Well, what have I been doing since Monday? On Monday evening, I got together with a bunch of hackers - Dan Sugalski, Shane Landrum, John Porter, (my host) and Peter Radcliffe - for a pint in the Burren pub, Cambridge. Jon Orwant dropped along, which confused the hell out of me, since I hadn't realised he was Boston based. Good fun was had by all.
On Tuesday morning, John took me on a "duck" tour of Boston. Ducks, in this context, are World War Two amphibious landing craft adapted as tourist vehicles. We went around the center of Boston (on pretty much the route I took on Monday, unfortunately) but then splashed down into the Charles river and drove around the bay.
Afterwards, I tried to get up to see Jon O again, but ended up horribly lost - I didn't realise that these bastards reuse street names, and that "Sherman St., near Cedar St." on one side of Massacheussets Avenue is very different from the "Sherman St., near Cedar St." on the other. Oops.
Then I headed down to South Station to catch my bus. A seven hour bus ride is not many people's idea of fun, and going through New Hampshire and Vermont didn't make it much nicer. These two states appear to be, well, slightly populated forests. What's worse, once you've seen one pretty New England village with church with steeple and white buildings, you've kinda seen them all. So it goes "forest, forest, forest, forest, ooh look, another village, forest, forest, forest". Great.
Eventually, though, we arrived at Canadia. The southern part of Quebec is considerably more French than I had expected - it's not merely Francophone America, it's got vineyards and everything.
Met up with Rich at Montreal station, and wandered around downtown Montreal. It's a very pretty place, in parts. It runs from tree-lined arcades filled with cafes and clubs, to concrete spaghetti junctions, within a few hundred meters. Sort of like Paris, I guess.
