fanboy

La Jolla was great— we went to the beach and did a kayaking tour of the Pacific. There was a cave that we got to kayak thru, and we got to see a ton of sea lions that were laying along the rocks.

This is by far my favorite American city that I’ve ever been to. So much history, and so much to do.

Best of all: you walk around, and you don’t feel like you’re going to be mugged (ahem, New York). We were walking around after sundown multiple times in the downtown area, one time after 2:00AM, and I never was bothered once or felt in the least bit threatened. You can take the city’s transportation system everywhere, and it’s only like $2.00 per ride. Plus, I actually felt secure on The Metro, unlike on Chicago’s “L”.

Coming to Boston, it was a surprise to me how many universities there are, just packed into a small area. Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern, Boston College, Boston University, Tufts, Suffolk are all there.

The only thing that sucks about Boston is the fact that there doesn’t seem to be bathrooms anywhere. You walk into restaurants, and somehow they don’t have a public restroom. It’s a miracle I didn’t get arrested for public-intoxication/indecent-exposure while I was there. Oh, and the customer service is pretty bad as well. It takes a century to actually get served once you sit down at a place to eat. Also, there is an absurd amount of Dunken Donuts in the city. Minor annoyances, really.

Boston is awesome, and you have to visit there if you get the chance.

Single tickets are obscene cost at $25/piece, which makes this hard to recommend. However, they hit a lot of historic sites in Boston, which I did like.

The tickets are bought inside of the Museum of Science, and you take this tour inside an old World War II troop carrier, just like they used on D-Day. You do get to go out on the water, which is pretty cool. You see famous American Revolution sites like Bunker Hill [Breeds Hill], and the Old North Church, where Paul Revere lit the candles to signify the British were coming. You pass by the U.S.S. Constitution, which is somehow still a commishioned Navy ship, despite being built in the 1700’s and looking like it came straight out of Pirates of the Carribean.

The tour-guide/driver purposefully acts very goofy, which may turn some people off, but would be entertaining to kids.

Going to Boston on vacation, I really wanted to check this place out. There were all kinds of games at Fenway while I was there, but no game tickets available at the ticket office. So, we decided to do the “Fenway Tour,” which was at least $15/person.

You pay for the Tour tickets, and you show up at the Fenway gift shop at the scheduled time. You meet up in a huge group of people. along with whatever other people are in the gift shop then. Please note that no one ever asks you to show your ticket after you buy them. If I had known that, I would have just showed up at the appropriate time, rather than pay for it.

At any rate, the tour involves taking you around to several different seating areas. One is the oldest seats (which are wooden) in the park, on the lower deck. Then up to the $200+ dollar seats, and then to the seats over the “Green Monster.”

They take you through the 2 restaurants in the park, and explain some of the history of Fenway. You gotta love that the team was originally named “The Red Stockings” but was shortened to “Sox” to be symmetrical on the uniform. Their owner also sold Babe Ruth (along with many other players) to the New York Yankees to make a quick buck to finance his broadway show. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Overall, I would definitely recommend people check this tour out. Just don’t pay for it if you can avoid it.

The New England Aquarium is worth visiting while in Boston. It is kind of expensive at about $20/person for general admission, which is not a whole lot of content, since we were able to see everything available in an hour.

They have a several-story-high continous aquarium with a spiral walking area around it, which is really cool. There’s an absolutely gigantic sea-turtle in there too, with divers around feeding the fish.

There’s an exhibit dedicated to jellyfish, but that didn’t keep my attention for long. They also have the obligatory penguins, which are available in abundance, and are always entertaining.

I absolutely loved the Museum of Science; it is definitely a must-see if you visit Boston. The Charles Darwin exhibit is awesome and very comprehensive, albiet with some reading involved.

I would highly recommend this to anyone with kids, since there’s tons of interactive stuff for them to do. There was a computer station game that I was messing with in the Darwin area, and a 6-7 year old walked up and was asking me all kinds of questions about it before I got him to play it himself. There were lots of extra employees around showing children different experiments, or running shows. One was with these humungous electrical coils. I was surprised that they had some live animals, including monkeys and chicks. There was this cartoon network exhibit, which showcased several animation stations. It included one area where it would take a 3-dimensional photograph, and put them together for a matrix-like effect, which was really cool.

Overall, I was very impressed with this place and any other science museums will have to live up to it.

I went on a weekend vacation to Chicago in middle of October 2006.

There’s just so much to do in Chicago, my favorites being the science museum, the art museum, and the aquarium. When you go, definitely get a “Go Chicago” card, because:
1) It saves a lot of money than paying admission at every place
2) You can bypass the long lines and go straight to the will-call counter