Boston Round Up and San Francisco

Boston was strange in that the tallest building was only 54 stories high and everything was quite spaced out. The hostel was fine and I met some cool people there, probably the friendliest place I've stayed since New York. A round up of the things I did there:

Went on a duck tour - a duck is a land/water vehicle built for WWII. The guy drove us around town, giving loads of details on Boston's history and points of interest etc. The we headed into the Charles river, where I had a go at steering the thing!

Went to the Science Museum and saw a cool lightning show (remember those friction machines from school that made your hair stand on end? They had a huge one of those that fired of bolts of lightning, oh and tesla coils. It was pretty awesome! There was also a fairly decent Planetarium presentation on the domed IMAX screen. Apart from a nice photo gallery, the rest of the museum was pretty average.

Went to Wally's Jazz Cafe and saw a band play some cool blues and funk. It was Boston Jazz Week while I was there and the legendary (we were told) drummer Bernard 'Pretty' Purdie popped in for a drink and got roped into playing a couple of tunes. Turns out he is the worlds most recorded drummer, he played on albums for James Brown and Steely Dan to name just a few!

Walked around Harvard university, went to a good stand-up comedy night, went to a jazz lecture in the public library (part of jazz week), went to the open night at Boston University's Astronomy Observatory (I saw Saturn, Mars and some Galaxy I forget the name of) and of course I did more record shopping!

I flew over to San Francisco via Philadelphia, which went smoothly. The new hostel is alright, nothing special though and not such friendly people staying here. The free breakfast is great though (loads of different types of bagels, croissants, bread and TETLEY tea! :D There is also a crazy fat ginger woman with a hat fetish who cooks dinner each night that's only $5 - I had Fajita's one night and some breaded chicken and soup another. San Francisco has the most bums and general weirdo's of all the cities I've been to so far!

I've done quite a lot of walking already, exploring the main shopping district and the piers along the coast. Also some greener areas like Fort Mason and Golden Gate Park (where there was a nice Japanese Tea Garden). There is also a cool street called 'Haight' where the cool little shops are (including record shops, of course). Gonna try and do some more organised things in the next couple of days, like a trip to Alcatraz and also to Muir Woods, over the Golden Gate bridge just outside the city.
Friday night I was to 'Elbo Room' where a couple of Dj's span some nice disco music and then 'Woolfy' played a live set, which was pretty funky indie-disco type stuff. Here is the flyer, check out some music on his myspace if you can



http://www.myspace.com/woolfys