1872: Long Trip

I’m in Boston! PAX East proper starts tomorrow, so today was all about actually getting to the place, getting together with people and then just bumming around to have a bit of fun.

I was a little stressed out at the prospect of the journey, to be honest. When I’m going abroad, I usually travel with other people whom I can rely on and ask questions of, so this was a relatively new experience to me. Still, I got through safely, and my bag even arrived at the same time as I did, which is the main thing I was worried about.

The reason I was a little anxious was that this was also the first time I’d taken a multi-stage trip to the States — in this case, flying from my local airport Southampton to Dublin, then onwards from there to Boston. I was particularly interested to discover that Dublin airport has a “pre-clearance” area for visitors to the States. I hadn’t come across this before, but it appears to be an extremely good idea: rather than wasting hours of time after you’ve been stuck on a plane for hours, pre-clearance allows you to do all the immigration and passport control nonsense before you actually take your flight. It’s actually sort of surreal; it looks like you’re entering the States — there are pictures of Obama and everything — but in reality you’re just heading for a normal airport gate.

When I arrived at Boston I successfully navigated the subway system to the hotel I’m staying at with my friends; this cost a fraction of the price of getting a cab, so it was an infinitely preferable option given that my funds are somewhat limited at present.

I’m not sure what we’re going to see at PAX tomorrow; for one thing, we’re probably going to take on the Final Fantasy XIV battle challenge and fight Shiva in the hope of winning a T-shirt, but other than that, I couldn’t tell you yet.

For now, though, it’s after midnight (here) and my body clock still probably reckons it’s about 6:15 in the morning, so I better go to bed. Night!