Boston 26 May - Scattered Thunderstorms KungPao Chicken Meal Deal For Lunch

Boston is a strange town. Very beautiful, very historic, very boring if you only have a morning to kill. That's the problem with one night lay-overs. All you do is spend the half-day off thinking about sleep.

So what did I do? After my usual 9am GMT wakeup call by my bladder (5am local) I decided to explore the local area - never having stayed in this hotel before. So a walk round the Back Bay area led to a few very nice boutiques, a few student bars and amazingly few coffee shops. On a early summer's morning it was very pleasant and worth the wander off the beaten track. Actually, considering the number of hotels in the area, I guess it is on the beaten track.

Otherwise, joining the junkies on The Common for an early morning stretch and retch is always pleasant.

So what to do on a half-day in Boston? Go to Cambridge. Much nicer, more coffee shops and nicer atmosphere. Take a historic Duck tour of Boston if you must but quite frankly you'll just be shown a bunch of buildings. (On the flip side, I used to live in Edinburgh and thought I knew the city until I took a touristy open-topped bus ride.)

If you do have the time I can heartily recommend going whale watching. There are several companies in Boston offering it. You leave 9ish and are back for 2ish. The best time to go is from April to October when the whales are common round the Stellwagen bank. Even if you don't see any it's still a nice cruise.

That'll do for a first post.

Travel Tip Of The Trip: If chatting to a colleague from work on an aeroplane - keep your voice to a low shout. The rest of us don't give a flying fuck about how long you can keep going just on caffeine to get the project finished. Yes this mean you, the fat bearded 22-year-old on the BD84 yesterday.