Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Baaaahston


Boston is the oldest place of civilisation that I have every visited and I love how you can 'feel' the history here. Because of the persistent rain we shelved the walking tour idea and bought tickets on the trolley. They have a winter special that gives us access to the trolley for all 3 days of our visit for the price of one so it turned out to be a good choice. Unlike the conch train in Key West, this one really does have lots of stops at different locations where you can hop off and explore for awhile and then jump back on. The driver's narration was excellent and we learnt a great deal about the city as we drove  around.



Our first stop was the Quincy Market where we got a chance to sample the famous clam chowder. Eaten in a bread bowl it most definitely lived up to expectations. In fact all the food at the market looked so delicious it was hard to choose what to have. The market area is beautifully decorated for the holidays and it includes a shop with the biggest range of Christmas ornaments you can imagine. I've been buying a distinctive ornament in each city to take home for our tree next year but like the food court the choices here were so vast that I couldn't decide what to have. In the end I bought a fairly boring red sox baseball bauble because it was light!



Because we spent so long at the market we didn't have a lot of time to explore Boston Common but we'll try to fit this in again tomorrow. Geoff's fascination with squirrels was rekindled in Washington where we saw squirrels of many colours including a black one and a snowy white one and continued today with the colony in Boston Common who are clearly hand fed because they were very playful.

Having grown up with the TV show where 'everybody knows your name', a visit to 'Cheers' was a must do. We sat at the bar and had a handle of John Adams before jumping back on the trolley right outside the door.



We had our first real travel hiccup today. I had booked tickets on the Amtrak to NYC for Sophie tomorrow and us on Thursday. Luckily it occurred to me today to check the baggage policy because we discovered that there is NO checked baggage on this train and no way of getting our cases to NY. Yikes! Thankfully Amtrak were happy to fully refund me and we've rebooked tickets (including a spare one for the extra luggage) on a bus instead.

Tonight we met up with a Bostonian friend for dinner. We went to the Cheesecake shop at Copley Square and had delicious salady, vegetably things.... and a wee bit of cheesecake.

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