Road Trip 2007

7-7-7
Ah, the wonders of technology. I brought my new laptop so hopefully blogging will be a bit on the faster side than in the past. Though we opted not to pay the extra $10 for tonight’s internet, so you should be able to read this a few days later… but at least I’ll be able to copy and paste.
We started off at 7:00 (7777) completely by accident… well, mainly because Hrothgar, Mel’s cat, seems to think 5:30 is a great time to HOWL at Mel’s door. Mel wears earplugs, and Andy apparently sleeps like the dead. With Clare’s ears out, I seem to the only one bothered by the howling cat. I opened the door abruptly, and got a few hisses from him as I shoved his fat butt down the stairs.
Up, I bathroomed and breakfasted, turning on the TV while I ate my Kix. The movie, I think, was Adam’s Rib… a great Spencer Tracy and Kathryn Hepburn movie about two married lawyers arguing opposite sides of a case.
Clare and I got ready with little fuss and jumped into our Trusty Rusty blue Aveo. It has no power anything, and for some strange reason, I can’t lock the driver’s side door without turning the key. The good thing about it, is that it’s covered in dings and scratches, so if I bump into anything, no one will be able to tell! Not that I plan any collisions.
We made it out of Pennsylvania pretty easily, even managing to stop for gas without getting turned around. Then, it was pretty much a straight shot onto the 95… even though there were no signs stating we were on the 95. We just hoped we were heading the right direction, and kept going. We zipped through Jersey, paying the $10 in tolls. Mel’s observation… you don’t have to pay any money to get into Jersey, but you pay out the nose to leave. Clare was a bit agog over the tolls we had to keep paying.
We made it out of Jersey alive, pointing at the foggy looking Empire State Building as we passed by NYC. Then it was into Connecticut. Now, the strange thing about the I95 through Connecticut. They have plenty of rest stops and gas stations. Like one every ten miles. Seriously. And at each one, there was a McDonald’s and a Mobile. Can you say MONOPOLY! It was creepy. We stopped at the first one for coffee and soda, thinking, oh, it’s a good place to stop. Then we drove on another 5 miles, and oh look! It’s a McD’s. I should have counted them all.
We were actually excited when we got to Rhode Island and saw that one of the stops actually had a Taco Bell! Anyway, on Natalie’s recommendation, and the fact that it saved us some driving time, we changed our first plans and stopped in Mystic, CT instead of Newport RI.
We snapped a picture of Mystic Pizza, and ate at a Cajun place called The Voodoo Grill. Great atmosphere, reasonable prices, and the medium hot sauce was plenty spicy for me. Glad I didn’t go with the hot or really hot. I had to go into the yarn shop, well, because I’m crafty. I didn’t find anything I couldn’t buy at the Alamitos Bay Yarn Co, so I didn’t buy anything.
We got back in the car and headed into Rhode Island. We were going to stop in Providence, but we kind of blinked… and missed it. Darn. I told Clare to stick her hand out the window, and we agreed that was good enough to say we’d been to the smallest state in the Union. We also decided that RI was slightly larger than the Isle of Wight, but not by much.
On we went to Massachusetts… which I apparently can’t spell… that’s another story. We hit Boston, and were so busy talking, we nearly missed out exit. I did a quick lane change and came off the freeway to discover two things about Boston. They have Roundabouts. And they don’t have a whole lot of street signs.
The Yahoo Maps directions wouldn’t have been too bad to follow, if we could actually have known what street we were on. That would have been nice. We ended up turning around twice, and found the hotel accidentally on our way back from one of the U’s. Success!
We then learned which of the Hotel Desk clerks was the helpful cheery one, and which one hated her job and wanted to be at home. Guess which one we got? Yup. At least we got a warm cookie. Yum. Anyway, we go to the 5th floor, and I think, 501… that should be right there. Nope. We’re on the corner at the very end of the hall. At least we have a corner and two windows and a nice view of the parking lot.
After about 2 hours of down time, we took advantage of the free shuttle and headed downtown for dinner. As we passed China town, we both decided that wasn’t where we wanted to eat. Instead, we cut through Boston Common and headed towards a bar that they I’d read about. We found the street that it was supposed to be on, but without cross streets we kept walking. It was full of trendy shops and I felt like we’d found the Beverly Hills of Boston. Goody. All the restaurants we saw were a bit on the pricey side, so we cut a block over and found, well, no restaurants. We were about to give up when I walked right by a Radio Shack. Clare had wanted a card for her camera. She got a 2 Gig card for $30 which I think is a pretty good deal.
Anyway, as we were coming out of the Radio Shack we noticed The Rattlesnake! We’d read about it earlier, and based on our decision to eat at places with cool names, that was perfect. We split a $10 pizza and ordered a drink and were quite happy.
Back at the hotel, we’re blogging and having beauty night. Clare has just emerged from the shower with a huge grin and a satisfied smile on her face… so that means it’s my turn. Signing off for now, Omouse.