Massachusetts

I'm in Marlborough, Massachusetts for a few days this week, after a weekend in Boston. More accurately, I'm sitting at a table in the Embassy Suites, which are very nice in that never-unpleasantly-surprised chain hotel way.

Last night was Snakes On A Plane. Everyone else went on Friday — Elaina originally proposed the trip in honour of my birthday, but we ducked out last-minute in order to catch a redeye to Boston. We couldn't very well go back to California without the experience, so we saw it… and it was awesome.

Granted, awesome in the way that MGD is an awesome beer — it makes no claims of being highbrow, for example — but enormous fun nonetheless. I particularly appreciated the way they worked their way through the list entitled “places people can be bitten by snakes”, and unselfconsciously rewarded the viewer's basest desires and expectations of a 70s disaster movie. (I even found it difficult to precisely place things temporally; the main character is clearly listening to an iPod at the start of the film, but the stewardesses are all wearing flares, and the aircraft is hardly decorated à la mode.)

Prior to the quiet, slightly more rural Marlborough were Boston and Cambridge proper. Driving in Boston is not nearly so nasty as I'd heard. We did, however, overhear a group of young women discussing the topic. One mentioned a sage piece of wisdom: “if you're driving and for one moment think you're going the right way, immediately make a U-turn”. This is entirely correct — we wasted a fair amount of time tracking back after roadworks and diversions put us travelling the correct way on I-90… one junction past our destination, and getting no nearer.

The coffee, on the other hand, is worse than is touted. At a café on Newbury, Café Ciao Bella, a waiter responded to Elaina's order of an Americano with “that's the one that's just coffee, right?”, and my latte was scalded. The Dunkin' Donuts drip coffee I damn with faint praise — “it's OK”, “pretty good”, I say. It's also absolutely impossible to eat healthily out here. It's sad that our TGI Friday's before the movie was not the most unhealthy place I've eaten so far.

Places of note on Sunday were Sonsie, home of a very quick but very nice mango mojito, and an unexpected but actually rewarding trip to H&M. (Yes, in a weekend break on the other side of the country we managed to go shopping at, of all places, Marshalls and H&M.)

It's very nice to see rain, interesting grey clouds, and deciduous trees; a far cry from California's uniform, unbroken blue skies and “crap trees”. The rain makes the choice of a convertible rental — a crimson Chrysler Sebring GTC — a rather poor one. It was a free upgrade, though, so I could hardly turn it down. I will note for the record that this is the second US-made rental car I've had (the other being a Pontiac Grand Am), and they've both been utter pieces of shit. This one is limited in internal features to speed, fuel, revs, oil temperature, and time readouts. It has well-thought out features like a button to open the roof and all four windows at once… with a counterpart to close the roof, but leave you to wind up the windows yourself. The car has nine thousand miles on the clock, and already the rear suspension creaks. Still, better than a mid-range Chevy rental… if ‘better’ is the right word.

On Saturday, Elaina treated me to an utterly wonderful dinner at Bambara. I have taken copious notes in anticipation of a humorous parody post, but I will observe that the Chilean red, and the maple-cured pork it accompanied, were very good, while the 1986 Colheita port was sublime. (I'm retrospectively very tempted by the steak frites….)

But, for now… back to work.

Posted at 2006-08-21 09:30:53 by Richard • Link to Massachusetts
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