Boston: Day 1

(Here I am with Hayden flashing my bib number)

We left for Boston on Friday, April 15, and since we didn't arrive until the middle of the night, I consider that Saturday was the first real Boston day. We woke up in a Hilton five-star hotel near Logan Airport. Hayden and I had an adjoining room with my mom and Bob. I slept nicely in the comfy bed I had all to myself, and then I got in a run on the treadmill at the fitness center in the morning. After we all got ready, we had a free breakfast in the hotel restaurant (Bob worked his magic for that deal). We then packed up and left our lovely hotel to pick up our rental car.

Next on the agenda was to make it to the race expo. That turned out to be quite a challenging feat. The streets in Boston are difficult to follow and get used to, so finding the John Hynes Convention Center took forever. We also ran into a bunch of traffic because of the Red Sox game. Since we couldn't find the expo, we ended up asking some people who had picked up their race packets where to go. Of course, there wasn't any parking, so my mom, Hayden, and I left Bob in the car to walk to the Convention Center. Naturally, when there are going to be 25,000 people running the marathon then the expo is bound to be incredibly crowded. It was difficult to move through the crowd, but I was able to get my race packet, buy the official celebration jacket (which I will point out later), get Hayden a shirt for race day, and snag a few free samples.

Eventually we made it back to Bob who actually snagged a parking spot thanks to his job title (it never hurts to travel with someone who has a badge).

It took forever to get out of Boston so we could head to Danvers and check into the Courtyard Marriot for the remainder of our stay. Even though Danvers is about 20 miles outside of Boston, we discovered that it took us an hour everytime we traveled back and forth each way. By the time we checked in and brought in our luggage it was dinner time. We found a local chain, 99, and decided to try it out.

After dinner we returned to our shared room which had a king bed for my mom and Bob and a sofa bed for Hayden and I (a double size sofa bed...just picture the fun that I had in that bed with Hayden :)