Hello All!
Before I dive into telling you my story, a couple of notes.
1. This is my first post on FT (Long time lurker - over a decade) and I figured I start here officially by sharing My trip of a life time. While I’m not the weekly globe trotter that some of you are, as someone who grew up as a domestic airline brat (Thanks to my grandparents who were my legal guardians), I’ve come to love to fly and travel and this was my first real trip to, what are for me, exotic locations.
2. I should also mention this was originally formatted for a different site that is air travel (airplane) centric, but because that site has been dying slowly for several years and doesn’t get much attention these days, I wanted to share it here with folks who’d enjoy and appreciate it.
3. I like to tell stories in detail so my post are a bit long. To keep things neat and from overloading everyone, I’ll me posting in a several parts.
4. Lastly, If you really only want to read about my air travel experiences, please feel free to skip parts 1 (this one) and part 4 which are more ground based stories, but there is a helicopter ride in part 4 and some amazing photos and a vid or two too, so it may be worth schlogging through it.
OK, so now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get on with it!
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One of the big items on my bucket list has been to do a true, around the world trip.
The opportunity finally showed itself in early 2014 when hanging out with My friends Dave, Lauren, and Chris. Dave and Lauren are Married, Dave and Chris are best friends since grade school and I became good friends with them in college. Chris is currently in school to study ecology.
Chris mentioned that there was a study abroad program called EcoQuest in New Zealand for students at his school, that he really wanted to partake in, despite that he’s about the same age as me (Early 30’s) and the program was for traditional students (i.e., in their late teens early 20’s). He casually mentioned that if accepted, we should come join him at the end of his program there, rent a camper-van, and explore the country. Of all the countries in the world I’ve wanted to visit in my lifetime, New Zealand was truly at the top of the list. I realized that the idea/invitation was really just for Dave and Lauren, I hesitated for a second, but as I was standing right there, I jumped right in and said I’d go too…. if he was accepted.
Three weeks later Chris announced that he had in fact been accepted into the program, now the planning could begin.
2014 turned out to be a really rough comedy of errors for me. One thing after another, after another, after yet another thing happened. Knowing that I was going to finally going to do some real exploring is probably the only thing that kept my spirits up.
Chris would be leaving at the end of August, with the program ending on December 3rd. Chris made the needed arrangements for him to be able to stay an additional two weeks.
We met many times over the spring and summer hammering out the details of where we’d go and what we’d do. One of the biggest factors is that Chris is a major, die hard, Tolkien fan. Dave and Lauren and pretty up there too (Although Lauren is more of a die hard Dr. Who fan). As for me, I like Tolkien alright, but I’m more of a Harry Potter guy (Yes we are a bunch of nerds, why do you ask???). As such, they really wanted to see the sites where the LOTR/Hobbit films were shot.
Of course my big draw aside from seeing the place I’ve always wanted to go, was the actual getting there and back. As I wanted to conserve as much of my cash for the actual time in NZ, I didn’t want to spend too much for airfare, but I didn’t want to go with predicable carriers per se (Dave, Lauren, and Chris would be flying UA/NZ, too boring for me). Domestically, ever since I lost my free flying privileges when I left college, I’ve used jetBlue as my preferred domestic airline and have started to accrued some nice points with them as well. Naturally, I would use them for my domestic section on this trip too.
I booked my B6 ticket a little later then I planned (after I had booked everything else) due to some financial constraints due to the afore mentioned issues I’d been having all year, but still got a decent price of my first flight which would be from BOS to LAX.
I’ve had a bad history of nearly missing the first flight of the last few trips I’ve taken, despite taking measures to prevent that. This time, I’d go so far has getting a hotel room in Boston for the night before so I’d be staged locally. I decided to take a risk and do a blind reservation through Priceline, where you select the quality level and general area you want the hotel to be in and pray really really hard that you get lucky and don’t end up far away from a T Subway station . Well, I’m please to say that I did in fact get lucky, very lucky. Priceline picked the Hotel 140, which is just a stones throw from Back Bay Station on Clarendon St.
Now All I had to do was wait.
Chris kept posting the most amazing photos once he arrived in August. September, October, and November seemed to drag by so very very slowly.
Finally December came. Dave, Lauren, and I would be flying from BOS on the 5th and meeting up with Chris in AKL on the 7th (Thank you International Date Line).
At 8AM on there 4th, I got a notice from jetBlue that I could check in for my flight, so I opened their app and in a few clicks, confirmed I’d be onboard. I was even able to add my boarding pass into my Passbook.
Later in the day, I picked up a family friend to watch my 89 y/o grandmother while I was away. Despite having given her over a month to get ready, the friend was barely packed when I went to pick her up. I was further annoyed as expedition was not her forte and I hoped to get down to Boston at a decent time to enjoy the night, but that got cut short, oh well. I finally got the friend to my place in Manchester, NH. We’d gone grocery shopping and after making sure they had enough food and supplies to last during my absence, I high tailed it down to the North Londonderry bus terminal.
Despite the continuing decline of service at MHT, that state continues to subsidize the buses down to Boston though local company Concord Coach, who runs the subsidiary Boston Express and Dartmouth Coach services too. I made it to the station just in time to catch the 7:30PM departure.
Despite the negative impact it might have on folks choosing to use MHT, I do like the bus service as parking is 100% free, of which there is plenty of spaces, and a round trip ticket to South Station is only $25.00.
Upon boarding the bus I groaned slightly. despite what the picture might show of seats clad in black leather and fancy contours, these are the most uncomfortable bus seats in the world. Alas, I was running on so much excitement to really care and and plonked down for the ride down Interstate 93, enjoying the mood lighting.
The deceptively comfortable looking, very uncomfortable bus seats
Acceptable legroom
At least there’s mood lighting
Lots of recline
Pulling up the ramp into South Station, I noticed a barrage of police cruisers one right after another with lights and sirens blaring. I was curious what was going on that could require such a large police response. Getting off the bus, I checked out the local news sites and found out the city was in an uproar over the grand jury decision in the Eric Garner trial. They would end up blocking roads and highways, marching through the street. Fortunately, they were all peaceful protests, but it did make for an interesting evening.
I made my way from the bus station over to South station proper to go down into the T subway. One of my biggest gripes about the South Station setup is that to get from the buses to the subway, you have to trudge your way the whole length of the train platform outdoors. As Boston is right on the water and I usually travel in the cooler New England months, this usually means you feel like you have frost bite by the time you get to the other end, huffing from trying to quickly sprint with your luggage, in a sketchy setting. If it’s rush-hour when you’re doing this, heaven help you as I’ve literally been knocked down and trampled on a previous trip. Would it really kill there MBTA to construct an enclosed side area with moving sidewalks???
Having to stop to catch my breath, I took this quick shot of the platforms.
I took the Red line to Downtown Crossing and changed on to the Orange line down to Back Bay Station.
I was pleased at Hotel 140 upon walking in the lobby. The gentleman behind the desk was very polite and professional towards me, despite looking rather worn out after the day I’d had. He handed me a much welcomed bottle of water while he got me checked in and provided me the wifi access details without even asking. The room was clean and comfortable. and I was pleased with Priceline’s selection. I will definitely being staying there again. Some of the reviews of Hotel140 complain that their rooms have no view, and indeed looking out my window, I only saw the brick facade of the neighboring building which I was perfectly fine with. The property had previously been a YWCA. The building itself has a lot of charm and character if you look correctly and at $129 a night in downtown Boston, was a steal! Finding a decent hotel room in downtown Boston under $500 night can be a miracle for a late booking, if you want views and high end service, pools, and still be downtown, you better be ready to pay.
After dropping my luggage of and getting cleaned up a bit, I went out to have a celebratory dinner has I hadn’t eaten really all day. I made my way down to the Fanieul Hall area and grabbed an award winning bowl of New England Clam chowder and and a Magners Cider from Anthem Kitchen+Bar.
Winner of the 2010 and 2012 Boston Chowderfest
Wanting to get to bed at a decent time, I made my way back to the Hotel via the Walgreens on School St. to pick up some last minute items. There were police and news helicopters circling the city like flies over a carcass due to the protest all over the city. I could hear chanting getting louder as i made my way up Washington St.
Just as I got to the Intersection with School Street, a parade of at least 25 police motorcycles came flying around the corner. I was awestruck to see so many bike units at once, at almost 10PM in 23º F (not including wind chill) weather. After they passed, the chanting was very loud and I looked ahead to my left to see a line of people marching yelling “Who’s streets? Our Streets!”. It was a powerful moment. *Click on picture below for vid*
Getting back to the Hotel around 11:30PM, I set my phone alarm for 5AM, popped a melatonin, and went to bed.
Stay turned for part 2 where I get to try the best WiFi in the sky for the first time, panic at my friends lack of flight planning, do some LAX plane spotting, and and give my thoughts on the new TBIT!
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Part two will be posted sometime in the near future. Please feel free to comment, ask questions, or anything else you'd like to say about this. Thanks for reading!
