Boston and Buffalo

So we hopped a Chinese Fung Wah bus from New York and headed up to Boston, and the cold came with us. Boston seemed to be another one of those well laid out good public transport north east coast cities, sweet. Despite the ease of getting around and the obvious niceness of the place we were just a little bit underwhelmed, (the city is overshadowed a bit by big brother NYC to the south).

We did get out and about a bit by going on a ‘themed’ (guy wore pantaloons and spoke in ye olde english) walking tour of important American revolution spots in Boston. And after that we stopped at important sitcom spots eg the pub that cheers was based on.


No one knew my name




Attack of the giant squirrel, no real reason for this photo

So, Boston... didn’t do all that much besides lay about in our hotel room (upgrade form a hostel, private bathroom...oh what a treat) and recover from a manic time in New York. But all mediocre things must come to an end so we caught a train to Buffalo (yeah I didn’t know there were intercity trains in the states either).
This was the longest train we have ever been on ......literally. It was 12 hours and we didn’t even get a quarter of the way across the states (this place is huge). So while i bunkered down and darned socks, Rach had a series of naps and the speeding scenery faded into night while the temperature dropped. Some time after 8pm we noticed that as people went between carriages there was ice and snow building up in the walkways, and when we’d stop every other hour the conductor would shovel it off.

We had done the European when getting on the train and just put all our luggage above our heads instead of checking it onto the luggage carriage. Good thing too as at 1am when we got into buffalo and wandered past the luggage carriage there was about a meter of snow over everyone’s stuff, hahaha.
So New York was cold and Boston colder but nothing compared to this place, and I know that there are much more frigid place’s on earth but when you go outside and the wind instantly freezes the snot in your nose it’s time to fly south. In saying that, for a place I knew absolutely nothing about except for the close proximity to Niagara falls we had an alright time bunkering down for 4 days waiting for the smallest inkling of sunshine.

Having a nice hostel all to ourselves right in the middle of town helped, next to a cinema (please hold the butter) and by a tram stop so we could do the local stuff without having to freeze our knees solid when outside.

We did get that all elusive day of blue skies and sunshine so got a local bus up to the falls and walked over to Canada (tick another country off the list).

The closer you get to the falls themselves the more the mist freezes on the railings until it was just a big ice fence.


Watch out as I stab you with my ice dagger


Ahh pretty

So the north east is cool (figuratively and literally) much more European style cities than we thought it would be. But the permeating temperatures were taking their toll and it was time to fly south for the winter, onto the big Texas T.