All malled-out

Yesterday I managed to go through pretty much all the stores in Natick Mall and surrounding area and only spent about $2! There were all sorts of stores I'd heard of but never been to, including Macy's, Neiman Marcus, Sears, JCPennys, Gap, Nordstrom, Crate & Barrel, etc. Also, there were the specialty places like the Lego store, complete with candy-bin like dispensers of different coloured bricks, and of course a proper Apple store (not just a Magnum Mac).

Unfortunately I had more time to kill at the mall than I really needed, while I waited for James to finish his last day of work-related stuff, so... my first visit will probably also be my last - but I didn't come here for the shopping (definitely not why James agreed to take me along, anyway!).

By the time we got into our new hotel closer to town, we wandered around the Faneuil Hall Marketplace area before having dinner, which was not too bad - it was the after-dinner drinks that was interesting though... We were wandering around and ended up at an Irish pub, as soon as we walked it we could see it was a local joint, and the barwoman immediately asked for our IDs - even though we were 25, 26 and 44 (James' boss)! We pulled out our NZ driver's licenses but obviously she just wanted us to leave because she said it wasn't good enough...

Anyway, so we wandered off into the Hard Rock Cafe instead. That was also funny because we were told to go through to the bar (since we said we didn't want dinner), we went through and since there wasn't really space for all three of us to sit at the bar we sat down at a nearby table, and then a panicked waiter came over and started berating us for not getting seated by the proper person, and basically told us to get up... We ended up at the bar in the end, but not without some drama!

In the end, I guess the weird thing is how rule-conscious people seem to be here, and they freak out (loudly!) when you don't do what they expect... I guess we'll just have to pick it up as we go along!