Bounding around Boston - Part 2

Before we got the bus to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Museum located on part of the MIT campus in Cambridge we walked past the Prudential Tower we'd just had lunch at the top of.

The bus ride was a very short one and after a little confusion as to where we were going we found the Museum. It was awesome for nerds like us and probably non-nerds too. What sparked my interest in wanting to go there was the large collection of holographic images they have on display but I ended up enjoying everything there. From plasma balls to awesome mechanical objects and an area you can write your own ideas with colouring pencils! Lots of science, technology and design among other things.

I have to apologies to Norngirl for what we did next which was to walk back to the hotel. In my defense it looked a lot closer on the map. Sorry again!

The upside to that walk was the view, a view of the city across the river.

Which also looks fun as an upside down reflection in the river.

The sun set as we walked back and we took it easy in the evening, taking our time over a swim in the pool then out for a long meal (I had a BLT pizza) and drinks.

The next day was the day we flew home but we had it planned so we could make the most of the day.

1st up we checked out then left our luggage with the water taxi company we were going to be travelling with to the airport later in the day.

Next we hopped across town, having a look around as we went.

We called into a few shops for the few remaining gifts we wanted to get for folks back home, a café for lunch, and made our way on the subway out to a place called Stony Brook which has a real old town US feel to it provided by the fun ye olde period looking houses.

Located there is the Samuel Adams brewery who do free tours though a small donation of a couple of dollars to local charities is asked for on the tour itself. Our tour guide was great, I can only describe it as like being taken on a brewery tour by Boston's version of Al Murray - which was brilliant fun - give this dude a pay-rise.

We got to taste the ingredients and then at the end, plenty of the finished product including some speciality lines. Not only that, they let you keep your Sam Adams taster glass. As well as our glasses we left with a new found appreciation for some of the beer.

Back on the subway and enjoying the almost tipsy feeling, we got off the subway and took a look around Boston Public Garden, a large park in the middle of the city.

Once we'd had our scenic fill, we got back on the T to Quincy Market where we'd been the day before.

We had something on our bucket list that we hadn't done yet which was on sale there. With just a couple of hours to go before we needed to be at the airport, we had time to try some clam chowder which was very creamy and tasty.

The trip was over all too soon, time has a habit of keeping ticking but as we'd planned we still had one more thrill, the water taxi. We'd looked at getting the T across to the airport but it just didn't seem as fun and it's always great to have something to look forward to right at the very end of your trip. I'm really glad we did take the water taxi as from the boat we were able to see the city from the water and it's quite the view, a fine way to bid farewell to the city.

As I mentioned at the start of the post, I found Boston to be relaxed and welcoming. The best parts of our trip for me were the Ice Hockey and the museum at MIT, I also very much enjoyed the Sam Adams Brewery tour and the clam chowder. Though Boston seems to sell its tourism on it’s history and that probably works for a US crowd my opinion would be, that like Belfast, it's best assets are where it’s people get on board in creating it’s future. Old and historically significant buildings, churches and boats are a dime a dozen around the world, but exhibits like those at MIT and the friendly feel inside a large sports arena seem increasing unique – at least those that really do it well anyway! The taste and flavours of the city are great and there is loads to do, especially in the surrounding area and a lot more than we could fit into our 1 full day and 2 half days. I’d especially like to revisit the city at a good time for whale watching as I think it’d be awesome. Out of the 3 cities we visited (Washington, New York and Boston) Boston was the most down to Earth and most like being back in the UK but that comes with both a good side and a bad, good in the way it’s non-threatening and functional but not so good in that it lacks some of the real excitement and that almost undefinable life of it’s own that somewhere like New York has in abundance. I really enjoyed Boston and indeed the whole trip, I just hope that one day we can afford to revisit.

Captains Orders Beta

Captains Orders (the infamous drinking game) made a comeback to our house on Monday night as we perched on the edge of our seats to watch the 2009 Star Trek movie.
For once the baddies on the screen were not the most dangerous thing! Like Tribbles these jelly shots appeared to have been breeding since last time and were looking a lot more ominous compared to previous occasions.

This wasn't just one episode with several jelly shots though, this was a film and because of this the rules had to be clarified. The rules were agreed; orders were not to be valid if given by the follically challenged band of Romulans needing anger management classes. Not even Nero himself; we refused to respect his authority. Also, orders were only valid when the captain was giving a direct order to a person/sentient alien and when they were indeed the current acting captain at the time.

So we got stuck into the feature presentation. As you probably know if you've seen it, it's not long before as a viewer you're part of a grand action sequence... filled with orders.
The jelly shots were soon starting to form a queue that was waiting to be consumed. Nine were eaten before the first pause for breath. Thankfully this all or nothing start to the film went from all to nothing and we eventually got a bit of a rest from onset of a case of Jelly-belly that we were self inflicting.

There was then a steady flow of orders with odd breaks here and there between the various captains giving their orders until there came a point where Kirk had us unable to keep up. We tried our best though and most of us had only a small backlog of a couple of shots. The big problem we did encounter - apart from feeling rather full of jelly - was that we ran out of jelly shot. I know right, we were shocked too!

Feeling slightly overwhelmed with Jelly it was an odd feeling of can't give up now but also worrying that this wasn't enough!

So we reverted to non-alcoholic shots of diet coke and kept up until the end. Poetically, the quantity of coke we had on hand lasted perfectly to the last order at the very end of the motion picture.

As the credits rolled and the tipsiness was really kicking in, it didn't take away from the rather worrying/impressive stack of empties.

As such, I have three recommendations when playing this:

Firstly, we are adults in our late 20's and have enough sense to know the damage this much vodka can do, I in no way endorse this as a practice to anyone, shots can be non-alcoholic (*end of health warning*.

Second, if you go the alcoholic route (as well as on your own head be it) - dilute the alcoholic content more than you normally would to suit what you can handle and take into consideration the taste - taking into account you'll need more shots than you expect – more than fifty each., hence having multiple flavours is also a good idea.

The third recommendation applies even to non-alcoholic jelly shots! Don't stuff yourself with food before playing. If you do, when you're on your feet your stomach may feel like its travelling a second behind your actual direction of movement. If this occurs then you've got jelly belly, a belly too full of jelly! Take a break from the shots should jelly belly persist. That's an order.

A visit to Happy Hour at the Brooklyn Brewery

Venturing away from Manhattan and a little off the tourist trail, we ventured into Brooklyn in the hopes of a good evening with lots of beer. This was my experience of Happy Hour at the Brooklyn Brewery.

We got off the subway and climbed the stairs up to the street. It was only early evening but it had been dark since we were at the top of the Empire State Building. When we had made it to street level, we stepped into the softly lit streets of Brooklyn.

The streets in the area we had arrived in reminded me more of home than the jungle of Manhattan. The first thing was that the buildings weren't quite so tall and more importantly the streets were quieter with a slower pace, most notably; less traffic and less people. Once we'd taken a moment to adjust our eyes, we realised we didn't actually know where exactly we were going. Norngirl had printed lots of maps but we hadn't called back to the hotel so we didn't have the one we needed with us. Oops. Not to worry though, Norngirl kinda of knew what we were looking for and with a bit of landmark spotting we picked the direction as being about right and set off to find Camelot; our own very silly place - or at least somewhere we certainly hoped could be after some beer.

We hadn't located the Brewery at the time but we were hungry. We called into a convenience store and bought some snacks that we wouldn't really find at home, a Bean Burrito in my case. Why I bought something containing Kidney beans, when I don't really like them, baffles me, but whatever sauce there was in that thing made it really quite tasty!

We lined our stomachs lined as we walked and before long we turned a street or two and found ourselves in sight of the Brewery. We couldn't tell from the end of the street but the queue outside it kinda gave it away.

We got in line. The accents around us seemed to be more local than those we'd been listening to the rest of the day which had been quite a mix of dialects from around the world. The people in line were also chatting about work, life, sports etc. This wasn't the tourist crowd we'd been around all day. I had the feeling like I was back at Uni, it wasn't a clubbing crowd either, it was the sort of crowd who enjoy a nice drink and chat with their friends - aka - my sort of place!

After a short wait, the doors opened and the line filtered into the building through a check of IDs at the door to make sure we were all 21 or over. Thankfully we still were and made our way inside.

Inside there were some big vats and in front of them some bags of Malt and other beer making ingredients. We were a little confused for a second as there was a queue for a bar but also a queue for a small booth which had a display case of Brooklyn Brewery branded merchandise. The signs soon enlightened us that you buy tokens at the booth then go to the bar with them to get the beers in. We got our tokens and headed to the bar. There was a nice wee selection of Beers and Lagers on tap, from the standard low % Pilsener to a general Larger, to Brown Ale to some nommy high percentage beers... and I mean high percentage, 9.6% and 10.2% alcohol if my memory serves me correctly. The two strong Beers were called the Blast and the Detonation and cost 2 tokens each compared the regular beers at 1 token. Tokens at the time we were $4 but if you got 5 you got a 6th free, so $20 for 6 tokens or $3.33 (Approx £2.10) per drink or $6.66 (Approx £4.20 at the time) for the high percentage ones. I think it was the cheapest we found beer out of anywhere we went in our week in New York.

I started off with a Lager to get warmed up and Norngirl jumped into the deep end with a Blast.
I really like my Ales and Beers so I'm not sure why I began with a Lager and and not with a Brown Ale. Sadly we didn't get a Brown Ale at all that night, it's popular and the barrels had ran dry by the time we had got through the rest of the beers. This was happy hour but happy hour is the event rather than one specific hour of time; by the sounds it's most Fridays of the year from 6-11pm. Thankfully we did try the Brown Ale in a bar later in the week and it was very nice. That night though we gave the rest of them a try and my favourite was certainly the Blast. As Norngirl said in her blog post about this day, she preferred the Detonation Ale. Granted these probably aren't names that breweries have top of their marketing lists in Northern Ireland.

In the world of beers, Theakston's Old Peculiar is my favourite followed by Guinness and I wouldn't say no to a Speckled Hen or a Wells' Banana Bread either. I think that 'the Blast' would come in there after an Old Peculiar on tap in Yorkshire and a Guinness on tap from the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin - so a well positioned 3rd in my overall list. It had a nice rounded flavour to it that wasn't at all over powering for a beer with such a high percentage. I've had a couple of other beers in the past that were of a percentage as high as these and they didn't taste right at all. One of those was a German beer in one of the beer tents of the Christmas market at Belfast City Hall which had 'Santa' in the name somewhere but these in the Brooklyn Brewery were everything that beer wasn't as far as flavour and enjoyment go. The Detonation was nice too, it had a similar but stronger flavour but I just preferred what I felt was the subtler edge with the Blast.

The beer wasn't the only thing our happy few hours in the Brooklyn Brewery had going for it. Many people were sitting at tables and chairs laid out in main part of what was essentially one big room but we had taken up residency on some of the bags of Malt in the thin part of the room by the token booth and doorway, sat with the vats behind us. It was a very chilled atmosphere and although lively, everyone seemed to be able to hear one another talking. In all honesty I can't remember if there was any background music playing or not, I'm going with not but I could be wrong as Norngirl thinks there was, she is usually right. The only negative I can remember from our visit was that later into the evening, the toilets had gone down hill a little in the cleanliness stakes. Apart from that though it was all excellent and we had a nice time chatting away to one another only to be distracted by a few random things:

One random thing - (to me at least) was the arrival of several huge pizza boxes and many other take away packages. As Norngirl explained to me at the time and as I came to find out, unlike in stingy UK and Irish establishments, New York is very open when it comes to ordering take out to a place like this or to your hotel room, I was ever so slightly envious and intrigued by this.

Brooklyn Brewery Cat photo by Norngirl

The other random thing - was a cute cat which seems to be very much at home in the Brewery. I would think probably a helpful aid in making sure no pesky mice sneak in off the street to nom all the ingredients. The kitty seemed very used to the noise and all the attention. Other than mingling around the feet of people drinking their beer, it was jumping up on to the bags and onto the desk/counter of the tokens booth, positioning itself into prime stroking locations. I love cats and was eager to pet this one, as was everyone else - staff included. The kitty wasn't going to let anyone go home disappointed though saying that it did try to nom a bit of take away from one of the door men but the dude wanted the food more so it didn't get a stroke from him, more of a shooing away.

Enjoying our beer, the evening got away from us and at around 10.15 we decided we best head on back across the river to find ourselves a proper evening meal closer to our hotel, so sadly and with a heavy heart we had to leave the Brewery and its merriment behind.

Happily tipsy, we wandered back to Bedford Street Subway station and caught a subway back to Manhattan. We got off a few stops short of the hotel where Norngirl knew of a few restaurants she had heard good things about with her pre-trip research. We ended up in an Italian restaurant where we ate some very nice pasta which we washed down with some water and a carafe of wine (that's 1ltr of wine, or pretty much 2/3rds of a normal bottle each). It probably wasn't the brightest idea given our evenings alcohol consumption up to that point but nevertheless we drank most of it. It was a very-very-merry stroll back to the hotel. We hadn't gone past the point of no return like you'd see some people doing on the streets of Belfast on a Saturday night as we know our limits even if we do push the boundaries now and again. That night we were just to that very happy tipsy place where life is good and where it's hard to not find things funny but still in a place where we can be polite, work out the correct tip, walk in relatively straight lines and find our way around places we've never been before. We're happy drunks rather than depressives or angry ones you'll be glad to hear. We made it back before we knew it and jumped into bed.

My comeuppance to mixing the grain and the grape and having a brilliant night out was a pretty heavy hangover when I awoke the next morning. I ended up trying to remedy this with a lettuce leaf, a dollop of Chicken Mayo sandwich filling (ordered in a hungover daze) and a walk in Central Park but before I get onto that, I'd just like to pass on some fine advice from an American great and true hero. Some advice that may help you decide if you want to follow in our footsteps with a similar night out in the Empire State.

"To alcohol! The cause of... and solution to... all of life's problems " – Homer Simpson

So to summarise, the Happy Hour at Brooklyn Brewery was great and highly recommended. Having a carafe of wine in the same night is not such a good idea for keeping your liver in good condition or for feeling fresh and awake and trying to order a normal breakfast the next morning. Drink wisely my awesome, non-judgemental, kind-hearted blog readers, always drink responsibly.