If you have been following my travels you will know that we were in Canada for a while before flying down to Boston. This was my first visit to the city and to Massachusetts. This is a city with a lot of history, but a lot of people will think of a certain sitcom that was set there. The building exterior used in Cheers is just near Boston Common, so we wandered over there. Unfortunately it was covered in scaffolding and so it was not possible to get a decent photo.
We stayed in the Revere Hotel that is named after a famous son of Boston. He played a part in fighting the nasty British. The locals do not seem to bear any resentment towards us. The hotel was nice with lots of artwork based around the war of independence. I will say that I am no expert on that part of history, so excuse me if I get anything wrong.
I did like the city itself. It is not too busy and has retained a lot of its old buildings, many of which have nice details. There are nice parks by the Charles River and it was really busy when we went for a walk there on our first evening. People were tango dancing on a boat dock and they were showing the new Mario movie on a big screen. The common is also a nice area. We saw tango there too and one day there was an African festival going on with lots of stalls and a band from Ghana.
This sculpture is a memorial to Martin Luther King Jr and his wife who met in the city.
US cities do like to have a grand government building and this one even has a gold roof.
If you want to explore sites related to the battle for independence there is a Freedom Trail you can follow via a line of bricks (as seen above). You can get a guide, but we just got a book.
One of those sites is a graveyard with several notable people in it, including Paul Revere. There was a guy there who provided his own booklet with lots of details about the graves. That really added to the experience and we dropped him a tip. It seems he has been doing this for many years.
On previous trips to the US I have drunk a few Samuel Adams beers, so it was nice to see the grave of the guy it was named for. I actually did not drink one this time as I found so many other beers to try. I make a practice of drinking the local beers and not the big brands that I could get at home anyway.
The bells at the Old North Church was used to warn of the approaching British army. You can see a British flag, but that is the old one before they added the Scottish blue cross. The boxed in pews were to keep the people warm. It seems they were removed at some point and then put back to restore it to how it would have been.
For ship fans there are a couple in the harbour.
We did not go on the USS Constitution, but we did go on the USS Cassin Young that served in WWII. I have not been on many ships of that era, so that was interesting. It is also free to go on board.
One evening we went on a ghost tour run by Haunted Boston. I do not believe in such things, but our guide Jarrod told us lots of stories of witches, hangings and highwaymen with some fun history.
Of course he did have some ghost stories too and you can take those as you like. I will not go into details as you need to experience it for yourself. We ended at the Omni Parker Hotel which he said is very haunted. It looked nice anyway and this is where people like the Clintons and Stephen King stay. JFK proposed to Jackie in their bar. This tour did not involve dressed up people jumping out to scare us. There are other tours that do that, but Jarrod thought they lacked historical accuracy. The freakiest part of the tour is when we are interrupted by a mass of motorbikes and quad bikes coming down the street making a lot of noise and pulling wheelies. Apparently this is a frequent occurrence.
I enjoyed our stay in Boston. I think it could be compared to somewhere like Cambridge in the UK with lots of students at top universities and a rich culture scene, but it is most definitely a US city.
