I just got back from a quick trip to Boston for a story I'm engulfed in. Boston is one of my favorite cities, but I've spent almost no time there over the past two years since the end of my dot-bomb travel budget.

If you ever have to stay in Boston for a day or two, and your corporate travel caps prevent you from staying anywhere actually decent, I can now provisionally endorse the Days Inn at 1234 Soldiers Field Road, on the banks of the Charles near Watertown. It didn't suck that bad.

I do suggest, however, that you avoid American Eagle's regional jet service if your're over 5'6″ and 125 pounds. It may only take an hour and 20 minutes to get from Baltimore to Logan International (and the same back) that way, but you may develop curvature of the spine and deep vein thrombosis in the process. It's like getting shoved into a pneumatic tube cartridge from a comfort stanpoint–sure, you get there, but you're left wondering if the trip was really necessary.

Dave Winer never responded to my hail, so I ended up lunching with a friend in PR (on my dime) at the Panera in the Arsenal office park (which is apparently on land owned by Harvard). Then I spent an hour or two talking with the president of a midmarket CRM consutlancy nearby, and had dinner with some other friends at Jasper White's Summer Shack in Cambridge. Dave, this is the kind of place you shoud do a blogger dinner at–unless you have a shellfish allergy.

Then I got up at 4 am. You know, the Mass Pike and Ted Williams Tunnel are a cakewalk at 5 am. I got on a plane at 6:50 and was back in Baltimore in time for breakfast.