And so we begin our Boston trip after a Uber ride to Billy Bishop Airport, a small airport on Toronto island that I have never been to before. Let’s see how it is and how things are on this travel day 0, hopefully we don’t encounter much trouble.
Our cab driver was brown and had so interesting music on the way, left him a standard tip via the app. Billy bishop is on an island so you have to either take a ferry or use the underwater tunnel to get to the island airport.
This ferry terminal is kind of like a baby museum about Billy Bishop himself, the famous WW1 fighter ace pilot. They have like a nice staue and stuff about him and the history of the airport at the ferry terminal.
On the ferry now waiting to cross the water. They have ferries every 15 minutes. Apparently the ride is only about 90 seconds. Pretty dead as we are pretty early.
Riding that boat now. It’s not that far at all really from the mainland. I’m surprised they just didn’t build a bridge over the water or something after all these years and kept with the ferry. The underwater tunnel passage is fairly new I think.
On the other side inside the actual airport terminal now they have more relics like this airplane strung about.
No self service machines or shit here. We went to the check-in counter and they also printed our boarding passes, noice.
And here we will remain for the next 3-4 hours waiting. It’s not a very big airport at all, very small. Just two stores and one restaurant. They have pretty nice chairs and sitting places tho.
Looking outside the window and we see this nice bait view of a plane and the CN tower. All of the planes coming into Billy Bishop are not jet engines I think, due to noise and being so close to the city downtown.
Proof of existence, waiting in airport edition.
Sometime later waiting, Dan got a message saying that our flight is delayed. Dang. It was supposed to leave at 1:30pm, but it got pushed back to 2:30pm apparently due to weather, probably rain. Guess we have to wait even longer now. They have comfy chairs tho so that’s a plus.
I admit that we came way to early to the airport but I had no idea if there would be any problems or such so better safe than never. Due to the delay, decided to pick up some turkey sandwich from one of the convience stores, hmm, freshii branded. It was not bad, but after tax it roughly cost $13. Expensive but you gotta do what you gotta do.
Our flight was ultimately delayed again to 3pm, shieet but we finally got on board without issue. We are flying Porter and their planes are not jet engines, but the ones that have turboprop, the spinning things. It’s a small plane but it will do, it’s only a short flight anyways.
Despite the short flight they still gave us refreshments noice. I appreciate the expensive kettle type chips, good stuff.
Flying over the city, maybe some part of Boston, maybe the sub-urb part or could be some other town nearby, not sure before landing.
For some reason when we landed we had to go through US/CAN customs. Hmm, in Vegas, NY I didn’t have to do anything like this, I guess every state does it’s own thing. The women in red is like, what are you doing? lol
After a relatively long taxi cab ride we got to our hotel, the Colonnade. It’s considered a 4-star hotel or at least upper 3 stars. Seems pretty good, definitely better than Atlanta hotel that’s for sure although quite far from Vegas hotel.
Pretty standard setup and tv, nice table for putting stuff on, it’s good. The positioning of the lamp is weird. It’s by the table but there is is unplugged and there is no outlets? lol wut. We moved it into the corner right where at least it could be plugged in.
Washroom is on the smaller size but at least it’s clean and decent. It’s a tub kind of shower so there’s that. They also included some rubber ducky for some reason (not seen here)?
After cleaning up a bit we decided to head out for dinner. Because of the delays in our flight we had basically lost 3 hours of explore time. We just wanted to get something to eat and then explore after.
The area we are staying is not really considered downtown Boston, but a shopping/hotel residential area known as Back Bay which in itself is kind of an attraction due to it’s older historic buildings and cozy looking streets.
After a short walk we reached our destination, this Ramen chain that is only in Boston/Maine I believe called Hokkaido Ramen Santouka. We went safe because yea, safe; not ready to explore lobster and chowder yet. As Boston is a very heavy college/university city with Harvard/MIT nearby and BostonU, I was surpirized to see a line for this ramen place, filled mainly with university students and or other academic patrons from what I can tell.
After a short wait, we got a seat because two spots are available at the bar/counter. Hmm, mobile app huh, not bad.
As supposedly a Hokkaido style ramen place, they had miso and shio ramen as their recommended broths. I ended up getting a miso ramen combo with extra toppings large size while Dan got the thing to the right shio ramen, pork cheek ramen with toppings on the side, supposedly more tender and rich meat from normal chasiu, cool.
The place itself is very small with limited seating. A good number of patrons you can audibly hear are Chinese folks, cause of course they are.
The store works themselves however I think were Mexican or something? Not sure but sure, at least they are not brown.
My miso ramen large. Despite being large size, it doesn’t seem that large, the amount of noodles given were just a bit more than I expected. For additional toppings I got the ramen egg and buttered corn. I dumped that shit into the ramen lol, why not. Overall it’s pretty good shit, nice eat and broth, good thickness of noodles too, not too thin, not to thick. Noice.
Dan’s ramen with toppings on the side because I have no idea why. My guess is because they don’t want the toppings to melt into the broth since it’s pork cheek, more richer, gotta appreciate you know. I had a taste of his meat, it was pretty good, it was better than normal chasiu that I got, noice.
After paying we decided to explore some other stores in the immediate street, known as Newbury street. They had this time comic/book/record store called Newbury comics. Nice. For a Tuesday evening it was busier than I expected.
They have three floors, the middle is general stuff, top floor is comics an manga, bottom basement they have vinyl records and cassettes, because it’s the cool hip thing with the kids now. This guy above, looking real hard for his manga or thinking if he should buy a volume.
Just by walking the street area it’s become clear that there is a considerably amount of Japanese stuff around, like this comic manga store, there is also a few Japanese beauty shops, Muji, Uniqlo and a few more sushi/ramen shops. I suppose there is a a lot of interest in Japanese stuff since I think they do actually have some Japanese population in Boston.
When inside a Dunkin, cause of course, picked up some of these Munchkins, aka Timbits. Noice, they are dirt cheap.
I ended up getting like 15 and it only cost like $5 something, which I think i comparable to in Canada at Tims.
We also went inside a 7/11 because why not. I saw that they have some nice hot food to go, just like in Japan, but not really. Pretty cheap.
I couldn’t resist and ended up buying some snacks/second ghetto dinner because while the ramen was good, I needed something else to soak up that broth in my belly, so yea. Above is a Jamaican patty, wanted to see if it lives up to anything; it did not; even Patty King at home is better than this one.
A batch of I think 10 mini tacos. They are pretty much frozen shit of course but for their price I can’t complain. For both of these items it once again came to around just over $5. Wow, at home this shit would be at least like $6-8.
We also saw a Trader Joes in the area so we went in. Interesting, can’t remember the last time I went into a Traders Joes, maybe first time? I can’t remember. You can tell a good number of people here were students shopping for shit. Is school starting already here? Damn I guess they start early then in Aug.
Trader Joes I would describe as a faux farmers market but not really, most of the items on the shelves are their branded shit, so in a way it’s like a real Omega Mart, but for real, noice.
This particular Trader Joes has a wall art saying it’s the smallest Trader Joes around, I don’t know about that but it was an interesting explore.
Ah yes, we made it back to our hotel, the sun has set already and we go back to our room with a nice bucket of ice, as the ice machine is close to our room. We had no ice bucket originally when we left for dinner so we asked someone in the lobby to give us one. When we came back to our room, the bucket was there on the table. Yes, that’s what I call prompt service. Unlike those motherfuckers in Atlanta. Good shit. Most Boston businesses and restaurants close pretty early at like 9pm or even 8pm, which is pretty early in my opinion but then again it is a weekday, so yea, this ain’t Vegas you know, so we packed it in early, nothing else to see really in the night.
Well then, that’s about all for today, it’s just a travel day, a longer than expected travel day filled with waiting and doing nothing but yea, that’s why you don’t plan for stuff on day 0, it’s bound to get ruined due to timing or whatever. Tomorrow is our first full day in Boston, so let’s see what happens next.