Day 1 - The best laid plans...

Sleep last night was glorious, deep and wonderful.

I had originally planned to leave on my epic journey to LA today.  However, on the back of last night's wee drive around, I decided to stay and sightsee a little.

On Marc & Nadya's recommendation I went to Sullivan T Station and jumped on a train into the City of Boston.  I got off at a station which I approximated would be in the Downtown area and was pleasantly relieved to find that it was.  Once in the street I made my way to City Hall and wandered around the streets taking pictures.

 

Boston City Hall

  

Info board in a graveyard about the Sacred Cod.  Forebear of the Silver Darling?

 

Higgeldy-piggeldy streets with Skyscrapers in.

 

I quite enjoyed the archey bit in the middle of this one.

 

 

It's not really funny, but I found it amusing.

 

 Steam actually rising from manhole covers.

I only realised there was someone in this car after I took the picture.  He didn't seem to mind.  The building behind seems to be called Tent City. Which is a strange name for a brick building.

This is an example of what seems to be a fairly typical Boston City Street.  I like it.

All the walking made me quite hungry.  I heard there was an eaterie at the top of the Prudential Tower, so I got back on the T and headed for a station which I approximated was nearby.

As luck would have it I got off reasonably nearby and proceeded to the top.  I had a wander round and took some photos.  I've never really been higher than about 20 floors before, so it was quite a novelty.  Visibility wasn't great but good enough to see the landmarks, Airport etc.

John Hancock Tower

Christian Science Plaza

Rooftop swimming pool - come on in, the water's lovely!

I think this jumper is nearly as old as the Camry.  I actually used to wear it to School.

Charles River

It's not a real blog post untill you have a factoid like this.

Lunch at the top of Prudential Tower included this bloody enormous Creme Brule as the finale to my 3 courses.  It was absolutely delicious.  That's a dessert spoon that I used for scale.

It was more like a minor detour ramp.

I had lunch up there!

After taking the T back into town I rocked up at State station which has doors under the Old State House - one of Boston's landmark brick built historical buildings.  Weird that Bostonians should convert the lower floors of such a building for this use, but also kind of cool.  I took to the Freedom Trail and followed the red line painted round the city.  I saw some churches and some gravestones and read a lot of placards blaming the British for all sorts of things like 'burning down a lovely house that we were really fond of' as well as shooting people dead in the street in cold blood which led to the American war of independence.

Freedom Trail also takes you to the USS Constitution Museum where I saw this billboard:

Damn straight. 

WW2 Warship in Dry dock.

It's not far from the USS Constitution Museum to the site of the Battle of Bunker Hill.  Which took place at Breed's hill (it's a long story).  You can climb to the top of the Monument there, and unlike the Prudential Tower it's free!

This is a statue outside the Bunker Hill Monument.



294 steps later, at the top of the Bunker Hill Monument I met a man for Peru who's first question was "Where are you from?" on finding out I was Scottish, his second question was "Rangers or Celtic?".  He took this picture.

After visitng the Bunker Hill Monument, I decided that as I was already nearly home, I would just walk the rest of the way.  My walk back from the city was nearly 4 miles in total.  I feel pretty awesome.

This church, with real-life convent attached signalled my walking past by playing some tunes on its bells.  For about 10 minutes.

This bus appears to have a fold-down rack for destroying pushbikes. 

Boston is really beautiful, has lots to see and do and is quite compact from what I can gather.  I would love to come back and spend some more time here one day.