Sara had left for a wedding, so I was on my own in Boston for the weekend. Boston was at the heart of the American Revolution: the massacre, the Tea Party (not the Canadian band), the Port Act and the Siege Of are all Wikipedia articles that have the word "Boston" in the title, and thus are probably somewhat related. As a citizen of the Rest Of The World, we only received moderate instruction in American history between school and Sesame Street, so I had to figure it out on the tour.
Unfortunately I had the tour guided by the little old lady who didn't remember much, rather than the tour by the guy in the period costume.
My Freedom Trail tour took me from Faneuil Hall, past the Old State House: from the balcony of which the Declaration of Independence was read, and the first seat of government in the New World. We went to the birthplace of Ben Franklin (inventor of the kite, or the $100 note, or something), the location of the first school in Boston, King's Church, a beautiful Old City Hall, and a butt-ugly New City Hall.
Afterwards, a British street theatre duo twisted themselves into shapes for my amusement, but couldn't really outdo the Edinburgh folk. Plus, his assistant was his 'sister', which seemed just a little too incestuous given some of his banter. They did, however, balance on top of one another on a big rubber ball, so mad props to them. Some other street theatre I caught the end of later seemed to involve 20 mins of set-up for a guy to jump over another guy. He wasn't worth a dead president.
Lunch was very Bostonian: Clam Chowder served in a hollowed-out bun, accompanied by Incan song.
For the afternoon, I'd downloaded a podcast with a guided walk around the Boston Harbour. This is the inner harbour, and they have lots of water taxis out to the Harbour Islands National Park, and other interesting places such as the airport, which is right on the waterfront. There are a lot of seafood stores and restaurants waterfront, as well as some interesting sculpture.
I love this building. It's the Moakley Federal Courthouse. My brother wanted me to go see where Boston Legal was filmed: unfortunately, the answer is 'California'.
I wanted to take some sort of boat excursion to end the day, and walking back from the end of the trip I passed an old schooner that I'd walked past earlier (where I took a photo of some passers-by for them, and they asked me when I was going back to England.) It sounded like fun, so I spent two hours out on the Roseway, a vessel owned by the World Ocean School, which does things like provide team-building exercises to underprivileged kids.
We passed right under the path to the runway of Logan International Airport, saw Fort Warren, the US Naval ship Sisler, and avoided being run into by oncoming bigger boats.
Overall, a fun day out, and my last day in Boston.
Tags: travel
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