Boston, Massachusetts 2

Main courtyard in Harvard (Harvard Yard).

What makes Boston fascinating to me is that it has this real blue-collar attitude, but also contains some of the most famous and well respected Universities in the world - namely Harvard and MIT. Well technically Harvard isn't really in Boston, but in a town just outside called Cambridge.

However my trip to Boston could not be complete without a tour of Harvard, so I caught the train down to Cambridge and joined a tour group headed by a very excitable freshman student.

She explained the history and background to a lot of the buildings and facilities of Harvard. The most surprising thing for me is that Harvard could be considered one of the cheaper universities to attend due to the scholarships they offer. I also imagined Harvard to be larger, but guess there wasn't much room for expansion being in the middle of Cambridge. She also showed us where the Final clubs existed made famous by the movie Social Network. I didn't think Harvard was as pretty as the Chicago University, just a lot of red-brick buildings.

Old man Harvard.

Inside one of Harvard's buildings.

Our very excitable tour guide is on the left.

Next I thought I should go see MIT, as this is probably the most prestigious university in the world for my particular field. It was much less pretty than Harvard. I guess this could be expected for a technical university? Mind you, I did catch it on a pretty miserable day.

I did get lunch at a really awesome food van though, it was a mass of curry and rice obviously made for poor University students. It was so good though, and something like $6!

Sculpture in MIT.

Such a pretty campus...

Kick-ass outdoor bench seat though.

Crazy looking buildings in MIT.

Close-up of one of the structures.

After buying the obligatory MIT and Harvard t-shirts, I caught the train into downtown Boston. I just wandered around downtown, it's such an interesting looking city. The streets feel very cavernous, and with the clouds very low, it looked pretty awesome.

I randomly came across a statue of Samuel Adams - who I only knew for being the name of a very popular beer in America. In fact, Sam Adams beer is the largest US-owed brewery currently operating in the US - Coors, Miller and Budweiser are all owned by corporations outside America. Turns out he was also founding father of America! Thanks Sambo!

Next I tried to get a beer at traditional "Irish" pub as that seemed like a very Bostonian thing to do. However much to my dismay they wouldn't take my Australian licence as ID and required my passport. Yeah I guess I should just carry that everywhere, not like it's a super important document or anything. I did get to finally hear some good stereotypical Boston accents though!

The girls and I all went out for dinner that night at a local bar. I remember the serving sizes being absolutely massive.

The next day I had to go drop off my bike for a service. I took it to a fantastic garage near Union Square. After catching the bus back to the house, I met up with Natalya, Blair and Christina for lunch at a Greek food truck in their University. Once they went back to class I walked back to the house and waited for my bike to be ready. I had to ride all the way to Jersey City that night and I was hoping I could get there before nightfall. However as the hours dragged on I realised that this would not be happening.

Natalya gave me a lift back to the Garage at around 4 PM. They did an excellent job, and found packing material inside my fairing. This meant that either in my last major service the mechanics didn't take off my fairing (thus not really doing a major service) or decided to leave it in (thus being idiots). This packing material would have probably been used when they shipped the bike from Japan. Nevermind, it was out now.

I rode back to the house and packed all my stuff up. I said my goodbyes to these fantastic hosts and set off for Jersey City.