I did have grand plans. I was going to go into Boston, visit all sorts of hipster places (there’s a tapas restaurant that is also a record and book shop, for crying out loud), take lots of pictures of my favourite building style, and generally enjoy my time in the area.

Except: the snow (and other, non-weather related concerns that meant that I didn’t feel much like going on big adventures during the night). Trying to venture through three feet or so of snow really wasn’t my idea of fun, so in the end I only made it into Boston on one day. A taxi ride to Alewife Station, and then the Red Line into Harvard Square, where it took me an embarrassing amount of time to rediscover Newbury Comics. Which seemed much smaller than I remember (admittedly, it is almost twenty years since I first went there pause for feeling old). There I wandered around trying to warm up, getting in people’s way, awkwardly responding to the conversation of the woman behind the counter, and looking at the glitter. So aside from the size, it was almost exactly like the time I went in 1997. Oho!

(I walked along thinking I wasn’t going to get anything. Then I saw the Criterion section and thought to myself “well, if they have a copy of Hard Boiled, I’ll get it, knowing that it’s fairly rare these days. And lo, they had one. And yes, it then went to the UK, then back to Boston, and only now back to Durham. A frequent flyer DVD)

I went to books, finding myself coming out of Park Street Station and knowing exactly where I was, looking at a CEX shop front that once used to be HMV in one direction, and Boston Common in the other. I walked past the giant Citgo sign as I walked from the centre of the city to Mei Mei. It was…further than I expected. And colder, despite the gloves and the hat and the scarf.

Finally, I did my Good Will Hunting bit, at the Au Bon Pain at Harvard Square. Except the snow covered all of the outside seating where the film scenes were shot, so I had tomato soup while watching two girls play Settlers of Catan.

It was an odd few weeks; I spent most of it trapped inside an office building, the (actually quite nice) Holiday Inn Express at Waltham, or on a plane somewhere. Hopefully when I go back in May I’ll have a chance for a little more exploring. And that the snow will have finally melted.