Musings

If there’s one disadvantage about traveling alone, it’s the relative absence of pictures with your own person in them. I don’t mind it very much; outside street or people photography, a lot of my pictures are framed during picture taking such that minimal persons will be in the shot. When that doesn’t work completely, it’s cropping in Photoshop.

Then again, you sometimes need pictures with yourself in it. My institution requests for them for their publicity or briefing materials, and the wife might want them too.

The window of opportunity for this trip was when Matt was in town, so he went about taking pictures – a selection of which are below – using that uber Nikon 35mm f1.8 lens of his.:)

So here we go – the post for the wife.:)

Picture on the right: in front of Trinity Church.

Picture below; At Chipotle’s. Really yummy burritos!

Picture below: In front of Faneuil Hall. It was very hot and the sun was about right in my face.:)

Below: In front of the Boston Public Library just before heading in to check out the place.

Below: Along the Gloucester coast line. This was where I took those pictures of the sail boat.

Below: In Gloucester while waiting for to board the whale-watching boat. This was about 2:15 PM – and yep, I was ‘enjoying’ the summer heat.:)

Below: Shade is good. On board the Yankee Freedom and just departing Gloucester harbor.

Below: Getting some quick video footage of whales breaching. Just look at the waves – the waters were very choppy.

Below: It was extremely difficult trying to balance myself with camera at the ready while waiting for the whales to surface again. The boat was bopping up and down furiously even tough it wasn’t moving.

Below: Both pictures are from Provincetown. Left picture: I was doing that video segment at the base of the monument. Right picture: After the climb and still looking hearty.

Below: On the return trip from Provincetown and on board Provincetown III, the fast ferry. You can’t tell from this picture, but it was terrifically windy. My back’s turned towards the wind – that’s why.:)

All the photo credits for this page go to our Ang Mo bud.:)

Thankfully, Matt and myself weren’t always gouging ourselves with food. On most occasions – the lunches at least anyway – we ate more modestly.

The first night I hooked up with Matt was on Thursday last week – this was before the two nights of vindaloo and steak horror – and he introduced me to a nifty burrito place (‘Chipotle’)  in Harvard Square. I haven’t had very many of these before, and they were pretty good.

These are ordered quickly and are quite customizable. Matt had the chicken, and myself the steak burritos:

One special feature of the burritos is its use of rice in the wraps:

Just before we headed out to the whale-watching trip at Gloucester on Saturday, we had lunch at the Topside Grill and Pub, a rated #5 of #54 restaurants in the small coastal town. No, we didn’t know it was rated so highly. I just sort of liked the façade when we droved past it, and Matt didn’t mind checking it out too.

Everyone says that you shouldn’t leave New England until you’ve tried their lobsters. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what ordering lobsters entailed. So, when we were presented with the lunch specials and saw a ‘lobster’ item, we went for it.

What we got wasn’t the lobster, but a sort of sandwich with lobster meat on it. No wonder it’s called a lobster ‘roll’. These things are hugely popular; we saw them everywhere in both Gloucester and Provincetown (which we visited the next day), and look like the easy foods to partake in compared to the actual lobsters.

The lobster roll was served on a plate with coleslaw and fries; yep the same stuff that those unfortunate fellows returned onto the ship’s deck (Matt’s “Gloucestered” haha) when we went sailing into the Atlantic Ocean later.:)

Likewise, our lunch fares in Provincetown were simple. At this point, we’d both sworn off heavy dinners after the vindaloo and steaks from the earlier nights!

The town square of Provincetown is lined with many eateries, like this one below that we checked into.

Very small town feel to it, though it was a little crowded during the lunch hour with many visitors also grabbing quick lunches.

Matt downed at least three fruit smoothies in the afternoon at Provincetown. I had the ice tea – which was very different from our local versions. Specifically, they were unsweetened. That’s my egg and bacon on a bagel sandwich.:)

The fast ferry bringing us back to Boston was departing only at 7:30 PM in the evening. With plenty of time to kill and weather increasing gloomy, we ducked into a restaurant for a quick bite. That’s clam chowder for me, and some sort of Portuguese concoction for Matt:

Not nearly enough food for me though for a dinner event. No American experience is complete with a hotdog. I wanted to see how bare minimum these go, and found an outlet doing these for USD2.75.:)

That’s about the sum of our non-destructive meals the two of us had. I’ll do a third post on breakfasts at my homestay soon.:)

Last post in the series. Several more random pictures taken.

Rich guy on a convertible. Think it’s an Audi A5, registered in New York from the car plate registration:

Golden Retrievers are popular about this part. Saw many of them.:)

A shop along Commercial Street selling antiques for your home. Too rich for me though.:(

Loved the poster on the left! This was near the entrance to Whaler’s Wharf, a small partially covered street with colorful shops:

Including a shop with an Asian artist assisted with his wife who was drawing 10 minute caricature portraits for visitors. He was a delightful chap; didn’t speak much English, and I don’t think he was Chinese either. My best guess is that he’s Japanese. Single person caricatures were going for USD9, and two-person USD15. Colored ones were going for a little higher – but those were very good prices for the quality of his work. Frames cost a further USD15.

And yes, I had my caricature done by him too. Will post it up sometime.:)

Wood End Lighthouse in the far, far distance, and the western end of the town. From the map we got at the tourist information center, we thought the lighthouse from the end of Commercial Street would still be within walking distance (we’d been walking for more about an hour at this point to get there).

We were so wrong.

This was at maximum zoom, 250mm X 1.5 crop factor. And this is as close as we got to the Wood End lighthouse. It was VERY far. The damn map was deceiving and not drawn to scale – gah.

A little depressing. We shuttle-bused ourselves up a little more north to Pering Cove Beach hoping to the Race Point lighthouse (Matt was determined to visit one lighthouse at least). No such luck: it was even further from where we were to it. Below’s a panoramic shot of Pering Cove Beach:

A beach of nothingness yeah. We backtracked to waiting for the shuttle bus to bring us back from what was the beach back to the town center. Below was my point of view for about an hour: starring at tall grass blowing in the wind:

His face says it all: our moods:

Back at the town center, we still had about 3 hours to kill before our fast ferry arrived at 7:30 PM to bring us back. It was getting real windy. We toyed with the idea of hiring a boat to bring us to a third lighthouse – Long Point – but one look at the choppy waters, and that we would be going in what looked like a small dinghy, we gave up the idea.

So we occupied ourselves people-watching, like this local cop stalking for a hot dog at The Red Shack (I had a hotdog here too).

Lounging around at the town center:

By 6:30 PM, a layer of fog was settling in on top of the strong winds. This was what it looked like. You probably can’t see from the picture too: but our ride – the Provincetown III – was returning and is in the picture.

I stuck myself at the front of the ferry and did the whole “I’m the King of the World!!!” thing sans Kate Winslet, enjoying the full blast of a cold evening wind on a fast ferry. When I returned, Matt observed that my face showed evidence of the wind blast.

Took a shot of the setting sun too at 8:10 PM:

We got back to Boston at about 9:15 PM. All dark: and it was a real feat getting shots like the below. On the slow Sigma 18-250mm lens. I’m getting real good at handheld long exposures, thanks to this trip.

So, the Provincetown trip was a mixed bag, considering the costs of getting there and returning. Crummy weather, and distances that looked a lot further than on the map. Still, the climb up the Pilgrim Monument, the very colorful residences, shops and restaurants – and of course, that we were approached by men in drag – made up for it.:)

Commercial Street runs about 5 km and almost parallel to the coastline of Provincetown. Both sides of the small one lane street are lined with many art galleries, shops, museums and restaurants. We didn’t step into too many of these establishments though, being contended just to walk for most of the stretch and soaking in the atmosphere.

Here’s a small selection of the hundreds of pictures I took while walking along Provincetown. Most of these below were taken using the E-PL1. Captioned where appropriate or when I can remember.:)

Revere Guest House – with vacancy:

Residences:

Flowerbeds adorn many of the inns and residences:

Provincetown also has a thriving artist colony, and many of them feature their works in small galleries along the street.

“Spank the monkey” LOL:

I think the Spank the Monkey shop was selling exotic jewellery. Another shop selling the same type of wares, but with a more ‘traditional’ storefront.:)

The Provincetown Library. They’ve got a special reading room that says “Technology-Free Zone”. No computers, no notebooks, no PDAs, no MP3 players. Heck – I don’t think you’re allowed to even fiddle with your mobile phone.:)

The pilgrims from England first made landfall in the America in Provincetown 400 years ago. To commemorate their landings, the Pilgrim Memorial Monument was built between 1907 and 1910, with then President Theodore Roosevelt laying its cornerstone in 1907. The tower itself is about 77 meters tall, and is 106 meters above sea level in view of it being built on a small hill:

At the base of the tower is the town’s museum.

Admission to the tower itself wasn’t free though – an admission charge of USD7 was levied. It was a non-brainer: just about every visitor to Provincetown has climbed the tower, and we weren’t going to be left out. The store below even sells T-shirts for visitors who complete the climb.

As a side note: the noticeboard on display in front of the museum’s entrance states clearly “There is no elevator in the tower.”:)

The museum houses many artifacts from the early settlers of Provincetown. There are more pictures of the museum in the Flickr album.

One particular set of paintings caught my attention: it was a series of five paintings depicting the key events of the Pilgrim landings. Below is a picture of the first event (there are four more such paintings):

Onto the tower itself! While 77 meters doesn’t sound like much, I judge it to be about 12-13 levels high. That’s a view from nearly the top floor downwards, taken with the D300 pointed downwards. The camera strap was coiled twice around my wrist – if the D300 slipped, it would have shattered into a couple million pieces:

The view up top was incredible. It was terrifically windy (you’ll be able to hear it in the video segment below) up top. The view was blocked by glass and iron grills, ostensibly to stop people from taking the fast elevator down, head first.

How did we get such pristine pictures though? Well, the D300 (and Matt’s D90) was stuck through the metal grills, and I turned on Liveview.:)

I managed to get a couple of really nice panoramas from up top, though the view range and number of composite images were limited because of  how little I could turn the D300 in a panorama sweep.

Just to show how tall the tower is, below is a snapshot of Matt going to the ground to get as much of the tower as possible.:)

Videos next. The first one’s a pan around the tower’s base:

Another video showing me struggling up the final steps and emerging at the top of the tower. The color balance on the camcorder’s a bit messed up when I emerged at the top, so I restarted a new clip for the third video below.

And finally, the magnificent view of Provincetown from the top of the tower. Very windy!

Next post: Provincetown’s Commerical Street.:)

Come to think of it, it isn’t entirely true to say you can’t go East when in Boston – you just can’t drive as it’s all Massachusetts Bay and the Atlantic Ocean in between you and Provincetown.

There’re a couple of ways too to get to the small town: by air, by ferry, or by fast ferry. The latter would get us from Boston to Provincetown harbor in 90 minutes over the approximately 100 km distance over sea, but it would cost a royal bomb at USD168 for a pair of return tickets – ouch!

There was of course the option of driving south from Boston along the Interstate, then make a sort of U-shape drive around Cape Cod Bay. The 182km drive would take 5 hours, and on weekends, possibly 2-3 hours longer. Everyone we spoke to said it would be crazy to drive driving to Provincetown during weekends. So, it was the fast ferry for us on the Sunday morning trip:

The fast ferry – Provincetown III – looked like a recently commissioned vessel with most of the luxuries of a mid-class ferry. Carpets, comfortable and roomy seats, air-conditioning, full galley and the like. I guess you get what you pay for.

The ferry departed Boston at 8:30 AM. Below is a picture I took from the ship’s stern of the Boston skyline:

The journey took just over 90 minutes and was pretty smooth and comfy. So comfortable that the both of us napped for most of it. It was pretty cloudy when we arrived at Provincetown though at past 10:00 AM.

Provincetown is a very small town of just about 3,100 residents, though its population swells by several factors during the holiday periods with many persons coming to stay at their vacation homes. The most distinctive feature of the town is its Pilgrim Memorial Monument, a tower that overlooks the island:

There are two streets that run almost parallel to the coast line of the town: Commercial Street that runs on either side of the town’s harbor and the town’s main commercial and art district, and Old King’s Highway, which isn’t an expressway by any measure: just a two lane road further inland with mostly residential houses and many small inns and guest houses.

If there’s any one thing I can say about small towns like this, it’s that the houses are all so colorful and wonderfully decorated with flower beds and landscaping as much as the house’s space allows.

The first spot we checked out was the Pilgrim Memorial Monument. It was a gentle walk uphill, passing through small town America. Below is Provincetown High School – and yep, it looks exactly like a frame out of The Simpsons.:)

Our visit to the Monument was memorable and deserves a post on its own (see next post). On our return back to the town area, we further explored the place. Below is the Chamber of Commerce, again the first-stop information center for visitors:

The Provincetown Town Hall:

The front of the Town Hall stood a statue of what looked like a British (or Aussie) World War II soldier. I didn’t read the statue’s plaque – there were a couple of big dudes sitting at the statue’s base and blocking and plaque, and I didn’t think about getting them to move.

Provincetown has a reputation of it being a gay town too, and there were many (as in a lot) of male-male and female-female couples about. Most of their activity was low-key, but several were holding hands, sitting on each other’s laps and the like. There was a funny cafe that was touting customers from the street – the cafe had male strippers, trannies, and cross-dressers in the cabaret performances. We didn’t take photos though – something Matt regretted LOL.

OK; very short video I took just after we landed and looking a little lost:

Next post is on the Monument itself.:)

Gloucester, pronounced ‘gloze-ster’ with a silent ‘c’, is a small town situated at Cape Ann, and the eastern side of Massachusetts. According to its 2000 census, the town has just 30,000 residents.

Besides it being one of the country’s oldest settlements (established in 1623) and its oldest seaport, it also is the filming site for the The Perfect Storm, the 2000 film starring George Clooney about a Gloucester fishing boat that was lost at sea during a fierce hurricane in 1991. I’ll have to rewatch the film again when I’m back in Singapore and hopefully recognize many of the actual locations seen in the film.:)

OK; a small selection of pictures taken in the several hours we spent in the town before heading to the whale-watching boat. Below: the Chamber of Commerce – each small town seems to have one, which sort of acts as the first information stop for out-of-town visitors:

There was a bunch of men near one of the docks getting into a boat. They didn’t look like professional seamen though. My best guess is that they’re heading to their yacht for a day trip out in the glorious summer sun.

Booking the whale-watching expedition at USD45 for each of us. The boat was departing at 2:30 PM, so we had time for more exploration.:)

This dude on the Harley Davidson gave me a wave when he saw me taking a snapshot of him:

The Fisherman’s memorial in honor of the memory of the 10,000 Gloucester fishermen who lost their lives at sea throughout the years:

Walking along Western Avenue, we had a marvelous view of the coast line. I took several panoramic shots here that I’ll process when I’m back in Singapore:

There were many weekend and leisure boats about for the weekend:

Including several yachts and sailboats:

The Fishermen’s Wives’ memorial: a sculpture of a woman and her two children, standing in wait for their husbands to return each day from their fishing work:

Lots of flower beds adorning Western Avenue:

Farmers’ Market: that would had been interesting to take a look at, were it not for the event beig only on Thursdays:

Check out the tow truck’s company name on the lower right of the vehicle.:)

Another biker gang looking dude on a Harley Davidson. I took a snap shot of this guy through the restaurant window of Topside Grill and Pub during lunch.:)

Workmen unloading their catch:

New England lobsters!

There were many seagulls flying about, hoping to catch morsels of food from the workers. They were real tough to capture with a slow zoom lens and I was tracking them on continuous AF:

This was at about 2:15 PM. At this point, we loaded up the boat and headed out for the whale-watching expedition.:)

Matt was pretty sure he’d come over from Missouri when I was in the country, but we were largely undecided as to what to do when we hooked up in Boston. We initially toyed with the idea of visiting Niagara Falls, but dumped it as too much traveling time would had been involved just getting there and returning. Not really time well-spent.

So, the idea of a road trip came up. There are three directions we can spring from Boston: North, South, and West (East would see us driving into the ocean). Westwards: places of interest would be far in between. So, Matt suggested driving up North towards Gloucester: here’s a selection of pictures from our trip there on Saturday.:)

The car rental agency was located right next to the Central Square T subway station, and the rental office was manned by these two American guys who looked like they were US Marines with their crew cuts. We toyed with the idea of booking a humvee, but figured we’d probably not be able to park the damn thing into a lot then. So, it was a Hyundai Sonata:

One thing about driving in the States is that you’d easily get lost + in the middle of nowhere with a GPS-enabled navigation computer.

One thing I was keen on trying out during the road trip was to get arrested by the local police for whichever. No such luck though: this police car just ahead of us completely ignored us:

Our Ang Mo dude on the wheel. No way I was going to try driving. Not on roads which drive on the opposite side than we’re used to:

No road trip experience is complete without a visit to Walmart just to see how Americans shop – which Matt remarked is a very sad state of affairs. We ducked into a Walmart store in Peabody for supplies:

Matt observed that this was a pretty small store by Walmart’s standards, though it looked plenty big to me:

Picking up on sugar grub, candies, chocolates, root beer, and water. All the sweet stuff would later melt into liquid form real quick in the summer heat though.

Gloucester and Boston is linked by Interstate highways. I was on Dramamine, so was half-conked out for the outbound trip.

It took us about 60 minutes to get to Gloucester, the seaside town being about 60 km away. The roads in the town was lined with many houses, all very pretty:

The summer sun was all up, which made for great pictures albeit in a moving car.

It’s a very different general feeling about the place, with plenty of spaces between residential unit to unit. Nothing like the high density living of Singapore.

We spent 30 minutes looking for parking lots in the town. Apparently, car towing – or minimally parking warden awarded fines – are a big thing in this part of the world. We finally found a spot that was available for public parking:

But then again, some things just remain the same no matter where you go:

We popped into the town’s Chamber of Commerce to get some visitor information, and to ask about interesting places to check out while in town:

Continued in the next post.:)

One thing I’ve always wondered is how Matt – our Ang Mo bud – can manage all the food he takes in, and still lose weight. Now that I get to dine with him in cuisine and food types he’s familiar with, I’m even the more stunned. On both occasions, the workflow is about the same:

1. “Hey, this looks like a cool restaurant – let’s check it out.”

2. “This menu item looks neat. We don’t know what the heck it is, but it sure looks interesting! We’ll have it, waiter.” (repeat several times).

3. <One hour passes>

4. “OMG – I’m about to die here. That was waaaaaaayyyy too much food.”

Basically, what routinely looks like a good idea – checking into a new restaurant – almost always turns out into a really bad idea. And only because we’ll usually order too much food than we both can finish!

Say, for instance, on Friday evening, we checked out an Indian restaurant in Central Square that Matt walked past earlier on. The restaurant prides itself as being the first Indian restaurant in the city:

We’d barely sat down before we were served with Chapatis first – which was ordinary – but the very red-colored chili dip was murder! Or at least, I thought so, because all I could manage was a very thin layer on my Chapatis. Whereas Matt dipped it all in, scooped up a load, and ate it all up in a gulp.:)

Then the appetizers. I had an Indian chicken sort of soup that was very tasty (it looked like it had been stewed for a while), and a Mango lassi. I haven’t had this before – lots of stuff I haven’t tried even as a Singaporean – and it was all good.

Then trouble began. Matt said “I got to get me some of those naans!”, and here we went: two naans. Mine was garlic, and his a minced lamb sort of naan. They were HUGE. In the picture below, they’re sliced up into halves and quarters respectively:

The naans alone would have qualified for a full meal. Unfortunately, there was also the main course… I ordered the lamb vindaloo, and Matt a Chicken something vindaloo; he’ll have to comment here to let me know what it was! I haven’t had a lot of vindaloos before, but this one was super spicy. I had a small bit, and the lips went aflame in horror. Matt sampled a spoonful, and said – “Yep, that tastes about alright. Average only though in spicyness – yummy.”

Had water to the rescue. The waiter came with one with a few ice cubes floating in my glass. I called for another glass… but this time FULL of ice!

By the time we were done, we felt sick. I was all camel, downing one mango lassi and three huge glasses of ice water, and still I felt like I’d eaten only chili padi for dinner.

As we stumbled out of the Indian restaurant, I swore that I was going to eat salads for the next dinner.

On the following evening, Saturday, we’d finished the whale watching trip off Gloucester and it was late in the evening at about 9 PM. We passed by a small town – Peabody – that was about midway between Gloucester and Boston, and decided to go get dinner… and Matt was all up for steak at the Outback Steakhouse along Andover Street. Oh boy.

First they feed you with a sort of brown bread:

Then Matt ordered a huge plate of Mexican something that was very much like those KFC cheesy melts that Ling loves:

We should have stopped right there, because the above plate was enough to fill us both up. But heck no. Matt ordered a plate of very unique looking deep-fried onion rings which he remarked is the sort of stuff that will kill us – the dish was called ‘Bloomin Onion’:

And that wasn’t even the main course. We had the same: The Outback Signature Sirloin Specials, with mash garlic potatoes and fresh greens sides. Both of us had 12 oz steaks, he had his medium-rare, mine was well-done. It doesn’t look like a huge plate, but believe me when I say that the plate was “American”-size:

And this time round we couldn’t finish the food. Half of the onion rings were left on the table, the mash potatoes for me went largely untouched, and Matt didn’t have stomach space for either sides. When the waiter came and asked if we’d like the remaining food packed to go, we could only wave – sickly – no need to.

There’s a funny bit of post-mortem. We were returning the car to the rental agency back near Central Square, so Matt put the car through a wash. A very unique sort of wash that I video-taped for fun. I’ll post it up later.:)

Whereas it seemed there were fewer breaches of the water by lovesick humpbacks whales than the projections of vomit by seasick passengers, I confess the 5-plus-hour trip was well worth the steep price of admission. The water was so choppy on this otherwise beautiful New England afternoon that it felt we were all aboard a 50-foot long drunken horse galloping through the streets of San Francisco. The voyage began under a uniformly blue sky occupied by nothing more than the sun. As we boarded the vessel passengers rushed for prized positions deck side to soak in the sunlight.

However, shortly after setting off and achieving full speed along the choppy waters, the wind roared and pales of waves spritzed coolly and wetly over and into the vessel’s side thresholds, and passengers ducked for cover into the sheltered cabin. Minutes later a whale enthusiast Gloucestered (my newest euphemism for projectile vomit) her lunch into — well, almost into — a trash bin, resulting in the most profitable protein spill I ever did witness, one which BP would no doubt appreciate. The smell, however, was so repulsive that nearly everyone evacuated the cabin in favor of wearing bucket loads of Atlantic Ocean on their clothing.

Hours later, and still nothing. Children amused themselves singing We Are the World. I suggested the theme to Free Willy would be more appropriate, but no one could remember the lyrics. While the more talkative of my fellow passengers attempted to guess others’ ages, I sought to obtain items with which I could fashion a harpoon. In the event that we did see one of those bastards, I wanted to be fully prepared to eat it.

But yes, we finally did see some whales. They breached, bandied about, paddled the water with authority and left us all thoroughly entertained, if but for 15 minutes. And yes, it was worth it. No one was harmed, even the whales. Though most of us did learn a bit more about the contents of half-digested lobster rolls and cole slaw than we thought proper for such an occasion.