East coast, around Boston
·2 mins
Last year, we traveled to Europe for a few days around my birthday in May. As much as I wanted to go back this year, we couldn’t because of some visa issues. So, we came to the east coast instead.
- We had a rocky start as we flew into Boston.
- The Pacific Northwest area witnessed a spectacular show of northern lights right when we were in flight. (What coincidence!) The view was so great that, if we were home, we’d just have to step out to see all kinds of colors - green, purple etc.
- I made a mistake in the rental car reservation: since the flight was overnight, I started the reservation one day early. So, the car that I had booked - a BMW SUV - was no longer available by the time we reached to pickup. I then had to shell out $300 more, on top of the original $1200, for a BMW sedan. Fortunately, the smaller car (barely) worked out fine for us.
- Our first few days were in Acadia National Park.
- The tourist season hadn’t begun yet, so a few activities weren’t available. Still, we got to enjoy fantastic views from Cadillac mountain, Sand Beach and other points in the park. Bar Harbor was nice too.
- We took a boat ride where the tour guide educated us about Maine and its fishing culture.
- Then a couple of days, including my birthday, in Salem. As a pleasant surprise, Salem turned out to be a quirky witch town.
- Next, we made Hyannis our base and spent a day each in Nantucket Island, Martha’s Vineyard and Provincetown. Nantucket was wet and windy but I liked the small town experience in all three places.
- We then spent a day in Newport, Rhode Island. The highlights were a visit to a fantastic car museum and a couple of Chateau of Versailles style historical houses.
- Last, we spent a couple of days in Boston. We didn’t do a lot there but we enjoyed the company of a few friends who were with us almost all the time, so that was refreshing.
- On personal front:
- I had lobster rolls on three occasions and those were a novel experience.
- I did a lot of side projects around self-hostring. For instance, I got a cheap VPS (i.e. virtual private server) and installed Headscale on it. My Jellyfin server back home gave us grief, probably because there was a lot of distance between us, so I explored some alternatives.
- I enjoyed uninterrupted time with the kiddo.