Speedrun with Me!
I travel good, fast, and cheap. People tell you that you can only do two in that trio, but I try for all three on my adventures.
Maybe you like to travel like I do: cheap, vigorous, and highly planned out. I work two jobs where I’m on my feet 12 hours a day, 3 to 6 days per week, and pop up the next day to do it all again. I work a lot so I don’t mind a little physical work when I play.
I’m 30-something, Oregon-born, I’ve got autistic focus, a constitution built from years of food and beer writing. My natural frugality gives me an eye sharp for deals. Should I mention I’m the president of a nonprofit that works on financial literacy for under-funded educators? Yes. I should.
If you want to vacation like I vacation, you have to be a bit mad.
But perhaps this kind of crazy interests you: I just went to Boston from Seattle and back, saw the bulk of the city, and only spent $950 to do it. I put over 20 miles on my $35 tennis shoes, probably should’ve caught a cold and definitely should have been hungover because I managed to try out food and drinks from over 20 locations.
I’m inviting you to come with me to discover a world of cheap, exhausting, and incredibly rewarding travel.
Here we go!
Day 1, Seattle to Boston
Saturday; It's remarkably easy to get to the airport in Seattle. It’s a one-hour LINK train trip from Capitol Hill to get to Seatac. I can precheck the day before and get through the security checkpoint in about 20 minutes. Me and my one carryon are at the gate about 30 minutes before boarding starts, just in time to mosey about the other gates and look for a good deal on a pint, or at least what can constitute a good deal at an airport.
I cringe at the $12 price for an airport beer but I’m thirsty and at this point, it won’t break my budget. I’m sure that’s what these outlets are counting on.
This is my first trip of this kind – a baseline for the next one. Leaving on a Saturday to speedrun a city so I can be back to work Tuesday morning seemed like a novel idea, but here I am at the African beer garden in Seatac, a throwback to when Mac and Jack’s brewery was still on the rise. I spend so much time musing over their African ambers and trying to remember how they were connected to Africa that I lose track of time.
I misjudge the time it takes me to get from the pub back to my gate, but manage to sneak in with the last of the boarders.They’ve got an Oregon-made old fashioned in a can that was likely made overly strong for its container size, which is just my lucky day. It’s the same abv as straight whiskey, but in a 100 ml can. After some quick math I realize it's about 2 1/2 shots for $13. I pour it over ice and gradually sip it over time. I had read that
Hostels can be hit or miss, especially in a dorm setting, but that’s a big part of their appeal. No one wants to spend any extended time in a hostel. You sleep, wake up, chew on some soggy bread and butter, and get your ass out to see the place you’ve spent all that effort traveling to. I heard of a hostel in Prague where the heat was turned up to about boiling due to an Australian couple of brothers who couldn’t leave the room at a sleepable 70 degrees F.
I didn’t connect my phone to the plane’s wifi for the bulk of the flight, but the book I brought on ritual witchcraft of the British Isles didn’t disappoint. It also didn’t hurt my feelings that I was the only guest in the three seats next to me. First class and extra legroom don’t have that much appeal to someone who lays down at about 6 ft 5 and hasn’t had any decent legroom in a vehicle since he was 16. Unless they wanted to open up whatever the equivalent of the pickup cab of the back of the plane is for me, I just cross my legs under the seat and relax as best I can. I’m on vacation now so there is no need to stress or fidget.
We roll into an empty airport at about midnight local time, the local buses are ready to take us downtown or to the nearest train station. A city where the public transportation goes throughout the night is a welcome change. I don’t see anyone tap cards or show bus passes to the driver as people enter so I follow suit. The bus takes me a few blocks away from my hostel and I find the city surprisingly stirring. Cars are driving around in the non-parallel streets that make up downtown Boston. It looked a bit confusing from a map perspective, but I knew that as long as I kept the whereabouts of the water on one side of me that it would be fairly easy to navigate my way to my lodgings by about 12:30 a.m.
On inquiring if there was anything around there to drink, they directed me to a few dance clubs next door. I pass by a few lines of people looking to get into clubs with a mix of bouncers and women dressed in very short black dresses that I assume are employees used to draw in a respectable crowd. Further down the block I find the thing I’m looking for, a standard American pub where I can sidle up to the bar and get a side of fries and a few life saving pints of a non-descript nature. After a few pints and snack fries, I’ve wrung up a $35 bill and am ready to attempt some sleep at about 2 a.m.
The hostel has a nice smattering of private lockable bathrooms on each floor that make it easy enough to change, brush teeth, and do what needs to be done to get ready to sleep. I’m told that I was in the third bed, but upon entering only to find darkness and not wanting to turn on lights to figure things out, I stand in the darkness until my eyes adjust to see the outlines of dorm beds. I find a bottom bunk that appears uninhabited so I take off my shoes and socks, stuff my phone into one of the shoes behind the socks, and put them behind my one semi-ratty duffel back with my weekends’ worth of supplies in it under the bunk. The pillows provided are nice enough and the blanket feels soft and smells clean. Of course the bed is about 5 inches too short for me, but that’s just life for a tall person so that doesn’t interfere with me drifting off to sleep within a few minutes.
I paid $311 for my roundtrip ticket thanks to Google Flights, $180 for 2 nights at this hostel, and am about $70 deep in food and drink to get here, but I’ve arrived in Boston for my first time. So it begins!
Boston has some great pubs. They don’t have to be of a special theme or variety. If they know how to make an $8 basket of fries that taste good and have some in-house dipping sauce recommendations that they’ll share with you, they likely know how to make everything else pretty well too.
If you can find a cocktail with 2.5 shots of liquor in it for $13 on a plane, you have found yourself a good deal. Learn how to convert between ml and ounces and know your ABV strengths.
Don’t worry about the hassle of driving to an airport if you are, like me, carrying just a single bag for a few day’s trip.
Don’t sleep on airport snacks that you might be able to share with your fellow passengers. Most people will think you’re crazy and refuse, but the ones that accept will be your alibis for life, much like the people at bars who will accept your shared pub snacks
Day 2: Wake, Walk, Drink, Tour
My plan was to use my still-fresh West Coast state of mind to wake up before dawn, find the Old Ironside ship, jump the fence guarding her, swim out to her bow, and sing the national anthem as the sun rose.
The desire came from the old tradition of polar bearing in my teenage years. At summer camp we would show our camp pride by waking up at the crack of dawn, wading into the ice cold lake up to our necks, singing a song, and rushing back to warm up. It only makes sense, then, that doing so again with a ship emblematic of patriotism would have the same effect.
But … I woke up at about 8 a.m. local time, so I instead went on a quest to find the best cannoli in town.
I took some advice from a coworker and plotted my course to two locations in Little Italy; Mike’s, and Modern Pastry. It turns out I'm more of a team Mike’s guy then a Modern, but I didn’t find a bad one in the mix.
The hostel was situated on the border of downtown and Chinatown. A lot of cities have started dubbing the same-named towns “International” even though most of the street names are written in Chinese, but to each their own. I set out for the Boston Commons as it looked on the map to be a landmark that separated myself from some pastries.
Boston Commons is a beautiful park with history, statues, and pigeons galore. As I trundled up to the Southeast corner near the Boylston Street station, I happened to be joined by throngs of people in brightly colored shirts, marching around the corner together. Apparently this was the day of Project Bread’s Walk for Hunger, the nations’ oldest walking pledge drive. The park was getting its full use today. A smattering of bands and tents were getting set up to raise awareness for bread, or perhaps money for hunger, or maybe people were just modeling their new volunteer shirts of the year. Their nonprofit has a mission to end hunger, something they have been working on since 1969, the same year we landed on the moon.
In walking around the Commons, it occurred to me that I was knee-deep into the historic Freedom Trail, another large item on my list of things to do in Boston. After a quick glance at some of the park signs, I realized that not only was I on the right track to pastry heaven, but the Freedom Trail would take me right to it. What a wonderful coincidence to kill two birds with one cannoli. Though as I eyed the pigeons of the Commons eyeing me with malicious intent as they guard the old Granary graveyard,
I didn’t spend an immersive amount of time on each landmark. Just enough to take a picture, read a plaque, and amble forward. On one stop was a man on a horse laid out on a statue of bronze, another in iron, then another in more bronze. I caught patches of conversations of tour guides touting up the near-fame of anyone living in the Boston area in the Colonial times. “Here lies a man who was writing a letter to his mother that might have referenced Paul Revere’s famous ride, but sadly the writer was dead by lightning before he could finish the letter..” It seems that the potential of meta fame is not a new invention for our generation.
On I went to Little Italy where I was pleasantly surprised to find both Mike’s and Modern Pastry just across the street from each other. They are cash-only establishments, but luckily I work at a bar so I had plenty on me. If there are a great many options, I will always choose the simplest thing if I haven’t been somewhere before. I figure, if they can't do the simple foods well, they ought not be trusted with the more complex ones. A chocolate dipped, ricotta filled, almond sprinkled cannoli from each was what I went with. For about $5 each, they didn’t disappoint. I favored Mike’s a bit more, but I’d happily go back to either. I’m told Modern is a bit fresher, while Mike’s is a bit more traditional, but the point is to try them both, and if at all possible, while sharing it amongst friends.
Following the remainder of the Freedom Trail up to the Old North Church seemed reasonable from there. Being that it was a Sunday, going on about 11:30 a.m., on Cinco de Mayo, there was even a live service going on. Singing could be heard from inside. A staff member of the church was positioned outside so as to only allow members of the flock entrance.
A bit north of there was the Washington Street Bridge which was just engulfed with no less than 10,000 seagulls in the sky. They seemed strangely drawn to the rooftop of the Residence Inn on the opposite bank which gave pause to consider what might have been being prepared in their kitchens to draw such an adoring fan base. As I rounded the corner past the echoes of caws behind me, I found myself at my last leg of the trail, and in front of Old Ironsides, AKA the USS Constitution, herself.
A ship like this three-masted frigate made of American oak is strong indeed. It was lucky that she was open to prying eyes and wandering tourists that day. American oak takes time to grown and possesses a very tight, strong grain. That exceptionally hard wood can take cannon fire, and, might I say, a good place for bourbon to rest.
In finding myself on the deck of this fine ship, now surrounded by a mix of international tourists, uniformed military, and many more seagulls that I would have preferred, the courage required to sing the national anthem loud and true escaped me. I sang it, for sure, but maybe just a bit more than a whisper as I gazed out into the harbor and thought about the courage it would have taken our patriotic forefathers to have held their heads high while riding this ship into glorious battle and potential death.
Next, a lovely walk to find a lunch bagel up near Harvard. The walk from the USS Constitution to Bagelsaurus, one of the places recommended by my Pa that actually interested me. I planned several stops on the way over to said lunch shop, though, including several local breweries.
As I made my way past the many small shops along the way, most of which would only seat some 15-20 people at a time, I was glad to be in very casual dress apparel. A simple hoodie, some self-made shorts I had to cut from a longer pair of slacks, and a pair of light but sturdy tennis shoes combined for a great most-weather outfit while doubling as a warning to would-be robbers that this guy “has no money to take.”
It also seemed I had walked into a suburb of Boston, Somerville, on a special weekend where they were showcasing several of their open artist’s galleries. I moseyed on into a gallery behind a Whole Foods where about a dozen artists were showing their works. A series of wood carvings and pressings caught my eye and it so happened that the artist, Annie Silverman, was selling a limited edition of her new book, “A Wood Block Index.” For a very reasonable $40. As I am a collector of limited edition art and prints, the book seemed like a great memento of my time here. She gladly agreed to mail it back to me in Seattle for a tenner, and the deal for my souvenir was done.
As with many intentions though, one must accept the risks of a failure. The bagel place was, sadly, sold out for the day. Another nearby pizza place, highly recommended, was also closed and looked to be abandoned.
However, Aeronauts, a local brewery on my list of must-see breweries, was open and in full swing. They too were showcasing local art in their parking lot in the form of locally-made clothing and indie games. Inside I met one of the brewers who was hunkered over a tulip glass of something Belgian. I ordered the taster tray.
A taster tray is a great way to get to know a brewery. For about $20 with tip tastes that amount to about a pint and a half, it’s an interesting way to spend some time. I went from there to Lamplighter Brewery, a truly forgettable brew pub that seemed inhabited only by grad students staring at their laptops. If ever you find yourself in a brewery where no one is having a conversation with a person near them, just pack up your things and leave. Once I got home, I had to check a map, my Untapped account, and my credit card statement to remember the place. The beer was probably fine, but I was looking for action.
I found it at Cambridge Brewery, just after their 35th anniversary, about as old as craft breweries get in the US. Showing up to a brewery the day after their anniversary party is a good day to find a lot of rare and interesting things on tap. This place was known as one of the first breweries in the US to brew a Belgian Tripel, a style known for its light body, strong ABV, and fresh springtime nature. A slew of strong Belgians and barrel-aged stouts later and me and the only other patron in the room were in an agreed-upon debate about the reasons for, and the solutions to, the rent being too damned high in the various cities we had been. Had I been in the night previous, it seems I would have been in some pretty lively company. Another $20 but for some supremely interesting brews. Maybe some of the best investments of the trip so far. The $9 I paid for some very tiny mignonette oysters was not the best investment, but that opinion could be because of my spoiled-Seattle excellent oyster access. Where I reside, you might pay $2/shell for some fresh caught blue point big boys, and this was not that.
In attempting to visit the grounds of Harvard and MIT I found that I could not, in fact, park a car in a yard that was closed due to a protester encampment. As for MIT, I found a rather nice faceless corporate pub called A4 which had some life-saving garlic knots resembling more of a Texas toast with a bit of garlic butter than a knot, but lifesaving it was, nonetheless.
Somewhere in the midst of all this walking, and a little of this drinking, I get a reminder that I’m taking a guided food tour, courtesy of Secret Food Tours, the following day. I also got a notification that I should bring cash to tip the tour guide, something I had planned to do anyway. I still found the email to be in poor taste. If you are going to charge $110 for a 4-hour tour, just pay your people in a way that they aren’t going to be reliant on tips to ensure their happiness. We (the other 8 and myself) are only paying for about $35 worth of food, and after the cost of doing business, that should leave the guide plenty of margin to pay them a fair wage to conduct the tour.
At about 8 p.m. the rains started for the night the red line brought me from MIT back downtown, as all trains in Boston will take you. I ended up at Legal Sea foods, another highly recommended place for chowder, but this recommendation came from a bit of internet research. My goal was to get to Democracy Brewing, closing at 8 p.m, but having arrived at 7:45 p.m. their doors were locked. As a server and bartender many times over in my life, I can understand the reasoning behind. Even so, my first cup of chowder in Boston at Legal Seafood was a rousing success, paired alongside a local hazy IPA made by Nightshift. The combo cost around $23 and was worthwhile.
A quick stop by the local liquor store reminded me that it was cold, rainy, and Cinco de Mayo, so I settled back to my hostel with a $10 flask of clear tequila, poured like a degenerate, into my water bottle so as to hide the fact. I sat back in the lounge, taking notes of the past 12 hours of adventuring and charging my phone while I poured through the dozens of photos I've taken. After finishing the bulk of my flask and heading over to the only establishment I would visit twice on my trip, the 4th Wall Bar, just a few businesses down from the hostel, that I had visited the night before. I settled in at about 1 a.m. for a nice cheap tallboy of a local $4 Narragansett beer. It took me more than a few sips to figure out how to pronounce it, but it washed the end of the day away nicely.
Off to “bed” and by bed I mean rolling on to the bottom bunk of a strangely comfortable bed, even while in a semi-crouching position and with little more than a thin blanket. Six hours of sleep went by with no problem at all, though I would have to mind to not drink too much out of my water bottle as it might not do to well as to hydrate me as much as I’d like it to.
Lessons of the day; Skip guided history tours, all the information you want is on their website. Just go for a walk through several graveyards and by churches while briefly pondering life’s great pastries.
Local art, especially a limited edition of something you just happen to find while wandering around, is always better than that shirt, hat, or otherwise that you’ll never remember to wear anyway. Support your local artists while they’re alive.
If you find yourself at an old brewery or restaurant that is celebrating an anniversary, show up and celebrate with them. You’ll be greatly rewarded in substance and culture. If you find yourself at a pub where no one is striking up a conversation with those around them, leave.
Prepare for a drink where there are no drinks allowed, as needed. Some quiet reflection after a long day should always be a part of the plan.
DAY 3: Walk, Eat, Drink in Boston
Monday morning met me at 7 a.m. local Boston time with most of my checklist crossed off and only a few places to walk. It rained through the night leaving clear blue skies and a truly beautiful Boston in the springtime. I ventured down to the second floor from my fifth, to find the kitchen alive and buzzing with my fellow travelers, finding bread, juice, and the various cheap pastries that one might find in any hostel on earth.
It dawned on me that I hadn’t actually bought orange juice for myself in several years, so a glass of that seemed to do just the trick. They had some various varieties of bread and bagel with some options for milk and cereal on the take. I opted for some raised wheat with some of the finest sweet cream butter that Boston is particularly well known for. Myself and my fellow diners engaged in some brief conversation about how the Hahvad yahd was closed, but beyond that, we mostly spoke of toast.
My goal for the day was to be whisked away on the aforementioned grand $110 dollar food tour of Little Italy which would include most of the classic food items on my list, to wrap up just before my departure back home.
But in waking up four hours ahead of the 11 a.m. tour time, I had time to visit a few parts of Boston I hadn’t seen so I trekked to Fenway Park. The original plan was to move along the Charles, but a line of upper class buildings caught my eye and I ended up walking down Commonwealth Avenue. Something about this walkway was delightful though, no bicyclists allowed. If only Seattle could be so sensible. On walking through another garden of nearly-famous statue people with stories I’m sure were nearly worth remembering, I found myself in front of Fenway and its accompanying alleyway. The alley surrounding had a similar feel to my home court SafecoField, but not having a strict background in stadium neighborhood construction. There was some interesting artwork to take in at the art school next door, a placement that must have at some point been criticized for putting jocks and the nerds within such close proximity to each other.
I only found out a bit later that I had walked past Mighty Squirrel Brewing, a brewery that was open in the morning (there were surprisingly few), and was pleased to find one of what I had seen dozens of around town so far, a Dunkin Doughnuts. I supposed that a cheap bit of coffee and cream couldn’t hurt at the moment, now being about 9 a.m. What they called a Triple Cream, a medium iced coffee, cream, with no sugar, only ran about $3.50, likely $7 in Seattle, and served miraculously well for what ailed me. I took it and walked myself over to the Charles so that I could catch a view of MIT and Boston University from the other bank.
If ever you get the chance to be in Boston in the springtime the day after a big rain, do try to head down to the Charles River and the Esplanade. It was as beautiful a sight as one could hope for within city limits. I noticed that a duck was having some trouble splashing about in the water and, upon further inspection, I found a large mouth bass, some foot and a half long, nuzzling the shore not a few feet from where I was standing. I tried peering over a bit closer to see the monster, but with a crack I found a broken meth pipe under my shoe and realized then that the pathway near, but not too near the river was probably the best course to take.
There were signs, a bit further down the path, that explained that the old infrastructure of the city would cause a bit of sewage dump into the river after a long rain, which likely explained the fish so close to shore. Still, I’m not unfamiliar with the taste of bass, so I suppose one with a bit of meth in its diet wouldn’t be so far out of the realm of my dietary experiences.
On realizing the time, and that I had to get from where I was to the promise of food, I quickly left behind the cherry blossom breeze of the Esplanade and headed back to the Boston Market to meet up with a group of seemingly affluent tourists gathering around our cute red-haired opera singing tour guide named Jayden.
We gathered at our designated meeting spot, me seemingly the last to find the person in charge. We passed around a device that let us sign in remotely, even though we were all there in person. We headed to our first stop, a series of small statues built into the road depicting the garbage that gets littered around town on a daily basis. We lightly stepped over the brassed debris to reach our first restaurant, the Union Oyster House for a cup of chowder and a bit of bread and butter.
This oyster house claims to also have been the birthplace of the toothpick, but I have been at far too many bragging restaurants and pubs in the world to believe that. In the 50s there were a slew of restaurant locations that claimed to be the birthplace of many a casual thing, far enough in the past to be buried in anyone’s’ collective memory. It's clever advertising, for sure, to say you were the first in something that no one, at the time, can claim otherwise for or have any real proof against, and I suppose it’s a fun pub debate to have anyway.
The chowder checks out. Maybe a little better tasting after a 12-hour hike while it starts to rain outside, but still a solid bowl. I wouldn’t say that Legal and the Oyster house have discernibly different chowders, but they were both pretty solid. I added a pint of the house Colonial beer to my lunchtime chowder though, a Boston brewery beer only available at this location. An amber red brew made with molasses, supposedly just like Thomas Jefferson used to brew.
We made our way from the Oysters over to the main part of the Boston market where we had our “secret dish,” a bevy of assorted spiced nuts that you might find at any open air market. Good snacks all around. It gave our tour guide time to find us a long table to gather around the 12 of us while she plied us with baked beans and lobster rolls. To the palate of several of the members of the group, the lobster rolls were passed aside with claims that they’d only prefer the flavors of crab Dungeness and Alaskan king. I was surprised to see so many preferring the crustaceans of my homeland, but with prices of lobster rolls reaching near $65 apiece, I was happy to take some extra seconds for myself. A pricey bit of food that I would not have otherwise gotten for myself. Lobster diving in Maine is still on my list of to-dos, but I think that buying shellfish is better left off.
On we went to the so-called triangle along Paul Revere’s house, a noteworthy square near several more of the monuments of the city. Jayden brought us some classic cheese pizza from Regina’s, not so named after a person, but from the Latin. Pizza has such an interesting reputation in every city. This had a good crust, lightly charred as pizza crust should be, with a rich cheese and an herbal tomato sauce. A classic slice, if ever there was one. Is there anything more winning than a lovely opera-singing tour guide, pizza and other delicious food stuffs and tidbits presented amid local culture and historical sites? No, there is not.
We wrapped up our trip at Modern Pastry, a place that I chose for myself and was happy that someone else chose for me as well. Besides the 4th Wall Pub, it would be the only place I’d visit twice in Boston. We partook in the obligatory group photo as our opera singer texted us several other locations we might find interesting, a tour guide using technology to reinforce interest. We gradually passed her a smattering of bills for a tip, with no knowledge of if we were being cheap or brave. From there we all went the ways we were going to go.
I went from there to the Boston Brewery for a taster in front of the Quincy Market. It had a more modern feel to it, full of industrial parts and a hidden deep basement. As a former beer and food writer I used to be a part of groups that would be given tours of historical beers by the owner, Jim Koch, of the more interesting beers unavailable to the public, but available only for those that might drip those rare beers onto the pages of our various magazines and journals. For some reason, I, a random passerby, ran into the billionaire brewery owner of international acclaim when I walked into one of his pubs. I was treated like any other member of the public. A hand stamp upon proof of legal age that would not come off except after several hand washings and a disdainful look from the bartender who has had to explain the difference between an IPA and a Hefeweizen at least 100 times per day.
I asked one of the four bartenders serving the 8 guests if they had ever taken the ferry over to the airport before, as Google maps was now instructing me to do so. They told me they had always wanted to, but hadn’t.
I was able to make it to the gate with just enough time to have one last local Boston $10 pint with tip from Cisco Brewing which would prepare me for another over-proofed and underpriced old fashioned a couple of hours later on the flight. I lifted up off the ground knowing I’d be home in time for bed. Hopped on the Seattle Link to get me back to my Capitol Hill neighborhood in time to go to bed by 11 and to be at work at 7am the next day.
A great first trip for the series!
Solid trip, $963 total price round trip, with 20% tip
Lessons learned from my last day
History and technology are odd bedfellows. Boston’s walk signals are all of different ages by decades and I could not figure out what was the original point of build.
A place with an included meal, if just a simple one, can start many adventures, even if you don’t eat the meal
Sometimes a missed beer in the morning can make way for an even better coffee.
If you can afford a lobster or a crab, consider yourself lucky. But if you’re with me and in need of a crab, expect that we’ll be heading to the nearest ocean to catch it fresh.
