Bonnetts Abroad Past Trips

Boston

I had been in Boston for week on business, and was staying over the weekend as it may have been necessary to do additional work on the Monday.

So we bought a return ticket for Debbie to fly out to Boston for the weekend, Norwgian Air from Gatwick. I'd used the same airline earlier in the week and had found it to be quite agreeable, brand new 787s.

Being a budget airline, the cheapest tickets don't come with meals or drinks supplied. but sandwiches can be brought onboard so it's not really a problem on a 7 hour flight to Boston.

I met Debbie at the airport at about 20:00, and we got a taxi back to the hotel.

Later on we went for a bit of a walk down to the common to look at the Christmas lights.

Saturday morning we were up quite early, we had decided to walk out to a breakfast place. Walking through the public gardens.

"Make Way for Ducklings", statues based on a classic children's book by Robert McCloskey. We went to see an exhibition of McClcoskey's works in the Museum of Fine Arts on the Monday.

We were too early for breakfast, so we just continued walking. Headed up Mount Vernon Street, before heading back towards the common and up to the State House.

It was still early, so we decided to walk down towards the harbour area, on the way we spotted this bird sitting in a tree by the side of the road. There were quite a lot of squirrels around too, looked like the bird was eyeing up the squirrels.

When I got my camera out to photograph it, the camera (TZ–70) jammed, came up with a "System Error [Auto Focus]" message. Very disappointing.

We eventually found our way down to the Boston Public Market, the inside part was still closed, doesn't open until 08:00, but outside there was plenty of stalls set up with, fruit, veg, meat and fish.

Still looking to find somewhere to have breakfast so we went into a local pizza place, slice of homemade pizza and a cup of coffee, it was rather nice.

When the indoor part of the market opened we went in and had a look around, a lot of high end products on sale.

We left the market and walked down to the Aquarium, we bought a Boston City Pass each, which gave us entrance to the aquarium, Museum of Fine Arts, The Skywalk and the Science Museum.

Upon entering the aquarium, on of the first exhibits is a shallow pool with rays in it. You are encouraged to put your hand in the water and let the rays brush by under your hand, thus stroking the fish.

Next stop in the aquarium was an outdoor seal pool, we were in time to watch a presentation of the seals being trained, exercised and fed.

The main attraction in the aquarium is a large central tank, with a walkway that spirals updards around the outside of it, this holds a lot of large fish, sharks and turtles. The wallson each floor are lined with tanks of fish, jellyfish, eels, etc. In one tank there was a large pacific octopus, fascinating to watch. although I've always liked cuttlefish.

We had lunch in the Legal Seafood at the harbour, I had lobster roll, Deb had chowder. We then bought tickets for the trolley bus tour, this pass allowed us to hop on and off the trolley bus and was valid for two days, it also included the entrance to the Boston Tea Party Ships.

We did a complete loop on the trolley bus to get a feel of what there was to see and do, the sound quality of the commentary made it a little hard to understand in places.

After the trolley bus, we walked up through Quincy Market, here you can buy almost any kind of meal or ready to eat food. But we'd already had lunch.

We walked back through the streets, heading in the general direction of the hotel, visiting the St. James Graveyard and also popping into some of the larger shops, such as Macy's on the way

We still had a days worth of travel on the trolley bus tour, so in the morning we walked to stop closest to the hotel, opposite the common. This has an office so we could shelter from the cold wind.

Directly by the trolley bus stop is this statue of Edgar Allan Poe, who was born in Boston in 1809.

We got of the trolley bus at the stop closest to the prudential tower and used our city pass tickets to go up to the Skywalk on the fiftieth floor. They wanted to see our passports, but we didn't have them with us, in the end they accepted a UK driving licence as proof of ID and let us go up.

The Skywalk has views around 360 degrees. The views were spectacular, it was a clear day and we could see for many miles. As well as the views there are short video presentaions about the history of the city and it's people.

The Boston Tea Party attraction was included in the price of the trolley bus tickets. They have two repropduction ships. The experience starts with a reencactment of a town meeting before going down to look at one of the ships

After looking round the ship you are taken into the museum part, which has one of the original tea chests that had been cast into the harbour. There are also clever, talking portraits that bring some of the history to life.

The visit ends with a film showing the start of the war of independence. After which there is a visitor shop and cafe.

The Old State House museum is also included in the price of the trolley bus ticket, a fairly compact museum, the star exhibit is a phiall of tea surviving from the original tea party event.

We then went back to Quincy Hall, were we had some lunch, very difficult to decide what to have, so much to choose from.

Afterwards we did some more riding round on the trolley bus until it got dark.

Our last day in Boston, we checked out of the hotel but left our bags with the concierge.

The two remaining tickets on the City Pass were the Science Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts.

We bought an all day ticket on the transit system, and header towards the science museum.

It was only a short ride to the science museum, but it already started to snow. The ground was covered in a slippery slush.

The science museum had a DaVinci exhibition on, so we spent some time looking at that, and also some time looking at the natural history part, but there wasn't much else to see here. It's mainly geared towards education and interactive sessions with school children.

We didn't stay long in the Science Museum before heading off to the Museum of Fine Arts.

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts is a world class museum and art gallery, with exhibits ranging from ancient civilisations to modern art, with entire reconstructed rooms and apartments from various periods of American history.

We spent most of the day here, perhaps too long, there's a limit to how many wonderful exhibits one can appreciate!

So we headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags, got a taxi and headed to the airport. After checking in we had a meal, before heading to the gate and our Norwegian Air flight