Boston, Day 1

I ended up in a room with 5 asian people, 2 of whom snored so I didn't get the best sleep of my life that night but it seemed to be enough because I was finally able to run the next morning! How wonderful! I don't think I went all that far but I got in 20 minutes at least. There was a trail close to the hostel that ran through what they call the 'fens' (ergo, Fenway Park). After the quick but glorious run I had some breakfast at the hostel and mapped out my plan for the day. I really only had 2 things that I wanted to do while I was in Boston..walk the Freedom Trail and go to a Red Sox game. Getting tickets for the Red Sox was a pain because they are so popular there aren't very many tickets available online. To be honest I'm surprised Boston doesn't have 2 teams like Chicago and New York do. My tickets were for Tuesday night but of course the night I get into town the Red Sox pitcher throws a no-hitter! Oh well, at least I got to see it on TV and hear some people from the hostel who had gone to the game talk about it.

I set out for the trail around 10 o'clock. The Boston subway takes you right to Boston Commons and there was a stop quite close to the Hostel. I love the subways! I do wish I had purchased a multi-day pass but all-in-all still a good value. Once you come up in the Commons there are a plethora of vendors. I tried to find a Red Sox hat I liked but came up empty handed. The visitor's center for the Freedom Trail was close at hand so I headed over there. Once inside I decided that I should spring for the 'tour' so that I would get a little more of the history than I could glean myself. I also picked up a guide book for a self-guided tour because the paid tour only covers part of the trail.

Boston Commons

Our tour guide's name was Ebenezer (who knew people still had names like that these days). This guy loved to stir up trouble and was very outspoken. He got into a political debate with one guy right away and the two of them kept throwing good-natured verbal jabs throughout the course of the tour. Perhaps the best thing he did was when we were all walking across the street and he started arguing with a bus driver. The driver was saying 'I have the light' but the light was red so he shouldn't have been in the crosswalk. Pretty funny stuff. My only problem with the tour was that we didn't get any time to wander around on our own. For example, in the burial ground we went to, there were several famous people but we only hit a few and then wandered off. You really end up having to do the tour twice, once for the added information the tour guide gives you and then once again for completeness. Even though I think he was trying to goof on one of the guys in our group, the tour guide did a very good job of relating historical actions to recent ones. For example, he talked about how today we would never be okay with a vice president shooting a lawyer and then not telling anyone (in this case he was talking about Aaron Burr and John Hancock but it certainly would apply to Dick Cheney as well).

Quick note on the 'burial grounds' in the city. Apparantly the Puritans didn't really care about people's bodies, only their souls, so they basically dumped people into these burial grounds where they would re-use the same plot over and over so some of the people are only buried inches from the top of the ground instead of the customary 6 feet. One of the governors of Boston had a Unitarian church built on top of one of the old burial grounds because the Puritans refused to sell him any land. He is quoting as having said 'the dead won't complain' :)

Our tour ended at Faneuil Hall which is a good place to stop for a bite of lunch. The Quincy Market building is filled with little restaurants on either side of a walkway. I ended up getting some pizza and then some little cookies (sorry, can't remember the name of the place) and also found a Red Sox baseball hat I liked.

Faneuil Hall

My next stop was the home of Paul Revere which was built in 1680. It's amazing to me that something that old would still be around, particularly something made of wood. 90% of the home is original and it has been restored to the late 17th century time frame and includes several items either made by or owned by the Revere's. During our tour it was pointed out that Paul Revere did not traverse the countryside yelling the 'British are coming' seeing as how his voice would not really have carried that far and if it had the British would clearly have heard him. He rode with 2 others and actually got captured by the British and totally ratted everyone out. Only one of the 3 riders actually made it past the British blockade/roadblock and even then he merely went to the homes of specific militia leaders to tell them what had happened. I went ahead and took the tour which was okay and probably worth the money to help preserve it. Every time I hit one of these 'pay' places I am thankful it's only me I'm paying for and not an entire family!

Paul Revere's former home

The next stop on the trail is the Old North Church where the lanterns were hung to signal where the invasion would come from...'one if by land, two if by sea'. Leading up to the church is a plaza with a statue of Revere and several plaques placed on the walls commemorating various things in Boston history. The church itself is not particularly spectacular but the history there is interesting and the old style pews were cool to see. Instead of just long rows of pews they had what I consider to be 'box seats' that patrons could buy and use for their family. In fact one of them is still owned and used by the Revere family. It would have been really cool to go up into the bell tower but they would not let you do that.

Notice the 'private boxes' instead of long pew benches.

From there I headed out to the Copp's Hill burying ground where there were a number of very old gravestones but none that were particularly famous. By that time my feet were hurting a bit and I needed to head back so that I could catch the Red Sox game so I hoofed it back to Boston Commons, getting lost a couple of times. For some reason I totally lost my sense of direction somewhere near the beginning of the trip and have had a hard time getting around since then. It's really frustrating and I'm beginning to wonder if that part of my brain shut down because I have the GPS.

Copp's Hill Burying Ground

After getting back to the hostel and freshening up quickly I headed out to Fenway Park which is a short trip from the hostel. I have to say the hostel was really well located and the price pretty reasonable considering where I was. Back to Fenway...the park is the oldest in the nation and while I'm not a major fan of the Red Sox I think they've always been one of my favorites. Back in the day when I collected baseball cards they had Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens who were both really big stars. Nowadays they have new faces but their team is now the defending World Champions having won the world series last year. The stadium is not 'huge' but really feels like a park like Wrigley where baseball is the primary concern and nothing else. They had a large number of food vendors but they were all selling pretty much the same thing. I ended up getting myself a Boston dog which turned out to be a boiled hot dog on the funky hot dog buns they had in Chicago. It was okay, but not as good as the Chicago dog. Same thing with the park...it was nice but at least at Wrigley I fit into my seat. The seats at Fenway probably are 90 years old and were designed to fit people who were not as tall as I am. I fit but it was a little cramped and uncomfortable. Luckily the people around me were decent and I talked to an middle-aged couple who were sitting on my left. They lived in Boston and had for some time. When we got to talking about the Freedom Trail the husband mentioned that they didn't really ever do the things in the city even though they probably should. I feel the same way about home...we always seem to want to get away even though there are plenty of undiscovered treasures close to home for us to find. I'd like to try to explore the Salt Lake area a little more this summer and try to find some of those hidden gems.

Andrew at the old..ball...game!

The Red Sox won, though it was close up to the finish. On the way back home I noticed a nice picture waiting to be taken where this old stone bridge crossed a placid river with a carriage type lamp on top of it and decided I would come back the next night. There were still plenty of people up and about at the hostel when I got back so I popped down to the kitchen to offload my pictures and catch up on my email. While I was talking to Melanie a girl who was from Australia asked if I could help get her laptop connected to the internet. Turns out she had been on a Jet Blue flight and they had lost her luggage. This was the day after Melanie had gotten stranded in New York because of Jet Blue so I'm starting to wonder about whether I really want to fly Jet Blue anymore or not. The girl from Australia, Leeann, used my laptop while I was on the phone and when I hung up we started chatting. Another Australian girl was sitting close and had been at the Red Sox game. Turns out she is a HUGE Red Sox fan and was following team across the country for a month! How amazing, who would ever think to find such a big baseball fan from Australia. And how did she get into baseball you ask? Well, I found out that she had been forced to take 8 weeks off by her job (!!!) because she had accrued too much leave. I can tell you that would never happen to me but Americans don't get 4 weeks of leave per year plus an additional 4 weeks after 10 years of service. In fact, I'm often confounded by our system of providing people with such measly leave. Hasn't anyone read studies showing that people who take vacation usually come back to work feeling much less stressed and are far more productive? Anyways, during her time off her friend made some bet with her about baseball so she had to watch a game and it just happened to be a Red Sox game. One of the players on the Sox is Coco Crisp (no lies) so that name stuck with her and because she was bored she just kept watching games and eventually got hooked. I told her someone ought to write a newspaper article about her and her journey because I think it would be cool to read something like that. I guess she'll just have to get her notoriety here :)

I made tentative plans with Leeann to goto Salem the next day since I didn't really have any major plans other than retracing the freedom trail and went off to bed.

D