I’m one of the weird people who actually enjoys traveling. The experience of going from point A to point B in general is quite enjoyable to me and in many ways, more fun than the actual destination itself.

A couple weeks ago I took a trip to Boston and back, for some questionable reasons, spent 3 hours in Boston, and got a lobster roll just to get back to New York 9ish hours later.

Acela Express Cabin

The day started at 8AM, missing my train.

Originally, the itenerary was meant to be a 6:00 AM Northeast Regional to Boston with a 4:00 PM return train which gave me more than enough time in Boston to gingerly enjoy the city and relax. However in my forever struggle with the concept of waking up at an early hour of the morning, I missed my train massively waking up at 8AM. After angerly getting another couple hours sleep I rushed out the door and rebooked myself onto an Acela leaving at 12PM with a return train leaving at 6PM, getting back to New York at around 10PM, however only giving me 3 hours in Boston to enjoy the city before rushing back to New York and spending another 4 hours on an Acela.

Acela Express

LIC Skyline

Thankfully, Amtrak wasn’t melting down operationally like its so prone to do and despite a 15 minute delay for our train to arrive at New York Penn, we left relatively ontime with an on-time arrival expected into Boston South Station.

Amtrak is quite good in terms of refunds, and I was able to refund a good chunk of my original itenerary, which allowed me to quickly rebook and not winge too hard at the exorbitant prices that is a same-day Acela ticket.

Providence

Quickly enough we were already in Providence, and I was feeling a little bored, this trip needed to have yet another last minute change and added thrill. So I canceled my return train and booked a plane back to JFK naturally.

Flight Confirmation

This wasn’t a completely stupid thing for me to do, well this entire trip was, but I had some good reasons for it:

  • Planes are fun
  • The mile redemption was cheap (only 9,500 American miles)
  • I would leave 1.5 hours later from JFK and get home nearly 3 hours before I would by train

This meant that I now had to cancel my train for a second time as I was stepping off finally at Boston South Station after 4 hours of shitposting my way through New England and ran to the entire reason for this trip: a Starbucks mug.

ME

My girlfriend and I have a tradition, whenever we visit a location, we get one of Starbucks collectible mugs which feature a design of the location either the city, state, or country. While we visited Boston in the summer of 2023, we forgot to actually pick up

Starbucks Mugs

After acquiring the coveted mug that I travelled hundreds of miles to acquire. It was time to do the only right thing when in Boston: leave.

Boston plen

The flight back to New York was your typical uneventful disappointment that is modern American Airlines and touching down at around 10PM and getting home around 10:45PM after the last 8+ hours of nonstop traveling on planes, trains, and automobiles I decided to do it all over again later next month with a 12 hour trip to Washington DC to look at a postal museum and more plens.