Doing Up Boston

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We spent Monday in Boston, doing all the touristy things. I told Steve there was a time in my life where I abhorred doing the tourist thing - too cliche or something. Over the years I've come to realize, it's the best way to see the interesting stuff. Duh. I realized that economies depend on tourists and recently I've also seen the light - that while saving is important, stimulating the economy is a necessary and good thing too. (Seriously, I thought saving money was 100% good and spending was 100% bad.)

We bought the boat/trolley tour package. That would be the Boston skyline from the boat, above. The boat tour is about 45 minutes long. You can get on and off the trolley all day long so we took our sweet time on that part. I highly recommend both. One surprising thing - the trolley drivers are very funny! I always think it takes a lot to make me laugh but our first guy was so funny I really didn't want to get off for fear of missing "the show". Our next guy was pretty funny and the 3rd guy just thought he was funny. All very entertaining stuff though and you really get to see a lot that you'd never get to see negotiating traffic on your own.

Photo from scottcabal at Trip Advisor.

We spent some time at the USS Constitution area. It's still a fully commissioned ship but it's open to the public, and it's closed on Mondays.

Photo from Wikipedia.

But we did tour the USS Cassin Young. This stuff is lost on me but it made Steve happy to see.

Photo from Stephco Cleaning website.

I loved this dramatic bridge every time we saw it and loved it even more when I learned from one of our trolley drivers that it's the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge and that Lenny Zakim was a civil rights leader. I took some photos but not as nice as this one. I did a little research on Lenny and the bridge and learned it was built as part of the Boston's Big Dig and it's the worlds widest cable-stayed bridge.

This was another of our favorite landmarks, the TD Northbank Garden. I'd forgotten until then that I'd watched a good number of Celtics games on TV with Dad during the Larry Bird years, played on the parquet floor of the old Boston Garden. And in more current news, I see my friend Bruce Springsteen played there this past April.

Other than Old Ironsides referenced earlier, the only other stop where we got off the trolley was at Quincy Market. It was lots of fun. I was relieved that Steve wanted to go here as much as I did. Besides the carts and kiosks seen here, there are brick & mortar stores and restaurants around the perimeter - we only went in a few. My heart was pounding throughout the Crate & Barrel store but I thought it would explode out of my chest when we happened upon a section displaying all things lime green. Wow. Nope, didn't buy a thing, though I considered a set of boxes - 3 shades of lime green, sort of a lacquer finish. I can't find them online unfortunately, to show you.

We had some lemonade and later stopped for ice cream - my first Death by Chocolate in quite a while, it was outstanding. We watched some street performers, which I thoroughly enjoyed. After we watched a 3-sibling circus type act, complete with a very believable "plant" in the audience, I asked Steve for a dollar to put in the hat because I only had big bills. He kind of rolled his eyes at me, I think.

Funny thing though - by the time we got to the naked silver lady, he seemed to be all on board with supporting street performers! Of his own volition, I saw him head over to her bowl to drop in some money. (She's not really naked, I just said that for effect.) When he dropped the money in, she broke her pose and did a bunch of cool robotic moves. When he got back to where I was standing, I was taking pictures and she kept motioning to Steve to come back so I could take a photo of him with her but he wouldn't budge. She looked sad.

Behind her a guy was playing drums on a bunch of overturned buckets and other plastic and metal containers. He took a break shortly after we arrived, which disappointed me. I wanted to watch more of him.

It was a long, full day - perfect weather - lots of fun!

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