Boston does NOT cater for people with suitcases AT ALL. Had to lug my frigging suitcase up half a million flights of stairs. The 'T', as they call it looks terribly run down, dirty, badly organised... They say it's being renovated, but I see absolutely no sign of them doing anythin to it - to be honest, it wouldn't surprise me if that sign saying it's being renovated was put up in the 60s, because it certainly doesn't look as if they've done anything to the place since then (at the latest). The carriages themselves even, are relics of the dark ages - the sort of thing you'd find in the london transport museum, or the science museum, if you were in England - somewhere between the steam train and the old routemaster busses. Inside, it was all orange lino on the floor, that horrific 1970s fake wood lino on the walls etc... urgh. Makes the Northern Line look like the batmobile of transportation systems in comparison. Someone REALLY needs to pour some serious money into the American Transportation system to bring it up to speed. It is in DIRE need of an update. A further gripe about these 'Ts': They have 3 steps... BIG steps up. So little me + big, heavy suitcase + BIG steps + big heat (must've been about 36'C in there at least and airless) = very pissed off and dishevveled Tash.
Got out of the station eventually and was instantly lost - even with a map. Asked a guy who looked like he worked there if I was heading the right way for the Boston Park Plaza hotel - he just rolled his eyes at me and grunted. Charming. Day 1, and already I don't like Boston. It is just like London. I spent however many hundreds of pounds, and flew for 7.5 hours and howeever many thousands of miles to the left, to escape London!!
It is very snooty here - the people - even the staff look at you like you're scum. The girl behind the concierge desk was so falsely nice I felt like saying something. "Thank you, have a nice day" my arse. Ok so I was sweaty and dishevveled, but after lugging a suitcase that weighed more than I did up a hundred and eight flights of stairs, I was hardly going to look like a movie star, now, was I?! Just because I looked like a tramp and probably smelled like one too, there's not need to look down your nose at me! People like me pay your fucking wages, wench!
In a nutshell, Boston thinks it's Old Bond Street - only nuveau, so seriously pretentious. They chose the wrong part of London to emulate - if they chose Camden, I'd be having the time of my life.
A BIT LATER....
Went for a walk for a junk food fix to cheer myself up and did something incredibly stupid, which I'll not go into here incase my mother reads this and flips out - needless to say, if I wasn't in the middle of the sidewalk in Boston surrounded by people, I'd have slapped myself. Anyway. Went to Borders to buy a book to write my travel notes in, so I have a copy here and a hard copy incase... I dunno... the internet vanishes mysteriously without a trace one day. Made friends with one of the guys workin there - he's coming to England soon, so I offered to be his guide of Canterbury if he wanted to go. I can't remember his name just now, but I've facebooked him - as I did Ned, the lovely Harvard guy I met on the bus from Hartford, and who carried my bag down the stairs at the Subway for me - He carried it like it was a feather - it's sick!
The hotel is frankly not worth the money they're charging. For all their snobbery and their put on airs and graces, the place is in serious need of a refurbishment. The walls had this dodgy brown wallpaper, the plaster round the aircon looked like someone had been kicking it in, the were wires hanging down from the underneath of the aircon, there was a pen on the floor by the bed (a non-hotel one) so clearly they hadn't bothered to hoover the floor. The radiator in the bathroom was scabby, the mosaic floor ( I say 'mosaic', it was just small blue/grey and white tiles) was pulling apart in the middle like they'd been in an earthquake or something, grey skirting, then nasty goldy brown wallpaper and where the tiling normally is on a shower wall, it was just a sheet of plastic made to look like tiles... ok, so this saves on cleaning time - no grouting to worry about, but they could at least have stuck the thing on properly - it just looked cheap and nasty in a supposedly posh hotel. The toilet pissed me off, because I spent about 3 mins trying to figure out how to flush it - basically you have to put the seat down to find the handle, and it's this tiny switch. Stupid. Absolutely stupid.
This is also a joke:
Very posh hotel... very small door.
I feel I should also tell you that I have small feet - I'm a size 4 uk (37eu), so that's like what, size 6? 6.5 USA size? I'd love to know how someone on the fat side is supposed to fit through that.
In short, the hotel looked incredibly shabby and not worth the 4* rating it apparently has. They even had a a thingy on the bed saying 'in an effort to aid the environment' beds would not be changed every day, but made. An effort to aid the environment?! in other words, they're too lazy to change the beds - it then went on to say that should youwish to have clean sheets, you need to leave that note on the bed that wants changing.
"HMPF!" is all I have to say to that.
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