Beer tasting, baseball, and Dinosaur BBQ

Day 5 / 9/07/2012 / Boston and Cambridge, MA

The day in Boston had a nice start, we went to the Samuel Adams brewery and took a tour there. Yes, the first day I wasn't driving and I'm drinking first thing in the morning. But hey, I'm on holiday. The tour was really interesting and we learned why all of the bigger beer brands in the States, like Budweiser, taste like they've been watered down, and what ingredients do what to the beer.




After the tour, or as a part of the tour, we got to taste three Samuel Adams beers. First was Boston Lager which is a good, quality lager. The second one was Octoberfest which seems like an upgrade to Boston Lager and it is sold more than any other Sam Adams beer if you consider only the days that the beer is on sale, Octoberfest being sold only around this time of the year. The last beer was also the best one, Red Brick. The beer got it's name from the red brick buildings that are everywhere in Boston and of course from the color of the beer. The most interesting thing about this beer is that you can only get it from tab and only in Boston. It seems that people take pride from being from Boston and Samuel Adams is using that pretty well in its marketing and brand building.







After the tour we decided to balance our day and went from a Boston alcohol sanctuary to a sanctuary of knowledge, Harvard. The whole campus area is huge and we only visited a small portion of it but still I think we got a good climpse of the atmosphere there.







We also visited a Harvard bookstore which was hard to forget as it had Harvard flags and banners everywhere in the store, I guess the students need to be reminded of where they study or maybe it's just for the tourists.




The final stop of the day was the most important place in Boston, Fenway Park. Even early on when we were planning the trip we decided that we would go see a baseball game since neither of us had ever seen one.







Since baseball is such a huge thing in Boston, I think we made a good choice with the Red Sox, just too bad that they lost but from what I've heard, it's pretty common. The Red Sox had just returned from a long road trip so the stadium was full and the atmosphere was great.




Everybody seemed to be wearing something from the Red Sox store so we decided to try and blend in with the locals. Don't know if it worked but at least we tried.




Day 6 / 9/08/2012 / Boston, MA - Salem, MA - [Mohawk Trail] - Deerfield, MA - Greenfield, MA - Bennington, VT - Middleville, NY

On Saturday it was time to get back on the road.




We first headed just north of Boston to hunt some witches in Salem. We didn't see anyone flying with a broom but then again we didn't wait for the sunset so maybe after it there would have been more supernatural things to spot. We did visit the Salem Witch Museum which had interesting information about the famous witch hunts of 1692.



After Salem we set out to route 2 and the Mohawk Trail which was, for me, the best part of the road trip so far, at least when it comes to the sceneries. Almost the whole trail is surrounded by big forrests and huge hills and rivers, or a river. It's just a beautiful place that would be great for hiking and canooing and just outdoors activities and we can recommend this trail to everybody who is interested in the above mentioned things or to anyone who likes driving in smaller, devious roads in hills and forests. Unfortunately the weather was rainy almost the whole time so we couldn't enjoy the sceneries as much as we would have liked.

On the trail we stopped to a souvenir shop just to buy something to drink but we ended up spending over an hour there talking to the very nice shopkeeper.







After spending longer on the Mohawk trail and because we had to readjust the pressure of our tires, problems using psi and a lousy air compressor, we didn't arrive to our campground until 1am. Still we put up our tent for the first time and slept pretty well on our new air mats and in sleeping bags.




Day 7 / 9/09/2012 / Middleville, NY - Herkimer, NY - Syracuse, NY - Farmington, NY

The KOA Herkimer Diamond campground was at an awesome location, right next to a river. The campground seemed like the kind of place you could easily spend more time in with lots of activites possible.




After doing some shopping in the local Walmart we headed out for today's main attraction, Dinosaur BBQ, in Syracuse. Those of you who have watched Man vs. Food might recognize the place. And it was at least as good as it seemed on tv.
The ribs were amazing, the meat almost fell of the bones, by far the best ribs I've ever had and maybe ever will.



-Riku

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Soccer and shopping - days 3 & 4

Day 3 / 9/05/2012 / Hyannis, MA - Foxborough, MA [Gillette Stadium] - Middleboro, MA

The third day started with some camera problems. We were trying to copy the pictures from the camera to Liisa's iPad without copying the pictures that were already on the iPad and Liisa accidently removed all of the pictures from the camera. We lost every picture from our second day. We used the whole morning to research how we could save the pictures. The innkeepers were extremely helpful, they let us check-out at 2 pm when the actual check-out would have been 11 am. They also knew there would a program available online we could use to restore the pictures. The program, Stellar, seemed to work as it found all of the pictures but we couldn't save the pictures anywhere before buying the program and when we bought it, there was a 4 to 24 hours handling period for the order. So we have to wait to get our hands on a computer before we can try again.

After the camera problems we set out to Cape Cod Chips Factory. There we took a tour of the factory which was a little disappointing. All we saw were factory workers clearly tired of their work. At least we got some chips without preservatives for our trip.




The drive to the factory and from the factory to our next destination, our first campground, was an interesting one as it was pooring. It was raining so hard that it was difficult to see anything and driving on a highway made sure I had no problems staying focused.




We arrived to our KOA campground after the office had closed but they have a very convenient system. If you check-in after business hours, there is a mailbox with all of the free camping spots and you just have to sign a sheet with your information and enclose the money or your credit card information in an envelope and they handle your check-in in the morning and you get your receipt when the office opens.




After checking our tent site we headed to Gillette Stadium to see a Major League Soccer game. My goal is to see a game in every continent, just have figure out how I can see one in Antarctica, maybe the scientists have teams there... When I was about to buy tickets to the game, a guy wearing an employee badge came and gave us tickets to the game for free.











The game wasn't too good but wasn't too bad either. The home team, New England Revolutions won the game pretty easily. After the game we went back to the campground and as it was already well past midnight we decided to just sleep in the car.

Day 4 / 9/06/2012 / Middleboro, MA - Wrentham, MA - Boston, MA

Thursday day was shopping day. We found an outlet mall, or an outlet village, pretty close to the campground and we managed to spend a few hours there quite easily. Even I managed to find something to buy though not as much as Liisa.




Next stop was Boston where we would have our first day without driving. The drive from the mall to Boston was uneventful and we got there before sunset and drove around the city before parking the car. We decided to leave the car to an indoor parking lot. When planning the trip we realized that if we were going to spend time in the bigger cities, we would have to spend money on parking as well as accommodation. For example the car park in Boston cost us $60 and we were in Boston for about 40 hours.

After parking our car we went to the hostel we had booked, Hostelling International Boston. We found out however that the hostel was overbooked. After arguing with the evening manager for about half an hour we managed to get a room in another hostel just ten minutes away. We were really disappointed with the service at HI because they had made a mistake and seemed really unwilling to do anything about it. Luckily the room we got was at 40 Berkeley where the service was great and the whole place seemed like a nice place. Even the breakfast was good, the best so far and the first place that offered bacon and eggs instead of just some sweet things like every other place so far.

After settling in the hostel we decided to go for a beer. The receptionist recommended an Irish pub nearby and since we were in Boston that seemed appropriate. The place was some kind of mixture of a pub, nightclub, and sports bar. Since Boston is the home of Samuel Adams it seems that in every bar you can get at least Samuel Adams' Boston Lager and probably some other Sam Adams beers. This is a good thing because unlike the major US beer brands, like Budweiser and Coors, Sam Adams has really good craft beers and they taste like a beer should taste like. Because I had already had a Sam Adams the previous night at the campground, I decided to have a Blue Moon instead. I also tried something new, Harpoon IPA. If you like IPAs, it's worth a try.




More tales from Boston coming soon...
-Riku

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad