Ridin' Solo

With Prue safely on her way to Lock Haven, I had another day in Boston to do with what I wished. After breakfast... And a follow up coffee and cake... I caught the subway to Boston Common for another walk around the park. The weather was great, so it was just a nice atmosphere to be outside soaking up rays (filtered through my SPF30 of course, mum). After this, and some lunch, I just felt like sitting in air-con - so I headed to the cinema that was nearby. I (finally) saw Ted - hilarious. I won't worry about using this blog as a means of film review, but what I did find really neat was that it was filmed (or maybe just set) in Boston, so heaps of the locations were ones I'd been to over the past 48 hours. And as you know... I love to do the "Oh I've been there" thing when watching movies. Haha. You all do well to put up with my annoying traits.

After the film, I headed out to Harvard again to have a bit of a better look at some of the shops in Cambridge. Spent a couple more hours there, and then went back into Boston, where I walked around some more of the South End city area (which Prue and I hadn't seen), found some dinner, and then went home for a lazy night and packing.

Friday, it was on to New York for a 1-night stopover before heading on to Philadelphia (some of these plans evolved at the last minute (which in Dave terms means 1 week prior) - so if any of you are asking "Why is he heading back to New York when he was just there??", you can just shut up.)

After getting in on the train at 10:15, I had to race up to my hotel (Pod Hotel - http://www.thepodhotel.com/ - very cool), dump my bags, and get back to 49th street by 11:59 to enter the daily lottery for front row seats to The Book of Mormon (I'd read about this the night before - high demand shows like this, Wicked, Lion King etc reserve about 20 seats that they sell off in a lottery for $30! - basically nothing considering the seats right behind sell for $500-$600!!). Anyway, after some sweaty "Dave-running" across Manhattan, I arrived there and got my entry in the barrel. 10 minutes later, 300-odd people were waiting to hear if their name would be drawn... The third one out of the barrel - "from Australia... David Barry!!!" I was stoked. Bloody stoked. I went to grab some lunch, and then returned for the show at 2:00pm. I was right behind the conductor, about 1-2m from the actors on stage - wow. I'm glad I saw it from a regular seat (further back), because you take in the whole stage and show, but this front row seat was just a huge complement to the whole experience, and solidified Book of Mormon as my absolute favorite show.

Content, I headed back to the Pod to get changed, and then headed out for some dinner and another viewing of Newsies. What? We've established I'm repetitive and obsessive - surely that doesn't come as a surprise... :)

Saturday morning, I went for a little stroll around midtown east (near hotel) which wasn't an area I had really explored up until now. Neat. Then it was back to Pennsylvania Station to get on the 10:15 to Philadelphia...