Friday 25th May 2007

Just to clear up for those of you who might be confused out there. I am writing in the past tense. I have already been to Boston.

Now that we've sorted that out I'll continue.

I forgot to mention the kind lady in the booth at the T station at the airport who told me to get the 7 Day Link card for my travel purposes on public transport for $15. Yes, you read that correctly, $15 for 7 Days covering all bus and T rides! You have no idea how dubious I was of that, in fact I asked her twice if i shouldn't be selecting one of the cards that let you put in how much you wanted to pay. don't get me started on public travel costs in the UK but I digress.

Where are we? Friday. Well, my hostess, Stephanie went to work first and I dozed before getting up and arming myself with my guidebook and took the #57 bus to Kenmore Station and then rode the T to Government Center. I went to the Federal Building to see a painting by Robert Motherwell called 'New England Elegy'. Unfortunately, I can't find a picture of the painting on google and you know you aren't going to be allowed to take photos in the Federal Building. I did ask though to which the security guard asked what painting was I talking about, the REALLY big one over there (no, I didn't say that to him). I made a sketch of it in my notebook though.

I wandered on from there and found myself in the middle of Haymarket and that presented me with some photo ops and also made me start to realise that distances weren't quite as large as they might seem in the maps in the book. From there I was originally looking for the Blackstone Block which at that time i missed completely and instead found myself at Quincy Market surrounded by tourists. I'd been warned by Stephanie and one of her roomates about Quincy Market but there I was not quite by design although I had said I'd have a look. It's mainly restaurants down the central hall of the market flanked by shops and a couple more restaurants including a noodle restaurant very popular in London (I go to said restaurant when my friends want to go, if I'm on my own I'll find somewhere else).

I actually ate lunch there in the central hall and was enjoying my lobster roll until the noisy German lady sat down next to me. In fact those guys running their stand should have paid for my lunch I was the only one at their stand and then everybody else arrived. The German lady was eating Clam Chowder in a Bread Bowl...something which looked good but I never got around to trying during my trip, maybe another time! See German lady was eating her chowder which was fine until some other Germans turned up and started asking her across me how it was etcetera. Isn't the polite thing to ask behind me not across the front me? Apologies to Germans in the audience. Lunch completed I did go and look in a couple of shops before heading back towards Government Center.

I stumbled across the Fire department doing impressive things with their fire engines and an empty cop car but there didn't seem to be any real emergency or maybe they were really efficient. The notion that everything is closer than you realise had come into play a little the evening before when we walked from the Prudential Center to the bus station. This time I came across the Old State House not by design on my way back to the T.

I was going to meet S back at the Pru as she was finishing a little earlier than usual so that we could go meet TRM.

To be continued.

This is the 'Memento' version of my trip. ;)