Our next day in Boston
After one long day in Boston, we repeated the experience! We got up a trifle earlier, enjoyed breakfast, and set out. One of the things we'd already decided by the second day was that, despite the reasonableness of the hotel and the perfectly decent room, the next time we're in Boston, we're going to be going for something closer in. There are lovely hotels in or next to the Prudential Center as well as some great hotels in Copley Square and nearby. While we certainly saved a bundle (hotels in Boston are really expensive) staying a about half a mile out from the Prudential Center, it was a bit of a nuisance grabbing a cab. I had the feeling that it'd be great to just walk out of the hotel and Be Right There.
Now, I know we'd said that we were going to do the swan boats, but it turned out that these are things that you pedal. After a day of walking around, pedaling a boat around a lake appealed to neither of us, so we gave that one a miss. But we were definitely going to go out on the water: we had been itching to do a Boston Duck Tour, a tour in an amphibious WWII landing craft. Duck tours leave from outside the Prudential Center.
It was a little cramped in the duck (well, they were built for functionality and not comfort). These have been remodeled some; the originals had more armor plating, which you don't need quite as often in the streets of Boston as you did on the beaches of Italy and France.
We got to see a lot of Boston that we hadn't seen before and some we had before we got into the water. The driver was a great guy who kept up a snappy patter throughout the trip. He knew a lot of history and was very entertaining.
When we got into the water, we drove under a couple of the bridges and back. The driver pointed out the Boston and Cambridge sigils on the sides of one of the bridges.
We finished the tour--it really was a great tour--and went to the Museum of Fine Arts. We'd had extensive discussion about what we were going to do, the MoFA or the Peabody, and we ultimately went with the MoFA. This involved a "T" ride out to the Musuem. It was a fairly hot day and I'm glad that the museum was cool.
The MoFA has a great collection, but I think I was after something more like the Tate Gallery in London. I was left with a bit of my desire for paintings unfulfilled. This is not to say that I didn't have a wonderful time. There was artwork dating back 6000 years ago from the Nubian empire. There was a lot of Assyrian work and a number of mummies and sarcophagi. The display of musical instruments was another specialty exhibit. Sadly, we weren't there at the right time for a full gamelan orchestra concert, but we could see the instruments set up. (I love gamelan music; if you're not familiar with it, check it out for yourself.) There were some beautiful Asian exhibits, too. I like what they've done with their displays.
We wandered around for quite a while but there was no mistaking the fact that all this walking was wearing us out. And we were hungry. We went to the museum store (an excellent store; we bought a copy of Bela Fleck's CD, Perpetual Motion), then we had lunch at the Museum café.
We finished at the Museum and rode the "T" back in to town. (Next time, we're hitting the Peabody.) There was one more thing we wanted to squeeze out of the Go Boston Cards: a harbor tour. The harbor tour left from the Long Wharf. It was a good day to be on the water: the stiff wind was fairly cooling and it was sunny and clear.
We went out on the water all the way up to Charlestown, where we saw the USS Constitution. The Constitution is still in active service after 208 years of duty. It got the nickname of "Old Ironsides" because its sides are made of 7"-thick oak heartwood and cannon balls would bounce off her sides.
A good concise history of the USS Constitution can be found here on the Wikipedia.
Near the USS Constitution, which we all know a little about from history classes in elementary school, was the USS Cassin Young, about which I knew nothing.
The Cassin Young was named for a Medal of Honor winner. It saw duty only in the latter half of WWII. Her most notable battle was surviving two separate hits by Japanese kamikazes while patrolling off Okinawa. I don't recall seeing a destroyer before and for some reason hadn't realized how big they are. I was confusing them with PT boats, which are a lot smaller.
We walked up a few blocks from the wharf to get cold liquid and a nibble, then came back and waited for our final tour: the Ghosts and Graveyard Tour. Here's a picture of our friendly and helpful staph:
The tour took us to a couple of the burying grounds in the area first. We rode up to Copp's Hill (named after a Mr. Copp, natch).
This tombstone was the basis of a story. Tombstones weren't cheap in them days… well, they aren't cheap now, neither, but I digress. Someone paid the gravediggers 30 shillings to bury him in the same plot and then add his name to this really attractive tombstone. They did--it's off to one side, but not easily visible in even the 1600x1200 version of this file. It got to be a habit for quite a while until someone caught them at it and also complained. We can only assume that they stopped the practice after that.
We also were given a night tour of Boston Commons and told about the public executions. Our guide called for a volunteer. I felt a hand pushing me forward almost instantly.
The guide asked the Babe what I was being executed for. Now, I thought she'd say "For crimes to numerous to mention," but she said "Hubris." Turns out that this needed to be explained.
We saw the Granary Burying Ground again, but this time at night and with a guide. And we heard some amazing ghost stories, including one of a highwayman who had a book bound in his own skin after his execution and had it sent to the man who's testimony convicted him. (Nothing like having a really lasting sense of humor.)
At the end of the tour, we went to the Legal Seafood restaurant at the Long Wharf. We'd been to the one in the Prudential Center two nights before and had had steak and lobster; this time, we just split a lobster. It was lovely both times.
We crawled back home and slept. On the morrow, we were going to pick up our car and drive west.
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