Boston

My first stop on my gap year was Boston. After spending the first 5 months of 2024 at home preoccupying myself with side projects and lots of nothing, I finally got up off of my ass and found myself an internship in Boston with De-Ice, an MIT-spinout startup building commercial aircraft de-icing technology. But this post isn’t about my internship, it’s about all the stuff OUTSIDE of work that I did in Boston – my favorite US city.

The Drive Over

To get to Boston, I drove all the way from Los Angeles with my Dad. We didn’t take the direct route either, we went north first all the way up to Washington before taking a right and hugging the Canadian border all the way to New England. But why tell you about it when I can just show you? Here’s a sub 1-hour hyperlapse of the entire journey with calming music in the background (timestamps of notable stops in the description).

And some photo highlights.

The Celtics

The very first weekend I was in Boston was the week the Celtics were facing off against the Mavericks in the NBA finals. For the closeout game (which the Celtics won) I and a co-intern friend found a small bar right underneath the TD Garden in the subway station where I pretended I liked the Celtics for 2 hours and she pretended like she liked basketball for 2 hours. This was my first taste of the infamous “crazed Boston sports fan”, and I loved it. As the clock ticked down, people were getting on top of the bar and the stools, and out on the streets people climbed onto buses waving celebratory torches. Getting home safely became an entire mission.

The ducks of Boston Common donned the team colors for the parade

Cape Cod

About every other weekend I tried to get out of town. Since I had my car, this wasn’t difficult. On my second weekend I went to Cape Cod where I biked the 27-mile Rail Trail the first day and took a boat cruise to go whale watching the second. The Rail Trail was one of my favorite activities from my summer in Boston. I enjoyed the ride so much I went twice, the second time with a friend. Conveniently at the point where I decided to double back, there was a petit French cafe where I could re-caffeinate and re-croissantinate before another grueling 14 miles back. As for the boat tour, I got seasick and threw up about as many times as I saw dolphins, so a little less than enjoyable. Along the way, I also stopped by the iconic red-and-white lighthouse featured on the chips bag.

I took a particular fascination to these patches of grass that grew straight out of the sea

Lobster is honestly incredibly overrated

Arnold Arboretum

Down on the south side of the Greater Boston Area is the Arnold Arboretum. Not much else to say about it other than it was a nice little day trip. At the same time, I went to a little pop-up chess tournament in Jamaica Plains.

I sat and watched this little fella get more an more comfortable with me over 20 minutes

pop-up chess next to Boston’s best ice cream? say less.

Springfield

In my second month, I registered for a chess tournament in Springfield. After a long day of high cognition, I explored the 2 main attractions of an otherwise underwhelming city: The Basketball Hall of Fame and The Dr. Seuss Museum.

there was actually a court in the middle of the museum where local games were played

Dr. Seuss and The Cat in the Hat. Dr. Seuss grew up in Springfield.

Boston Proper

On the weekends where I decided to stay put, of course I explored the city. I had seen many of the tourist hotspots already, so unfortunately I don’t have too many pictures of the Freedom Trail or Harvard/MIT. Some of my preferred weekend timekillers were coffee and a book on Boston Common, Italian food on North End, or window shopping along the streets of Back Bay.

Italian Cannolis in American sizes – perfect

Washington Street, the most New-York coded Boston alley

Daily Life

What made my time in Boston more meaningful than just an extended staycation was my daily routine. 5 days out of 7 I would wake up in my rickety Allston apartment, hastily snark down breakfast and bike roughly 3 miles to Somerville (where De-Ice is located), crossing the Charles along River street. I took some photos of my morning transit near the start of my internship.

Harvard off in the distance on my morning commute

A day’s paycheck later, I would bike back to Allston along a different route, crossing the Charles on the BU bridge instead which conveniently passed the BU gym where I would get my evening workout in. On an occasional treat, the team would go out for coffee or dinner, either somewhere nice and in another part of town, or right next door at the Aeronaut brewery which served no beers that surpassed the Venezuelan Arepas they randomly had as a side.