I parked across the street and ran in to get in touch with people, but both Raul and Chris were not registered under those first names so I was getting mightily confused. Luckily, the desk clerk finally remembered that a message had been left for me, though not a key, and I found that Chris would be back at 2. It was 1:30 or so at that point, so I put my car in the garage and brought my stuff into the lobby to wait and wind down from the drive. Just as I was starting to debate with myself if I should give his cell phone a call or not, he walked in. No key was available for me then, so we just went upstairs to drop off my stuff in his, Hilary and Lee's room. I looked up a couple of addresses and we headed out to Mad Hatter's to eat. I had the BIG poutine, or at least had most of it, and Chris tackled the chicken poutine and the pitcher of Sangria. We discussed politics despite the weekend's vow to not discuss jobs or politics, sitting on the patio and dodging yellow jackets. By the time the pitcher was emptied and the non melted cheese curds picked out, it was getting time to meet people back at the hotel room for 5pm. We considered trying to find a few shops, but were good and went back to wait. And wait. Lee was there sleeping, but Hilary and the others had been out shopping and came back late. While dinner was being discussed, I ran out to the Provigo across the street, pounced on the Lady Grey tea they had, was disappointed by the lack of cider for sale, and came back with snacky foods to find everyone napping. I joined in the crashing out for an hour and then we started stirring to go out to dinner. French cuisine was decided upon and a resataurant close by was found by Liza and Raul (Gutenberg on President Kennedy). We met up with them and Whitney and Jason at the hotel bar, then started walking down the hill. Hilary decided to skip dinner and wait for us at the hotel. We were seated right away, the place looked empty, but over the course of the evening, people would appear from and disappear into the secret room in the back. Our waiter was great, giving a description of the chef going to the farm and picking out the rooster (hormone free) and then picking the pine needles to make the sauce for it. I was more intrigued by the description of the sesame covered salmon and didn't regret my choice. The bread was hot from the oven and the salad covered in a really good raspberry vinagrette. I had the blueberry tart for dessert and some earl grey tea as some of the others sipped their port. On the way out, we stopped to hear our waiter's story about coming to Boston to get over a broken heart, but picking a weekend when the tall ships were in and the only room he could get was a suite at the Hilton. He took it for one night and then charmed a woman into letting him stay with her for the rest of the week, taking her on a cruise in the harbour with a wonderful seafood buffet.
We rolled ourselves back up the hill, found Hilary recovered and ready to go out, and started the sprucing up process. Our room was ready quickly, so we went downstairs and gave our opinions on the rubber outfits bought that day by Jason and Whitney. They were well prepared when it started to rain on us as we were walking to Cybertek club. There we found that the advertising had been wrong, no EBM for us. I managed to convince people that we should try the Sphinx instead, and got people into cabs to go over to Stanley. It was 1am or so at this point, but FLA was playing as we were going in. I checked my coat and danced for a while, but found that dinner still needed a bit more time to digest, so I found a place to sit and watch the floor. The smoke got to be too much for me and I spent most of the walk back, after the lights went up and we shuffled out, coughing up bits of lungs. I got flat as soon as possible and took a shower to get rid of the smoke smell once I'd recovered a bit. We were all asleep by 4am.
We managed to get turned around in the one way streets, but we had a free detour through the old port, and eventually got onto 10. Chris pulled off onto 35 I think to get gas, but then we went straight to the border via 55. I just showed the guard my work visa and he waved me through. We stopped for a bathroom break and then went a couple of hours until they pulled off for food. We stopped in a tiny town in Vermont I think, at the Sunset Grill. It had an Erte poster in the entry way, art deco style posters in the dining room, and a ton of bikers in the bar. The food was good, and I had a wonderful cup of Mandarin Orange Spice tea. Hilary jumped in my car for the rest of the trip back to keep me awake. I led for a while when Chris started getting tired. We saw a shooting star as we were coming into Boston, it disintegrated in the atmosphere as it came to the end and sparkled a lot. The batteries I'd stopped and bought for my CD player gave out and we relied on tapes. I followed Chris to his house in Sommerville, traded Hilary for Lee and dropped her off then took Mass Ave all the way home, being careful to keep myself from nodding off. I did a quick unpacking and fell into bed at 1am.