (I use the USB plug back home, but the hotel didn't have any USB outlets). Luckily, there was a shopping center, which included a Target, nearby so we headed over there. This Target must have a thief problem  because they had EVERYTHING locked up (I mean everything: electronics, medicines, shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste....it was insane!). I was able to find my plug I needed (and Stace found some insoles she felt she needed to help her achy feet from all the walking we've already done) and we checked out quickly. We headed over to Wahlburgers for dinner because I had heard so much about their restaurants. Service there was a tad slow, but the food was pretty decent, the portions seemed small (which wasn't horrible since we both weren't starving). I ordered the bacon mac n cheese, Stace got some tater tot item and halfway through we switched so we could both try each others. It was nothing I'd go out of my way to have again, but if it were one of the only options I'd probably eat there. We got back to our hotel by 7:30, took our daily needed showers (especially after traveling), read for a bit, and then passed out...a bed has never felt so good and this day was SO long!

The only "changing" leaf we saw today :/