July 20, 2024 - Canadian Cruise Vacation Day 1 - Rochester NY to Boston

Though there haven't been any hikes lately, there have been other recent activities.  A coworker of Brian's became aware of a kitten that was abandoned near a grocery store.  We went to visit this very cute little blonde kitten and Brian was instantly charmed.  So now we head off on our long planned cruise and return to move our new feline friend in with us. 

Thankfully, I took Friday off to prep for the cruise.  I did a little cruise prep but mostly I did kitty prep.  We decided to try having the litter box be in our master bedroom closet this time instead of the small bedroom office where I work almost every day.  This required emptying the master bedroom closet of all the clothes and blankets etc that were previously in it.  I turned my energy up to 11 and consolidated as many random little boxes (mostly of DVD's and Blu-Rays) into fewer, easier to stack boxes which required a quick trip to U-Haul to get some more boxes.  I threw out dozens of obsolete computer cables and minor electronic bits.  By the time Brian was headed home at 4 pm, I had completed all my tasks and even managed to clear up some extra space in the other closet and the furnace room.

 

 

We headed out (via Lyft) around 5 pm and had a pleasant drive with a new US Citizen from Romania who was great to chat with.  I was curious what the Rochester Hyatt would be like given that Rochester seems marginal to be even able to support such a large somewhat upscale property.  The part of the hotel that is at ground level is certainly not encouraging.  There is a set of doors and glass windows etc but in reality those doors are locked and the only pedestrian entrance seems to be through the parking garage ramp.  Thankfully, the interior of the hotel is up to snuff.  It's not cutting edge or fabulous but it met my expectations for the brand.

We had a light dinner at Bar Bantam a few blocks from the hotel.  We had some plantains topped with pork and a delicious pesto or chimichuri sauce which was wonderful.  I had chicken kebabs for dinner and they were flavorful and very summery with the grilled chicken chunks and vegetables.  Brian had a summer salad with berries and goat cheese etc.  After dinner we wandered around downtown for a little walk since the weather has finally flopped back from sweltering to wonderful.  We shared a cupcake from a coffee shop directly across from the Eastman School of Music.  It was interesting to see the range of streetscapes in downtown.  Many of the streets downtown are sad with boarded up buildings and sketchy desperate people wandering around.  Others, like the one in front of the music school, are convincingly leafy and peaceful.  One irritation that you don't seem to be able to escape in any part of downtown Rochester is the really noisy cars and motorcycles with modified exhaust roaring around the downtown streets.  They were really obnoxious at street level and still a little annoying from our 20th floor hotel room.

When we got back from dinner, I called the front desk to get an additional pillow.  After an hour I went down in person and requested it again.  After 15-20 minutes I decided that getting an extra pillow just wasn't going to happen.  Of course the extra pillow did finally show up when I was nearly asleep.  I slept ok from about 9:30 until midnight but unfortunately was wide awake from midnight until at least 3 am.  I was awakened by Brian at 4:25 am and had less than half an hour to shower and do whatever else I think needed doing before heading for the train.  

Thankfully, our very short Lyft ride was fast and easy and our first train (of 2) was precisely on-time.  We got business class seats for both trains this trip and it paid off in a very quiet isolated car with no traffic and little noise.  The seats are great and have interesting thigh support cushions that can be extended.  I wasn't successful at sleeping on the first train but some napping happened on the 2nd.  We spent a good amount of time going 90+ mph which is, for me, mentally satisfying even if the ultimate door to door speed is not very good.

After a crowded and pushy deboarding from our first train at Penn station, we arrived at beautiful but not very practical Moynihan Train hall reasonably on time.  We ate at Zaro bakery in the station and it was very good.  There was a 35 minute delay on our 2nd train and as usual, standing around waiting for them to announce what track your train boards on and trying to be near the front of the ensuing 200 person long line is not very relaxing.  Thankfully we were able to hear an Amtrak employee telling a few people which track it was boarding from just before it got announced so we were ahead of the mob. Boarding on the 2nd train was quite fast and at least business class isn't even half full, surprising for a NYC-BOS train on a weekend day.  The 2nd train trip was very sedate with minimal interaction and a lot of dozing.  We got into Boston about 30 minutes late and made a quick bumpy trip from South Station to the airport on the Silver Line fake train/bus thing.

The Hilton hotel at the airport is connected to the terminals by a 'covered walkway' which made me think of an outdoor sidewalk or a marked path through a parking garage.  In fact, the path is an enormous series of very long skybridges leading from 2 different terminals, across the airport access roads and eventually to the hotel.  From the A terminal where we started it involved 2 escalators, 1 elevator, 2 sky bridges then another escalator and elevator in the hotel itself.  

We waited a LONG time for a seat at the hotel Pub (the hotel was sold out partially because of the global IT snafu with Cloudstrike) and had an interesting pizza with house made sausage and Boursin cheese.

My parents landed (after midnight) at terminal B.  The process to get there was absurd.  It was the same gauntlet of walkways, escalators and elevators just to get back to A then a whole other set of escalators and another sky bridge to cross the airport access road again and eventually a last elevator to get to baggage claim.  I'm kind of impressed that it's even possible to wheel luggage through such a distance without having to carry it etc but wow, that was a seriously long complicated path to get back to the hotel.

 

 I was so tired that I slept clear through the night without getting up once.