Jeffrey Vanneste’s Personal Blog

So out of the blue we (Rachel, Michelle and I) decided we were going to head to Boston for the weekend. We booked some tickets for a Blue Man Group performance and found one of the cheaper hotels that was some what close to downtown Boston. We decided to leave on Saturday early morning so that we wouldn’t have to pay for an extra day in the hotel for Friday. This was great news since I wanted to buy a GPS before driving anywhere. Our GPS purchase trip ended up costing me a bit more than I was expecting. I bought a Garmin c330 (the cheapest GPS I could find), Guitar Hero 2 for 360 (because everyone else is playing it), and a new pair of shoes (I’ve been wearing steel toed boots for the last 3.5 months). I was ready to go to Boston.

We left at 7am on Saturday and arrived at our hotel with not too many problems. We put complete trust in the GPS (we have no name for it yet) and it got us to our destination, eventually. Our hotel wasn’t exactly classy but for the price we couldn’t go wrong. As soon as we dropped our stuff off we headed to the metro which was a 10 minute walk away. I have to say that the Montreal metro blows this one away. We were a little confused on how to buy tickets but there was a helpful clerk that was walking around that pretty much did everything for us. She had a strong Boston accent which I laughed at in my head.

Our first stop was the Museum of Science. We walked around the exhibits for about an hour. The girls got pretty excited when there was an exhibit to check for lumps in breasts.

I also saw a Naboo N1 Starfight model hanging from the ceiling that looked pretty slick.

After we finished all the exhibits we went to the planetarium to watch “Far, Far Away” which was *suppose* to be about Star Wars. I some how managed to convince the girls we needed to goto this show. I was under the impression that it was going to show all the Star Wars planets in the Star Wars universe. I was wrong. Very wrong. They mainly talked about Earth’s evolution and how some planets in Star Wars relate to Earth in different stages. It took a couple minutes before I became very disappointed with the show and spent the next 30-45 minutes just trying to stay awake (I believe Michelle passed out).

Once we left the planetarium (I was very relieved) we went and signed up to get on a Boston Duck Tour. Our guide claimed he was from Canada and kept saying “aboot” instead of “about”. I think he was doing it all as a scam to get more tips. The girls bought into his ploys. The tour was alright and we got to see most of downtown Boston and out on the water (since the vehicle could go on land and water). When the tour was over Rach tipped the guy $5 CAD since that’s all we had.

For supper we went to a place called “Rock Bottom” for supper (they call it dinner here… wtf). I had a burger which was pretty awesome. Apparently in the states they give you the option on how you want your burger cooked. Michelle/Rachel informed me and the waitress that it was to be cooked well done. For dessert we had the most amazing carrot cake ever. This thing was huge. Lots of cream cheese and lots of caramel.

After supper we finally went over to the Blue Man Group show. This thing was amazing! If you ever have a chance to goto a show do not pass it up. The venue was really small (sat about 500 people) which I think helped it out a lot. They had about 7-10 different acts that they performed. From playing on big tubes, to playing music on big drums with paint all over the place, throwing an insane amount of toilet paper over the entire crowd, pulling people from the crowd to participate in “sketches”, and so much more. I guess it’s hard to explain all the things they did but the main point, amazing. I look forward to going to more Blue Man Group shows in the future.

The next day we got up early to walk the Freedom Trail. It was 0′C out and a lot of wind so it was pretty cold dressed in spring gear. It was nice that we went on the duck tour so we knew most of the things we were seeing while walking around.

We had a few hour window with nothing to do so we walked around the theater district until we found a show to goto. We ended up going to Shear Madness which is apparently the longest running non-musical play in the world. It was OK but nothing special. After the play we went to Cheers (where they didn’t know our names) for supper and drinks. We watched a baseball game there to kill some time as well (Boston won). The Cheers we were at looked nothing like on the TV show. They made a replica in another part of the city that we didn’t goto.

After Cheers we went to the airport to pick up Michelle’s friend from Japan Erica. Her flight was delayed and they lost her luggage so it was a good time for everyone. By the time we got to Erica’s place it was close to 2am and we passed out pretty quick. Our last day consisted of getting up at 11am, eating lunch with Erica at some small diner (I had a pretty decent buffalo chicken sandwich) and then started to drive home.

Boston was OK to visit. I have no desire to go back there again. I wouldn’t ever want to live there. They had way too many toll bridges which pissed me off. We didn’t have any american money when we first got into the city so they gave us tickets when we went through the toll bridges. Good luck on getting money from us in SK.

Michelle arrived yesterday.  A couple hours after her arrival we were talking about going to Boston for the weekend.  So today we bought tickets for the Blue Man Group and plan on leaving early tomorrow morning.  It takes about 5 hours to get to Boston so it will be a quick trip in and out.  This just gives me another reason to buy a GPS.

I have now experienced “Cabane à Sucre”. This has to rank as one of my least favorite weekends in Montreal. We drove 30 minutes to get to this place that was going to serve us brunch and have all the syrup we can eat.

I’m not a big brunch fan. I like breakfast and lunch. You can’t combine them. Rachel told me to not eat breakfast before going but I did anyways. I live on the edge like that. It turned out I made the right choice. Check this out:

Does that look good to you? They also had pee (no spelling error here) soup. I’m not going to eat pea soup. Gross. I ended up eating carrots, a bun, some fries, and a piece of pie.

After brunch we checked out the other activities. A horse ride around where they collect the maple syrup. It wasn’t exactly a beautiful site. It all looked just like this…

They also had a mini petting zoo. Nothing special in there. Some rabbits, goats, etc. The most exciting thing here was an emu that I think someone slipped some LSD cause it was flaying all over the place. The emu was about the same height as me. For the record, I could totally take it in a fight. You know, if it came down to me versus the emu in a life or death situation. I can think of numerous cases where that might happen.

Our final stop was having syrup on a stick. I don’t know what they actually call it. Pretty much they pour some syrup on some snow and then you take a popsicle stick and roll up the syrup and eat it. Most people used a single stick either because they were wusses or because they had better skills than me. I used 4 sticks.

I think I managed to get syrup everywhere. Pretty much if spider-man was to fight someone with some syrup sticks it would be a stand still. Both could climb buildings and fling sticky stuff.