Beautiful Boston

We woke up to bright blue skies and gorgeous sunshine ready for a big day in the revolutionary city. Our hotel was in the seaport area, a re-vamped area of old Boston where the port is situated. It only took us about 10 mins to walk across the two bridges into the main part of the city and it was a nice walk. The first thing we noticed was how ridiculously clean the city was. It looked like New York in the sense that the architecture was similar, and it had the East Coast sensibility, but it was clean and orderly,where NYC was noisy and messy.

Less people live in the CBD of Boston, it is a harbour city with many suburban options, so the city is largely reserved for commerce.

We headed straight to the Quincy market area, via the Old State house where the Boston Massacre had occurred. The Boston massacre pre-ceded the revolution. It was the first spark in the revolutionary war. You can read about it here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Massacre.

We then headed to Quincy market for brunch.

It is an old marketplace that is now full of eating options. Every imaginable culinary experience is available here, but I headed straight for the Chowder. I’d been warned about the New England chowder. It can make you pine for it forever if you can’t have it, so it was dangerous to even go there.

So I took one mouthful of this chowder, all creamy and lumpy, and I fell head over heels. It was the most magnificent tasting thing in a cup I had ever have. How could I leave it behind eventually ? I knew I shouldn’t have gone there.

The girls had some too, they all melted at the mouthful too. If kids and adults can agree on something like this, it must be extraordinary.

The setting was lovely. We had only found seats upstairs but just quietly, they were the best !. The big cream coloured dome of Quincy market was above us, and an assortment of long windows around the circular room let in an enormous amount of light. Restored beautifully, it was a lovely spot to engage with the chowder (the world’s most magnificent food).

The boys opted for Philly cheesesteaks, which had me beat. Boston = Chowder, Philly = Cheesesteaks as far as I was concerned, but you can’t tell them. They liked them anyway, and it was obvious the general standard of food in Quincy market was very high no matter which part of the world it was from.

We had made contact with the Trolley tour operators before we left who were keen to show an Australian travel agent around Boston, so we picked up our tickets and headed to the bus pick up.

We opted for the Boston Upper deck trolley tours. http://www.bostonsupertours.com/upper-deck-trolley-tours/. They had elevated trolleys which gave you a much better view from the street.

Once on the trolley, we had our first encounter with the Bostonian. Forged from largely Irish stock, the Bostonian possesses one of the worlds finest sense of humour. Being influenced by the Irish meant that it was a sense of humour an Australian was most familiar with.  We travelled past Rose Kennedy’s garden with 104 rose bushes in it to signify each year of her life. On to Charlestown and the bunker hill memorial, then over the bridge to Cambridge  where we decided to give our jaws a rest and wipe the tears of laughter from our faces, for just a little while to get a coffee. The trolley stopped outside the Cambridge Galleria shopping mall.

Here we encountered some giggling schoolgirls who were entertained by our accents, and a best buy that emptied our wallets.

We jumped back on the trolley and finished the whole town loop. Seeing the Massachusetts state house, Boston Common, The botanical gardens, The very well to do suburb of Beacon hill and Fenway park, home to the Red Sox. The laughs never stopped either, those Bostonians are hilarious, laconic and very good tour guides !.

We jumped off at our hotel which was on the tour route and dropped off our shopping. Got some warm clothes on and jumped back on the bus to go back to Quincy market.

Passing the barking crab restaurant, the tour guide mumbled “there’s the Barking Crab restaurant, named after a college girlfriend I once had” and so it went on. We went back to Quincy for dinner. I had another chowder. It had only been hours but the warning’s were true, I had pined for it already, actually, I didn’t just eat mine, but I finished the kids too. I had gone down a path of no return.

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