27 Dec, Wednesday - The End of the Tour in Boston and back to New York

In the morning, we toured Boston. Boston is where many of the top universities are located and we visited two of them. First was Harvard University and the campus ground is really beautiful. It is so funny that Harvard University is actually located in the town called Cambridge. Make us wonder if Cambridge University is located in Harvard town Then the tour guide told us an interesting thing about the Harvard Statue. No one actually know how Harvard looked like, this statue is just how a student thought he might look like.
As there still some time, we walked around the edge of Harvard University. We went into Au Bon Pain, a bakery chain store and found it selling Krispy Creme original donuts. The donut was quite disappointing, I guessed the speciality of this store wasn't the donuts.
After Harvard University, we visited Masschusette Institute of Technology or MIT for short. MIT is big and so is their school fee - US$46k for a year! You must be either rich or to have a scholarship to get in.

The above building is their auditorium, very nice curved structure. This is what I called a nice artistic building. The nicest part about MIT building is probably the pillars. Tall, huge and looks majestic.
After that we visited the John Hancock Tower. It is actually famous as it was designed by I.M Pei (a China man and 1 of the famous architect) and it's really a smart design. The design is very futuristic and it is set in a part of the town where all the buildings are old so as to show the blend of old and new. In fact, it is built just beside the oldest church and the church can be seen in the reflection of the building... cool right...
We then visited the Massachusetts State House... The top of the dome is actually plated with real gold! How rich the state is.. The Freedom Trail also starts here (3rd picture below). This trail is a red bricked line that brings you around the historical sites of Boston. Pretty cute eh...
We then headed over to Quincy Market for lunch. Quincy Market is really a wonderful place! There's a wide variety of food there, from boston lobster roll to boston pizza and we were so spoilt for choice...
I settled for swordfish kebob with buttered rice in the end and it was super delicious (5th picture). I have not eaten fish for a super long time since I started this tour. It was so good, maybe because I never remember eaten swordfish before.

6th picture was the friend we made in NY.

After that it was goodbye to boston and a long drive back to NY. We arrived back in NY around 7+pm and that's the end of our 8 days tour. Overall i will say that the tour is okay as it was more of a cultural trip. And for the price of US$699, we got to stay in hotels like marriot, hilton and we visited over 10 cities in 2 countries.

The trip was very much touch and go, in the sense that we didn't stay at each city long enough to really explore it in depth and the bus journey was pretty long at times. However, we had to agree that going on tours were more suitable for our pockets and our convenience. Imagining doing free and easy, I think the luggages would have killed us. Anyway, it was a good tour.

Back to New York

We dropped off at Chinatown and took a taxi to Charlene's place. Charlene is becky's secondary good friend and we will be staying at her place in NY for a week. Saved alot of money or accomodation. However, we were supposed to stay elsewhere but New York University had some dispute with Charlene over her hostel contract. She had to stay 1/2 semester more before moving to elsewhere but she wasn't satisfied with her previous hostel and wanted to move out. In the end, she had to stay in another hostel and she is current staying with 2 other room mates who had went home. So becky and I will bunk in and there's also another friend of Charlene, Kelvin who is staying together.

We went out for dinner together at this indian restaurant but I didn't eat as I had was very full from the swordfish lunch.
After the dinner, we took the subway to Rockefeller centre. My first impression of NY: dirty. (the subway stinks, rubbish everywhere and the buildings are dirty), crowded (after being in Victoria for 4 mths, finally i am back to a city where there's night life and many people... the subway is open 24hrs so it's convenient)

We went to see the famous giant christmas tree and all the Christmas decoration... The xmas tree was so beautiful - big and all lighted up! We then walked over and took photos of St. Patrick Church which looks pretty gothic to me.(5th picture below)

That's the Rockefeller Center.