Boston, USA
Marathon trip!
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Marathon trip! 〰️
Thursday 14th April 2022
We left home at 3.30pm to head all the way out to Heathrow. We had seen so much news about airport chaos with Covid and staff sickness that we were wanted to be there as early as we could drop our bag off! So with 3 hours before our flight we cruised through bag drop thanks to already completing all our covid checks through the VeriFLY app and also security was super easy to for once. Now we were seriously seriously early. What a nice issue hey? Better than arriving stressed!
We headed to our gate and hung out eating the sweet potato salad I made us for dinner before everyone else started arriving for the flight. Whenever I travel with Lew he always gets the aisle seat because his legs are so long which meant I was squashed in beside this large women speaking very loudly on her phone to 5 family members on FaceTime until we literally pushed back from the gate. Amazing how some people either don’t care or are oblivious to such things. The flight itself wasn’t so bad at 6.5 hours, that’s about the time when you begin to get restless. And if your flying to NZ your only half way on the first long haul flight so you have a loooong way to go. We decided not to sleep so we could get onto Boston time a lot better but it meant when we landed it was 4am London time and we were very much struggling to stay awake. Boston has a form of the underground which is far less reliable or easy to use than London. But London is something special so I’m not surprised it doesn’t live up to that standard. It took us an hour to get across to our accommodation in Longwood in this beautiful big old Inn. Our room was small but lovely and all we needed with a shared kitchen downstairs. Perfect to make our own breakfasts and dinners to save $$.
Friday 15th April
We ended up getting into bed at 1am so we woke up feeling pretty rested. After some Google searching we realised we had a Trader Joes just down the road from us which is very similar to Whole foods. A place which we LOVE to visit on every time to the States. But there’s a reason it’s nicknamed whole pay cheque…
We grabbed some coconut yoghurt, hemp milk, blueberries, peanut butter and everything else we like eating for breakfast and headed back to the house.
After fixing ourselves some breakfast we wandered out the door to see some of the town. We made our way to the famous Fenway park where the first baseball game of the season against the Minnesota Twins was happening in a couple of hours. We couldn’t get cheap tickets for todays game but decided to head there for the Saturday game at 4pm. It would be my first baseball game which is super exciting!
Newbury Street
We continued to the famous and beautiful Newbury Street located in Back Bay. This is close to the arena where the Marathon expo is happening but the line literally wound its way around the stadium so we decided to do some window shopping instead of waiting in that. Newbury is one of the most expensive streets with high end boutique shops in gorgeous 19th century brownstone buildings with large bay windows on the bottom story. At this time of year blossoms and daffodils were in full bloom and with the sun shining brightly it highlighted the beauty of the place. We popped into Lululemon and a couple of other favourite shops before grabbing some ramen at Red White - a plant based ramen place. Boston has a lot of Asian food we have noticed and we wouldn’t say this was at all a stand out but it certainly filled a gap. We also grabbed some vegan mint chocolate chip ice cream next door at Emack & Bolio’s ice cream and sat and watched the crowds of people wandering Newbury Street.
Boston Common
This is the oldest city park in the USA dating back to 1634. It is a gorgeous well manicured park in central Boston which is close to the Back Bay & Beacon Hill. This is where the 5km race starts and ends and also where the marathon on Monday ends. Because it is a public park any shows or performances here on this land must be free. They can sell chairs, hot dogs and other things to make money but the actual performance/show itself has to be free and available to anyone. Its a great location to bring a picnic and just enjoy the people watching!
After lunch and seeing a bit of the city we managed to get Lews marathon bib and see the expo on the way home and the line this time was non existent! The expo’s to us now are really not very exciting and there is a lot of consumerism involved with loads of marathon clothing being produced which isn’t great quality but people just lap it up. I guess if your not running a lot of marathons its a great reminder of your achievement. After this we walked home, exhausted and the jet lag was certainly starting to hit us! London is 5 hours ahead so as you can imagine with its being 4pm here (9pm in London) we were starting to fade. I has a bit of a nap and Lew went out on a short run to get his legs moving before we had to go out for the Duck tours.
Boston Duck Tour
This had been recommended to me just this morning by a follower on Instagram and doing a tour early in your trip to a new place is always a good idea. It gives you such a great overview of the city and sets you up to fit everything into your schedule. Plus it gives the legs a little break from all that walking! These Duck tours happen multiple times a day and you constantly see the WWII Duck Vehicles that can go on land and water driving around the city. We were on time until the slightly unreliable public transport decided it was going to “readjust” its schedule whilst we were onboard which meant we had a good sprint to where the Duck left from to even make it. We were only 2 minutes late but everyone was already loaded up into the truck with our driver + guide Dr Ben was ready to go. The tour itself drove us around the Boston common and past Beacon Hill before heading into the West End. Ben was very good at telling us all about the history of the city as we drove each area. The West End was really interesting because shows would come to Boston and if they made it in Boston they would then go to the West End in NYC which was just down the coastline as little bit. Boston was where star shows were made. After driving through here we then plowed into the Charles River down a ramp and our vehicle suddenly turned into a boat to show us the city from the water. Ben was very proud at the fact that the Charles River has been significantly cleaned up over the last 50 years and now is almost drinking water quality. The Charles River is actually held in by a dam that is released when the city is expecting rain but it otherwise held at a particular level. Something that we certainly didn’t know about Boston was how it came to look as it does today. Il try and summarise some of it!
Boston was colonised by the British in 1614 and originally called New England. There was a lot of important wars during this time but in the 1800’s a lot of Irish flooded into Boston because of the potato famine and Boston looked very different at this time. Boston was just the Shawmut peninsula which was 789 acres of land connected to the mainland by a narrow bridge as it was very tidal and at high-tide it was an island. In short it was decided that more land was needed and for 50 years, 6 days a week, day and night trains brought gravel from Needham to fill in the mill pond and create what is now Bostons Back Bay. This Labour was mostly completed by hand by the Irish and was finally completed in 1882. It’s easy to tell what is the original land of Boston because it is hilly, whereas all the reclaimed land is flat with straight streets of names in alphabetical order. There’s a photo below of the original land vs what was created. When a lot of the beautiful buildings in Back Bay were built the fact that it was reclaimed land and had a high water table was something that needed to be considered for the foundations. Large amounts of wooden piles, which were just tree trunks with the branches stripped off were thrust into the ground to hold these building up but they must stay submerged in water in order to prevent them from rotting. Trinity Church alone has 4,500 wooden pilings holding it up. Now this is where the dam comes in! The dam actually holds the water levels within the Back Bay neighbourhood at a certain level that ensures the wooden piles continue to be submerged in water so they dont rot. However with climate change the city has noticed how much higher the water levels have become and the dam needed to be built higher to account for this. The issue is climate change is ongoing but the dam cannot be made any higher to account for this. So Dr Ben was telling us that within the next 30 years Bostons Back Bay has plans to become the next Venice. When this water continues to rise higher and higher the city will need continuous pumps to pump the excess water out of this area. It was honestly so mind blowing to hear this. Boston is the number 2 city behind New Orleans to go underwater because of rising sea waters due to climate change. These sorts of real impacts in cities I feel arnt talked about enough. How can you ignore climate change when your city is LITERALLY going under water! I can’t even image what this place will look like if we ever come back.
After getting out of the water we drove through some other areas of downtown by the Quincy and Boston Public Markets and some of the old burial grounds. This part of Boston is known for its Italian community and is the place you want to come if you are in need of a pizza or pasta fix!
Once the tour returned to its original location we headed home on the subway passing by Trader Joes to grab some food to make tacos. It’s very easy to get good Mexican food in America so makes a healthy home made dinner pretty simple and cheap.
Saturday 16th April
We had an early morning start to the day with me running the Boston 5km race at 8am. It was a chilly but gorgeous sunny morning and got us up and about early. There was a lot of people running today, mostly just as a relaxed way to start the marathon weekend which is pretty popular in the city as it is over Patriots weekend. It started off with the mayor singing the national anthem before the race got going. There was a lot of people and for half the race it was pretty difficult to run fast with the amount of people you had to dodge. The track itself also wasn’t the most scenic, unlike the Verona 10km race I did. But it was certainly an experience to run another international race in another city.
Post race we headed home on the subway and relaxed a bit before we had to head to the Apple store to drop Lews phone off to have a battery replacement. That’s something Apple has just introduced which is fantastic and will really make his phone live for a lot longer!
Beacon Hill
This beautiful area of Boston is one of the oldest areas with houses dating back to the 1600’s. They are gorgeous brick buildings propped up on the hill with established trees and little corner shops everywhere. It really was a pleasant place and of course the most expensive place to live in all of Boston these days. This area is well known for its Black and Jewish communities which historically lived here. Its also the start of the Black Heritage Trail which is something we were recommended if we had time. The neighbourhood got its name from the beacon that once stood high on the hill to warn locals about invasions during the American Civil War. One of the most famous streets is Acorn street which still has it beautiful cobblestone streets, gas lit lamps and ivory hanging off the buildings. But theres other equally as beautiful streets if you wander aimlessly around the neighbourhood hoping to come across some little gems.
For lunch we made it to the markets we had spotted yesterday on our Duck tour but didn’t find anything in the market that we fancied. I had a place saved Saus Boston Which did a vegan burger so we grabbed that take away and sat outside in the sunshine people watching. We had for so lucky with this weather!
Fenway park
This is the home of the famous baseball team the Red Sox. If your going to see baseball this is the place you need to come that’s for sure. A friend recommend some seats for us with an unobstructed view and they cost us about $80 each ($123 nzd). Not cheap but if your doing this once you may as well get some good seats. Coming into Fenway it was super crowded with loads of fans in red supporting their hometown team. We had to pass through security with a metal detector and a bag check before we were allowed into the stadium. The first time we saw the pitch was incredible. America certainly does sport well! We climbed up to the box where our seats were and has such a good view of the bases and pitch. Once again they sung the national anthem before the game begun. America is so patriotic. Lew has seen one baseball game before but for me it was the first time so it took us a while to figure out the rules. Because it came from cricket originally it was of course just as slow in my opinion. It took them forever to hit the ball as they waited for the perfect throw. Basically everyone got caught out because of the way the bat is a lot of the balls just went straight up high. An easy target for catching. We did get to see a couple of home runs which was awesome but the game finished with the Red Sox winning 4-0. We were super chilly and I think jet lag had caught up to us at this point. We grabbed some bits to turn our leftover taco filling into some nachos and called it a night very early.
Sunday 17th April
This morning it was time to relax a little as it was a cooler morning and tomorrow is marathon Monday so we don’t want to be walking too much today for Lews sake. I went down to Trader Joes to grab some bread so Lew could sleep in longer. Going to a normal grocery store is a still a little bit of a novelty for me since we get our groceries delivered in London or I go to a small family run shop to get fruit & veggies. Wandering the isles is just so interesting especially in a foreign country. Normally I have to google translate everything when we are travelling in Europe but having it all in English meant it was too easy to get a little bit of this and a little bit of that!
Lews iPhone was ready for collection so we headed into town to grab that. I stayed underground whilst he ran up so we didn’t have to pay two more train fares. We had been a little naughty anyways because our train stop didn’t have any gates so we were basically using our ticket twice as we weren’t “validating” it. Whoops :P.
Tomorrows marathon day was set to be a little cold in the morning. Because of the way the course is set up going in one direction Lew needed to catch one of the yellow kids school buses with everyone else in his wave all the way to the start line at about 7am when his race started at 10am. They had to leave their gear bags at the finish line which mean he had a lot of time without anything warm on. There is only one ideal solution to this and that is find a local charity shop where you can buy a piece of clothing for cheap, leave it at the start line and then that then goes back to charity afterwards. It is a lot nicer than wearing a big rubbish bag made of plastic and disposing that. The problem with marathons is it is so messy and consumerist. Loads and loads of gels, water cups and all sorts litter lines the streets after the races and the atmosphere makes people feel like the NEED something like a piece of cheaply made clothing to remember their experiences. Because it was a Sunday and a holiday weekend it was a little tricky finding a charity shop that was open. Somehow I came across the Garment District which was perfect! This was a across town closer to Harvard which we planned on visiting today anyways. This store had a massive heap of clothing in a pile on its ground floor that you way $2 ($3 NZD) per pound and can wade through it all hoping to find items to rescue and add into your own wardrobe. Its actually super fun and when you give something a good wash in your own washing powder you wouldn’t even know it was on the floor of a second hand shop before it found its way to you. Lew found a couple of great thick jumpers to buy and I came across a shirt made from liberty fabric which I would cut up and make into something else. Liberty fabrics are very expensive in the UK but it was an absolute gem to come across. I also found a cute little flowy summer top that will look great with jeans. Overall out total came out to be $4 usd ($6 NZD) or something absurd as that! We nailed it.
With Harvard University being close by we wandered through the streets ad picked up some Vietnamese from a cool place called Circa. It had amazing reviews and we stumbled across it as we walked out of Whole foods across the road picking up a smoothie container so we could make Lew a smoothie for the morning and he didn’t have to worry about throwing out the bottle. I had this gorgeous noodle dish with eggplant and tofu whilst Lew of course had a banh mi. His fav. It was bitterly cold outside for the first time in the entire weekend so it was nice to just have a little bit of shelter from the wind whilst we ate.
Onwards to Harvard. Now we actually should have organised a tour or something but we figured we could walk around campus and get the feel of it. Except for a few things like the fact that it was a Sunday on a holiday weekend so no one was around, all the building are pretty boring in comparison to Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, it was freezing cold and the motivation for being outside was very low. So safe to say a quick wander through the main part of campus was all we needed before we headed back to the underground. Harvard is a massive campus and was founded in 1636 making it the oldest institute of higher learning in the USA. Its an Ivy League school and notoriously hard to get into. It has strong ties to Cambridge University in the UK as a lot of British came across to Boston in the 1700’s and wanted to establish something of a similar educational institute as they had where they came from.
We took the underground home grabbing some things for pasta for dinner. Lew had a tradition now that before every marathon he has a pasta. So I made the most delicious vegan bolognese with some plant based sausages and veggies. So yum! We also had so much I packed up two meals for the plane ride to Denver tomorrow afternoon post marathon. We had an early one getting all Lews gear out for the morning and pinning his race number to his shirt etc.
Monday 18th April
Its marathon Monday! Hurrah! We were both up super early so make sure Lew could catch this bus on time. I prepped his smoothie to take on the bus and also his concoction of Arbonne pre work out and a fizz stick to sip on. (p.s this worked perfectly as a pre race concoction!). Most of the people in our accommodation were still sleeping as their wave wouldn’t start to about 11am onwards which is the latest marathon of all of them. I said goodbye to Lew as he headed off to the train station to go into town. I had my own marathon to complete this morning before I met him on the finish line! But it was only 6.30am and for me that didn’t start until 10am. I relaxed and watched a couple of episodes of Bridgeton before getting myself up and ready.
My job was to pack up everything we have with use, check out of our accommodation and head out to the airport to drop our large bag off before getting back to the finish line before Lew completed the race. Because this marathon is a straight line it would be too hard for me to do this and watch him out on the course unfortunately. But we heard from others there are some good ways to see you loved ones running from multiple spots. Lew even mentioned some form of a bus that goes along side of the track or close to it. Perhaps if we ever came back we would give it a go.
I left out accommodation at 11am with two large back packs on my front and back, a bag of food and our 23kg bag I was going to drop off. The airport in Boston is actually not that far away at all and on the underground system which is why it was feasible for me to do this. I got out there just before midday, dropped the bag at the United counter in between refreshing my Boston marathon app to track Lew who was doing perfectly and coming in faster than the splits he wanted. Since he had hardly done any training and no long runs he figured aiming for a 3 hour marathon would be a good shout. He was well on his way to achieving that. Returning to town with two very heavy carry on backpacks I made my way to the finish line. It wasn’t at all as easy as many of the others iv been to and I lost hope of actually seeing him at all. Because Boston had a bombing at the finish line in 2013 with 3 people killed they were very very particular with a lot of police presence and bag searches. I of course had two backpacks and a bag of food that they had to continue to search every time I went anywhere which was beyond frustrating. Lew ended up passing by without me even seeing him and he called to say he was already at the pick up location at the park.
He had done so well finishing at 2 hours 58 minutes. I was surprised at how good he looked and how well the was able to mobilise. Before we knew it we were back on the underground out to the airport as it was a very tight schedule. The main at security said Lew was the first marathoner to come through so technically he won the race right? Lew said to me the finish line for him wasn’t the end of the marathon it was sitting his bum on the plane seat to get to Denver. After all that our flight was actually delayed by 45 minutes so we had plenty of time. We sat in the airport people watching and eating our pasta and other snacks. The most exciting thing was that tonight we would be in Boulder Colorado. A place we hadn’t been since 2018 when we went across for John and Avery wedding. We hadn’t seen Pat & Joe since the Chicago marathon in 2019 so it had been a long time coming thanks to a particular virus which we won’t name s it doesn’t deserve the credit.
When that plane finally took off we felt so relieved and excited about the next part of our trip!!
