Searching for the Vikings

Tuesday, Aug 1 - Day 1 BC (Before Cruise): Boston, Massachusetts, USA



The ride up to Boston couldn’t have gone more smoothly. There was very little traffic except in a few construction areas and even there the traffic slow-downs were short. The weather was nice. The car ran fine. We found the hotel easily, and it turned out to be much nicer than we expected. We dropped the rental car off in the big Hertz agency in Logan airport, which was only five minutes from our hotel. The hotel shuttle picked us up and took us back to the hotel. The whole journey was perfect. That’s almost scary. Us pessimists worry about things like that.

Our hotel abuts the airport on one side and Boston harbor on the other. Even though we had booked a room with what was referred to as an “aviation view," which meant you looked out at a runway, they gave us a room that had an exceptional view out across Boston harbor to the Boston skyline. Fantastic! After checking in, we went to our room to freshen up a bit, turned the thermostat up a little since it was freezing in the room and went and had a nice lunch in the hotel restaurant, which had the same breathtaking view of the harbor and the Boston skyline.

We then went out for a walk along the harbor along a paved pathway right by the water. There were nice views of the skyline and many boats. After our walk we went back to the hotel and back to our room. Uh-oh. It was very warm and stuffy in our room. Try as we might, we couldn’t get the A/C to blow cold air. My wife decided to call the front desk, but we couldn’t even get the phone to work. So we went down and told the front desk clerk and she said she would send somebody up to see what they could do.

A few minutes later, a young man knocked on the door and after fiddling with the thermostat, one of these computer controlled, touch screen, technology-overkill things that even displayed the weather outside, he said he be back in a few minutes. It was now 79 degrees and very stuffy in the room. He came back and said he was going the change a fuse in the A/C unit. He changed the fuse and said he’d be back in an hour to see if that worked. It didn’t. We didn’t have to wait an hour to figure that out. Finally, with trepidation, we went down to the front desk to see if they could move us to another room. Fortunately, they could and did. The new room was only a few doors away on the same floor and had the same beautiful view, and the A/C worked. Whew!

Unfortunately, nasty things were still happening. As we were moving our stuff from the old, hot room, to the new, cool room, Donnie noticed some funny pieces of plastic on the floor that hadn’t been there before. Then she noticed one in the new room. They looked like broken plastic similar in color and texture to the plastic parts on our suitcases. It turns out that the wheels on the bottom of my huge, overloaded, very heavy suitcase, which hadn’t been used in decades because we used much smaller suitcases on most of our trips, were disintegrating. Great! See, I told you the drive up here went too well.

We’ll have to live with it.  At least once we get on the ship, we wont have to move the suitcases for 38 days.  We had a nice, but too filling, dinner in the hotel restaurant, looking out at the now lit-up Boston skyline, and eventually went to bed.