Boston

...More later.

Boston in October, when the sun is shining, the Redsox are playing well, the leaves are just doing their New England Fall Color thing...what a treat!

Getting paid to be there...what a total delight!

Look, this isn’t getting us down to the nitty-gritty of what Boston is like for a visitor, this is just shilly-shallying around to garner a few laughs (Well OK...smiles then) while you try to get ...
...and towns in the USA, Boston was built before cars were thought of, so no tidy ‘grid’ system of street layout applies, all go into the mix to make driving, or being driven, a frustrating and protracted affair.

So anyway...where was I?

Ah yes, walking back to Copley Place from Memorial Drive, on the other side of the river.

My route took me along the banks of the Charles River, and through a beautiful stretch ... more

OK. Here’s a quiz question:

What is the least friendly place on Earth? Is it:

A) Downtown Novosibirsk on a Wednesday morning in February?
B) A pub outside Ibrox when Celtic have just whupped Rangers...and you’re wearing a green scarf?
C) Platform 3 at King’s Cross Station, four minutes after you miss your last train home...and your credit cards are maxed...and you’ve got no money...and you’re a little bit pissed, but not pissed enough to sleep on a bench?
D) None of the above?

The answer, of course, is D...none of the above, because without a shadow of a doubt the least friendly spot on the face of our planet is Logan International Airport, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Sorry Boston.

Lovely city, great people, very nasty airport. Very.

More later.

Boston in October, when the sun is shining, the Redsox are playing well, the leaves are just doing their New England Fall Color thing...what a treat!

Getting paid to be there...what a total delight!

Look, this isn’t getting us down to the nitty-gritty of what Boston is like for a visitor, this is just shilly-shallying around to garner a few laughs (Well OK...smiles then) while you try to get your thoughts in some semblance of order. Get on with it!

Fine...where to begin? AHA! The airport!!!

I arrived at Logan at a respectable time of the day; feeling quite perky after a decent flight, and looking forward to a couple of weeks of well paid labour with ample time for sightseeing and socialising. Smiling like a fool, I approached the immigration desk happy in the knowledge that my visa waiver form had been correctly filled in and that I was carrying nothing which could be construed as contraband or threatening. I stepped forward to the passport control, handed over the appropriate documents, and was then subjected to a major grilling regarding the purpose of my visit, the length of my stay, what seeds, meatstuffs and small furry animals I was carrying about my person and why my hair was so short?

Eventually, and without so much as a sneer, far less a smile, the surly skinhead (and he thought MY hair was short?) at the desk deigned to let me through onto the hallowed lino of Logan; Boston’s international airport.

Collecting my bag was fun. Only took 40 minutes and two changes of carousel.

A further unsmiling scrutiny followed, this time by members of the small furry animal and foodstuff police, and I was finally allowed to proceed into the arrivals hall and onwards to find a taxi for the short hop to my downtown hotel.
The taxi driver was a tad uncommunicative - by which I don’t mean he was unfriendly. After all, he only picked people up at the airport, he didn’t work there himself – he just didn’t speak a lot of English. Nothing wrong with that...after all, neither do I.

I was staying at the Westin Copley Place; a large and fairly typical example of a chain hotel, in the same group as Sheraton. Comfortable and undemanding, but it could have been anywhere, so it doesn’t warrant much comment.

Having parked my bags, and unshipped the small furry animals from their hiding places so that I could let them loose, thereby causing the downfall of the Western World as we know it, I set out to get my bearings, this being my first visit to Boston.

Having a commitment to visit the British Consulate, I thought I’d get that over and done with straight away, thereby freeing up the rest of the day. So I jumped in a cab, not having the foggiest where I was going or how far it might be.

It turned out to be a convoluted ten minute ride to a point just across the Charles River from my hotel. I paid the fare and made my way to the 15th floor of the building which houses the consulate. It was worth the cab-fare just to see the view over the river towards the city. It was stunning!

The weather being pretty fabby, with clear blue skies and temperatures in the mid-twenties (or, as they say in the USA, high seventies...they use something called ‘farenheit’ you know) I decided to risk walking back to the hotel; it didn’t look too daunting a distance. Indeed, I reckon I walked back faster than the taxi had driven me there in the first place. This is a lesson it’s wise to learn in Boston: a journey by road is almost guaranteed to be four times the distance it would be on foot. One-way systems, roadworks (including the infamous ‘Big Dig') and the fact that, unlike the majority of cities and towns in the USA, Boston was built before cars were thought of, so no tidy ‘grid’ system of street layout applies, all go into the mix to make driving, or being driven, a frustrating and protracted affair.

So anyway...where was I?

Ah yes, walking back to Copley Place from Memorial Drive, on the other side of the river.

My route took me along the banks of the Charles River, and through a beautiful stretch of parkland through which half of Boston’s population appeared to be walking, skating, cycling, rollerblading, running and any other form of recreational perambulation you care to name.

Hard to blame them; it was a perfect day for any and all of these recreations, and a perfect day to take in the beauty of the Autumn – sorry - Fall – colours – sorry – colors. A good day too to take some photographs.

So I did.

Boston is a bit ‘European’ in the way it feels as you walk around it; at least in comparison to some of the other places I’ve visited over the past few months. As I mentioned a few lines ago it doesn’t boast (if that’s the right expression) a grid system, and while it has its fair share of mirrored tower blocks and giddy-making edifices it also has a fair sprinkling of old buildings...and I use the term ‘old’ advisedly here. Boston’s first settlers, or perhaps I should get my politically correct hat on and say Boston’s first ‘incomers’ showed up and pitched their tents around 1630. Frankly, the traffic has been getting worse ever since! The net result, however, is that you can turn a corner with 40-floor towers at your shoulder and come face-to-facia with something fetching in red brick and Georgian design. Not unlike the City of London in some ways.

A perfect example of this is the Old State House, which is located pretty much in the heart of downtown Boston. It was from here that the Declaration of Independence was given its first public airing, and it was at the heart of the whole damned Boston Tea Party fandango. (No music, no dancing, no drink...not even tea! What kind of party IS this?) It was originally built in 1657, with rebuilds in 1711 and 1747. Pretty nice building all round. Visit it!

From Copley Square, where my hotel was located, there’s a fair choice of directions to start off your exploration of Boston.

You can head for the River, down Dartmouth Street, which will take you through the beautiful tree-lined area of Back Bay, where a town house (if you could find one that wasn’t converted into flats) would cost you a cool $5 million or more. You’ll quickly get to Charles Street, which I would strongly advise you negotiate by means of the footbridge. Having done so, you’ll find yourself in the very park I spent a happy hour or two photographing, with really fine walks in either direction. If you choose to turn right, you’ll come before too long to the Longfellow Bridge and thereafter to the Charles River Dam Bridge, which is where you’ll find the excellent Museum of Science (if that should be your thaang).

After you’ve ‘done’ the museum – or not –carry on across the bridge and on your right you’ll find a really nice shopping mall...if that isn’t too much of a contradiction in terms for you to cope with. It’s called the Cambridgeside Galleria. This should give you a little clue as to what the area you are standing in is called. Yes, that’s right...Galleria.

By the way, if you took a left instead of a right at the river, the first bridge you come to is the Harvard Bridge, which will take you into the heart of MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and onto Vassar Street. Are you getting the idea? Here’s a helpful hint: If you’re allergic to further education...prepare for some serious sneezing. And a nasty little rash too, I wouldn’t doubt.

Let’s try another direction from Copley Square and see what happens.

Actually, let’s try a little diversion. Let’s try talking like a Bostonian. First, find a plastic surgeon who can inject some Botox into your upper lip (or you could just find someone prepared to punch you in the mouth) Now, as you can no longer move the upper lip, all you need to do is to convert all ‘R’ sounds to ‘aah’ sounds and you can almost certainly pass as a Bostonian. Well done. Now where were we? Oh yes...

Let’s go down Boyleston Street.

Now, if you were to go left onto Boyleston, you’d find yourself quite quickly at Fenway Park; home of the fabulous Boston Redsox baseball team (Well OK, maybe they’re not THAT fabulous, but I like them anyway), while if you turn right onto Boyleston, you’d quickly find yourself in the vicinity of several decent bars and restaurants...MUCH more important than baseball! As you’re in the area, why not drop into George’s Bar, which isn’t really anything special; just a nice, friendly local bar with good food and fantastically attractive barstaff...say hi to TJ for me...she’s the really drop-dead gorgeous one with long straight hair and ...OK, enough, enough.
Carry on a little further and you’ll find yourself in the land of the seriously expensive shops, while on the other side of the road, the buildings disappear altogether and give way to Boston Common; a really fine city centre park, with all sorts of sports facilities and many acres of green stuff and trees. Every bit as appealing as Central Park in New York, The Meadows in Edinburgh, Hyde Park in London or my back garden in Putney for a bit of inner city down time.

Carry on down Boyleston (taking care not to get yourself misplaced when it changes direction) and you’ll find such delights as a shop selling all things Russian. However, we’re not talking caviar and vodka here, as this store looks for all the world like a rather run-down charity shop, with old Russian Red Guard furry hats and strange tea sets, books heavy with Cyrillic script and paintings that look like something off a nasty motel wall. It describes itself as a supplier of decorative artefacts, and I suppose if you wanted to design an interior that looked like a Soviet era flat in downtown Minsk, then this would be the place to go. It gets its own mention purely for being so utterly bizarre!

Shortly after this exercise in Strange, you’ll start to see theatres; theatres and Chinese restaurants, which go hand in hand here as they do in London. Chinatown and the theatre district huddle together in symbiotic proximity, allowing you to eat enormous amounts (I do mean ENORMOUS amounts) of mu shu pork, crispy acrobatic duck and beansprout noodles before reeling groggily off to take in a show. You can then stagger back for some more acrobatic (come on, haven’t you seen them hanging in the windows?) duck and Tsingtao beer before lurching in an unseemly fashion back to your lodgings of choice where, if you are on the budget version of this holiday, you can rest your eyes on a Russian painting of dubious quality; interior décor Boston style!

A word of warning: if you are going exploring in the area which takes in Chinatown, Theatreland and the financial district, and I strongly advise that you do, as it’s vital for getting a feel of what makes Boston tick, then take a guide, a decent map, a compass, a big ball of string and a comfortable pair of walking shoes. It’s quite easy to get a bit disoriented among the high buildings, alleys and strangely contrary streets in this part of town and to start seeing landmarks again...and again...(“Hey, there’s ANOTHER branch of Fred’s Bagels and Ice-Cream. That Fred’s doing really well for himself!”)

OK. Back to Copley Place. This time, go into the Westin Hotel by the corner entrance, up the escalator, taking time to pitch a coin or two into the pool at the bottom of the waterfall. At the top, you have a choice: right goes to the hotel reception, and left goes into a shopping mall. Go left and into the mall.

This isn’t any old shopping mall here. No, this is a mall that connects Copley Place with various other bits of Boston without having to brave the Great Outdoors. This should tell you a little something about Boston’s climate through certain parts of the year. Yes indeedy – through certain parts of the year, you will NOT want to walk outside. Honest. Trust me on this.

So what are the incentives on using the mall when it’s not actually raining buckets or some degrees below zero outside?

Simple really: the chance to flex your plastic like a millionaire!

This mall houses shops like Louis Vuitton, Thomas Pink, Tiffany, Armani and many more.
This is a mall in which you can spend a whole day...and the gross national product of Brazil or similar...no problemo.

There are, of course, plenty of other stores for which having a credit rating akin to that of Donald Trump is not a requirement, and these too have plenty to offer the discerning shopper. For example, there’s a great cutlers with an awesome selection of knives of every sort (don’t forget to put them in your cabin baggage on the way home!) a couple of first rate jewellers, some fine T-shirt shops; perfect for souvenirs, and about 450 places to buy mobile phone contracts.

This mall has something else to offer: a weatherproof walk between Copley Place and the Hynes Convention Centre, taking in a couple of other hotels and the Prudential Centre on the way. Not to be sniffed at when the weather turns nasty.

Naturally, there’s a great deal more to Boston than I have iterated here. If there wasn’t, this op would be the size of a Rough Guide. However, it’s here that I will draw a halt, with just a short list of ‘Don’t Miss’ bits and pieces to wrap it all up.

So Don’t Miss:

The Museum of Fine Art – fantastic if you like...well...fine art.

The Duck Tour – As you wander around the centre of Boston you’ll catch sight of some astonishing vehicles: amphibious craft painted in garish colours and carrying a payload of eager sightseers. These trundle around the various sights of the city, then plunge into the Charles River for a quick ‘once round the bay’. The take off from The Museum of Science and from near the Hynes Centre. Tickets through your hotel concierge or from a stand in the mall mentioned above (close to the Sheraton).

The Prudential Centre’s Skywalk Observatory – not that high in architectural terms, as compared with, say, the Sears Tower in Chicago, but at 45 floors or so, it does give a breathtaking view of the city. Costs about $7 and accessed via the self-same mall.

Bunker Hill – visit the site of the famous battle...if your fancy takes you in that sort of direction.

Suffolk Downs Racecourse – go in the general direction of Revere and you’ll find the track on your right, surrounded by used car lots and airport hotels, but if you like horseracing, this is the spot.

Turners Fisheries Restaurant – part of the Westin Copley Place Hotel, this place serves some VERY fine seafood in innovative fashion. Great wine list too.

And while we’re on the subject of eating, try these:

Legal Seafood – branches all over the place. Great food at reasonable prices.

Steve’s Ice-Cream – Bostonians eat LOTS of ice-cream, and Steve’s is incredibly popular...with good reason. Find it at Faneuil Hall Market Place.

Dick’s Last Resort – greasy food, rude waiters, balloons tied into long hair and origami willies plonked on short hair, crap live music. Great fun all round!

That’ll do...you can find the rest yourself.

Oh yes, and it’s the home of Samuel Adams beer too.

 

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