The morning started without any fire alarms. Always a good start to the day when that kind of thing doesn’t happen.

It was a little bit of a bummer to pack up and say goodbye to Boston. Rich in history, and home to so many significant American historical events, I think we really only scratched the surface with our short visit. Glad we got to see a bit via the trolley tours, and with some good old fashioned walking around. Boston Common is nice. And judging by the numbers of theatres clustered together near the one we visited last night, seems the entertainment scene there is pretty cool too. The coffee scene, much less so, but at least I found one good one. Of course, it’s always nice to visit somewhere with squirrels – still a novelty. 🙂 The city’s mix of very old and new architecture kept things interesting, and its chaotic street layout shows it was a town that was grown more organically rather than planned from the start. Nice place. Give it a visit.

Checkout from the hotel was much less arduous than checking in, though I have to do some sums and figure out how an ‘early checkout fee’ makes any sense at all…. Since we didn’t check out early. The main train station wasn’t all that far away, but when luggage is being lugged, even a short distance…isn’t. So we Uber’d to South Station, no dramas, and checked ourselves in to the Amtrak Lounge to wait for our train.

The lounge, I guess maybe it was a formal ballroom or something in a past life because what a pretty space! The ceilings were amazing. The snack selection was not. The coffee machine was eager to please. Otherwise it was just, I dunno, comfy chairs in a space. Which is fine coz it’s not like anyone is going to spending any considerable amount of time there.

About 20 minutes before the train was due we wandered back to the main train hall to see where our train might be going on – but that wasn’t announced until about 10 minutes before boarding, so everyone rushed down to platform, er, Track 7 to get on board. After our trek to the front of the train we took our comfy seats and settled in on our ‘Acela’ train.

The service was friendly and incredibly prompt. e.g: Someone took our drinks order and very promptly, almost immediately I’d say, forgot all about it. But not to worry, the staff were kind and after a prompt we did get our drinks served with lunch. And considering how incredibly strong my Margarita was (so what, day drinking on holiday is acceptable, shut up!) I think it included an extra shot or two of apology.

The train whizzed along at speeds of up to about 240km/h, no bullet train, but still pretty good. Imagine that at home, getting from Sydney to Melbourne in about four hours, that’d be pretty awesome. I spent part of the trip doing very useful things like napping, and watching the latest episode of Doctor Who. Like I said, very useful.

I was kinda amused that all the provisions for lunch were loaded on at… Providence station. How fitting. Lunch was delicious, a tandoori chicken with rice, delicious warm bread and a kind of tiramisu in a jar. Perry had a cheese and fruit plate. All good stuff.

As we travelled along, trees and trees and trees and trees starting to give way to trees and houses, which in turn became concrete and metal and metal and concrete, signalling our destination was getting closer and closer. It must be an absolutely spectacular trip in autumn when all the leaves take on their oranges and reds and browns – certainly pretty than the forest of unadorned grey sticks we saw, at a guess.

It was a pleasant journey, here’s a bunch of random photos taken out of the window as we went.

Three and a bit hours comfy later we said goodbye to all the trees and hello to all the buildings, and suddenly darkness as the train dipped underground, to bring smoothly to Penn Station on 34th street, or more accurately, to the shiny new Moynihan Tran Hall which is surprisingly spacious and pretty.

Also surprisingly, it was 28 degrees – warmer than Hawaii! After a bit of walk, there we were at the hotel. The room is New York sized (ie not big), but perfectly and thoughtfully formed. Plenty of storage shelving, and it must be modern as there are plenty of power and even USB-power outlets around the place. Surprisingly there is also a fridge – not guaranteed by any means in New York. The view is ok – a bit of old and new.

Having settled in it was time for that unavoidable holiday task – getting some washing done. There is a place with a good reputation about 10 minutes away, so we went and dropped off laundry for pickup tomorrow. It was either that or pay hotel prices of around $15 per shirt. Yeah right!!

There’s no time to waste so now we’re in town, we’re right off to our first Broadway show for this trip – Smash. I haven’t watched the Netflix show it was based on, but apparently it loosely follows the same story. It’s all a bit meta – this is a musical about the making of a musical. Which must have been even more meta while they were making the musical which is about the making of a musical. Perhaps it nearly wrote itself? Anyway, before I get too dizzy…. It was fantastic. Amazing performances from all the cast, great songs, great story, it kept up a good pace the whole way through and had just the right mix of funny and serious. The Director character always on hand to give some much-needed comic relief. I loved how it gently poked fun at all the roles involved in getting a musical happening, particularly the *theatrical gasp* drama coach. The only criticism I can level at it, is there were no wandering ice cream sellers during intermission – this is borderline unforgivable! 🙂

After we all flooded out of the Imperial theatre, Times Square was its usually bonkers batshit-crazy self, everyone packed shoulder to shoulder just trying to get the heck out of there, which, eventually, we managed, back to the hotel via a small detour to Carnegie Pizza for some serviceable pizza. And homeless people asking us to buy pizza. New York, like everywhere it seems, has had an increase in people living rough on the streets since our last visit, I’m sure. It’s much more sad than it is annoying.

One thing we’ve learned about our hotel is that it has a lot of people, and those people like to be going places, so you can easily wait 10 minutes for a lift. I think one was out of action today which might explain it. Not the end of the world by any means, but you do need to plan ahead a bit.

Well that’s a pretty big first day and we have a bunch more to go, so as it approaches midnight, I approach the end of this blog entry, and all being well a good night’s sleep. Goodnight!