Days 4/5 - JFK museum and Samuel Adams brewery tour

Sunday seems a pretty sleepy day in Boston, so we thought we'd take advantage and head to one of the 'must see' landmarks of Massachusetts - the JFK museum and library, which is about 30 minutes outside of central Boston. Plus, we had spent the best part of an hour in the morning trying to find a coat/jumper for jack to buy (a fruitless search) and I needed to get away from the depressingly barren wasteland that is 'T.J. Maxx' (I have no idea why it's a J...)

We took the T subway to the museum, which was filled with historical inaccuracies and pro-JFK propaganda, as was to be expected (really feel like Mark Corrigan saying that). I am being facetious in fairness - it's a pretty impressive collection of all things JFK, though our morbid curiosities remained unfulfilled with the lack of anything related to the assassination on show. It was worth it too for the gift shop though, which is filled with a bizarre mix of presidential memorabilia and miniature flags of tourist countries that have very little to do with JFK himself. Though I guess it would be insensitive to include Russia and Cuba...

The rest of the evening passed with dinner and drinks, which was fun, but we came back to the hostel around 12ish and called it a night.So fast-forward to Monday...

... Where we embarked upon a tour of the Sam Adams brewery.

Joining us on the tour was a Malaysian couch surfer we met a few nights ago who, to my horror, had never tried any kind of beer at all. I demanded (within 5 minutes of knowing her) that she tried a Sam Adams light beer to start with, and she was suitably impressed to want to join the tour

A summary of the tour is as follows: we had a 10 minute presentation about the beer-making process. We went to a tasting room. We got wasted at 11am on free beer. On a Monday morning. It was brilliant, and I wish every Monday could follow this pattern.

We were them taken to the second-oldest restaurant in Boston, Doyles, by a manic shuttle driver who had clearly been drinking since, well... He probably hasn't stopped for the last 20 odd years. Additionally, every time he said 'Doyles' he did some weird fist-clenching action, and shouted it in the way a sports commentator might shout the name of a particularly menacing wrestler/boxer. It was disconcerting, but the food was great, and we got to take home new edition Sam Adams beer glasses, which was cool.

A few more beers later, we headed back to central Boston, where, like Boston's finest homeless, I fell asleep on Boston common, reeking of alcohol. An hour and a half later, and it was back to hostel and onto a Bar trivia session, with yet more beer. And then more beer. We also met some fun Canadian guys, with whom we got yet more beer.

I've just drank my first glass of water since 10am, I've had some Cheetos and I now intend to pass out.