Tour diary 40 - 1.7.11. – Yet another terrible plane journey – Dancing with Diego – dogs, drunks and dancing fountains… and the wonderful energy of Harvard…
O.M.G! I didn’t think a plane journey could get worse than those we have experienced so far but here we are in South Carolina airport having arrived at 7.30 for a 10.00 flight and it is 1.30 a.m. and no sign of the plane.
We have had to pay as much for our tickets for our bags and when challenged they had the audacity to say that by charging people to put luggage in the overhead lockers it speeds things up. How? Apart from the fact that we are now into our 7th hour… not so speedy I would have said. But if you are putting a bag overhead whether you pay for it or not makes no difference to the fact that you put a bag overhead!! Steve asked them not to insult his intelligence with this ridiculous statement and just say why they are charging so much money to get your luggage on board the plane. It would appear that the tourists are subsidising the businessmen who want a cheap flight and don’t want to take luggage on board.
So Steve thought he was getting cheap flights but in fact our luggage is costing as much as our plane tickets. Then there would be an extra $10.00 - $50.00 charge if you wanted to choose where to sit.. I kid you not!
Definitely our worst experience flying so far.
We have been told that if this flight does not happen, then the only next flight is Thursday morning, which means we have to go book a car again to get back to Mary’s.. pick up the bags again and reload them into the car… and they said that there would be no fee back by way of recompense, but they will not charge us for putting us on the plane finally on Thursday…
Thanks!!
I feel so sorry for young families with tiny children and toddlers. At the moment they are sleeping on the floor. At least the airports could supply some chairs, which could slope back. There are only chairs with fixed armrests so no one can lie down on the chairs even to have a bit of a rest.
It would have been nice to be offered a glass of water or something to eat especially for those families with children but nothing was forthcoming from the airline …Spirit.
Dreadful, dreadful service and treatment and a total con with the cheap ticket deal.
Avoid them like the plague…
Thank goodness for my laptop. I am just catching up with mail and watching You Tube clips with Mary. ‘Kevin and Elaine’s wedding aisle dance’ has now been viewed over 345,000,000 times. Amazing what these You Tube clips get up to…
‘Charlie bit my finger!’ has even more hits I think and Mary loved ‘Matt dancing all over the world’…
Steve has managed to access some old John Lennon Documentaries and a long David Bowie documentary and now has found some Tony Hancock… The time passes O.K. when you have something to do…
………………………
So finally we got on the plane at 4.30a.m instead of 10 p.m.
We arrived in Boston just as the commuters were going to work. We all just crashed exhausted from such a grim experience…
We are staying at the house of a friend and it is a 2-family house in Cambridge. I love the concept of being able to live separately but still within the same house as family members. I suppose it is a bit like a commune. From the outside the house looks like just a large size house, but it has as much room and space going on in the cellar and it does in the loft space, so it is like a 4 floor house and in fact I think given how small our houses are in England generally, that it would be easy for 4 separate families to all live in the same house. Given that this house doesn’t look that big, yet around us are enormous looking houses I can’t begin to imagine how huge they are inside.
Once we had rested Steve and I were up for a day sightseeing and walking around Boston. We have been there before so were a little bit aware of what was on offer. We parked up by the Quayside and walked for about 7 hours non-stop. We both feel like it is harder to do now.
In NYC we would often walk for up to 10 hours. It’s either our age or it still is the heat. Boston is a lovely 80 degrees, which is heaven after the torturous heat of the Carolinas, which was over 100 degrees every single day.
There is the lovely Quincy market, which is a bit like our Covent Garden at home, both in structure and the fact that there are street performers. So we came across a wonderful break-dancing troupe of 6 black men. They were superb and extremely funny to boot. One of them was sooooooooooo skinny that he actually looked like he had the legs of a Preying Mantis – stick thin. He also had a very goofy front tooth. He however believed himself to be absolutely delectable so he would focus on a female member of the crowd.. slid his trouser leg up – (what he must have thought was seductively) – up his thigh and mouthed to her…”You really want me don’t you!” Then he would mime a phone call and say … “Call me”.. He was hilarious… but in the end it was obvious that he was an expert dancer and acrobat and comedian. Most of the break-dancing was not new and as I love it so much I have seen most of the moves, but these guys were so animated and such nice personalities. They pulled a little boy out of the crowd, with Mum’s permission and were going to use him in a line up of 6 of them, with Skinny man doing a somersault over all their backs. However, to get a long enough run up… Skinny man went right the way across a busy main road! So this little tot was lost amongst these amazingly athletic men.
But.. just before they lined up they said to him. “Do you dance?” and this amazing little 3-4 year old boy just went into an incredible break-dancing routine. The crowd went wild especially as the dancers pulled out a $10.00 bill out of their collection bucket and paid him. His little face was such a picture. They called him Diego as they said he looked like Dora the Explorers sidekick. Mum was stood in front of me and said he always got called this. Anyway.. Skinny man took a long run from the other side of the busy road and leapt over the 5 men and a ¼ … line up… Brilliant. Steve does not like break-dancing at all, he can’t see the beauty and athleticism in it as I do, but he patiently waited whilst I stood in the front line and then when I turned to him to say about the little Diego I found that he was busy filming it all, so he had been enraptured like myself.
At the end of a tiring day we took some time out to people watch, one of our favourite pastimes. We found a wonderful gazebo covered with wisteria in Columbus Park a tiny little park just by the harbour. We sat down with a very busy bar on the right, which sounded like a swarm of buzzing bees. The harbour with the boats was right in front of us with the boats coming in and sounding their horns, which was lovely. Then at the Quayside was one of my favourite things, which is a circle with waterspouts coming up out of the ground and going off at different time spans. So little children run in and out of the water trying to avoid the sprays and they have the most wonderful time. We once sat for 3 hours at Battery Park in NYC watching the kids getting wet and generally being delightful…
When we went with the lovely Mary to Broadway on the Beach in South Carolina, Steve bet Mary $5.00 that she wouldn’t walk through the fountains. Mary is always up for a challenge so she took him on and somehow managed to walk all the way through without getting wet, but she got a tad too cocky.. just as she was congratulating herself on getting through.. saying… “Go Mary!!” a huge spray caught her right in the middle.
A group of young parents were on the sidelines watching their children and they absolutely roared with laughter as did Steve and I and as Mary has such a wonderful energy she walked back to us, saying to them on the way.. “Making you laugh out loud in such a happy way made my day and my drenching was all worth while” Steve caught it on camera so we are telling Mary that we shall soon have her on You Tube…
So this was our line up …Boats in front – fountains by the quayside – people really enjoying themselves in the quayside bar and then just in front of us a Dog Park!
What joy to see these dogs running around like lunatics playing and chasing and generally doing what dogs do. And of course there is always one dog, which does what dogs especially love to do which is to try to make love to the legs of anything in sight. Now the only problem with that was that this particular dog was about 4 inches high and about 8 inches long. And his enthusiasm seemed to be focused on all the large dogs.. the French bulldogs.. the Husky.. the Retriever .. and the large Poodle. Added to this problem that he could only reach up to the joint of the back legs was the fact that the ones he was determined to ‘service’ were also male dogs!
One very well endowed French Bulldog just kept shaking him off good naturedly when he got too irritating. We were just so delighted to watch his intent on getting round to all of them to do his thing. There were 14 dogs altogether and I don’t think a single one missed out on his amorous intentions. Funnily enough when a dog was lying down which should have enabled him to have easier access he ignored them. I think The Challenge was everything.
Then to crown our entertainment an extremely drunk man on a bench behind us decided to sing!!
If you have ever heard a drunk ‘Pub’ singer in England you will know that there is very little discernible wordage. Just a yeoolooww …. Yeoolooww kind of sound going on. But this guy did know his love song all the way through and the words were apparent but what was happening was just as he claimed how much he loved, his loved one.. his head fell forwards and he went to sleep in mid song. Steve claims that I always find drunk people amusing. I wasn’t aware that I did, but I must admit that every time the song stopped for a second and I turned round and he had fallen asleep I did giggle quite a bit. He seemed very happy though to be singing and altogether the early evenings entertainment could not have been better….
As we drove home along the banks of the Charles River, it was so beautiful with all the sailboats out and the rowers going through their paces, the sun was going down and it had been a delightful day. With Harvard on one side and the exquisite red buildings throughout Boston I felt that I would really love to do a degree course here. Boston and Cambridge just oozes Academia. I have never felt before that I would like to do a degree, but I certainly felt drawn to it now. Steve said the same and then we were trying to decide what course could we do. I’m not sure if they do Metaphysics and Parapsychology here! They would be the only subjects of interest to us both.
Steve is soon to do a talk to some of these very learned men, which should be a challenge. I expect some very interesting questions at the end of his presentation.
Lots of love
Annie
More strange signs...
Go the extra mile for chicken …….(on a picture of a cow)
I picked up the best crabs at Crabby Mikes !!
Shabby’s restaurant
Suck Bang Blow
(I have no idea what this was for!!)
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