Boston
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| Boston in the snow |
We arrived in Boston
around 11pm so we went straight to the hotel to sleep. Boston was seriously
cold, -15 when we arrived and we felt like our faces were going to crack. This
severely limited what we could do there, so after running to a café around the
corner for breakfast the next day, we took an Uber to the Old
State House. This historic building was constructed in 1713, and housed the
Massachusetts General Court until 1798. The building was saved from demolition
in 1881 and is one of the oldest public buildings in the US. It is now a
history museum.
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| Old State House museum |
The Old State House also overlooked the Boston
Massacre in the late 18th century and was the site of the
reading of the first declaration of independence. In the late 1700s, the
British government decided to tax the colonies on items such as tea, paper,
coffee, wine and sugar. The problem was, the taxes were not benefiting the
colonies at all, and these strongarm tactics exceeded the remit of the British.
As a result, the King of England sent troops to Boston which further outraged
the Bostonians.
On 5th March 1770 there was more trouble afoot. A group
of Bostonians were out in the streets confronting soldiers. One soldier was
accused of not paying his tailor by the tailor’s apprentice. The soldier
actually had the receipt but instead, he walked away, not wanting to engage
further with the apprentice. As the crowd swelled, other soldiers got involved
and exchanges got increasingly heated. Finally eight soldiers surrounded by
local people, started shooting. Five people were killed and nine wounded, and
the somewhat biased local press branded the incident the Boston Massacre, which
has stuck for all this time. Six of the eight soldiers were acquitted and two
were convicted of manslaughter.
The Old State House was worth a visit and every half an hour there
was a lecture given by one of the staff, on the massacre, or the building.
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| Cheers Bar |
After the museum we headed over to the place that really put
Boston on the map, the Cheers bar! This
was the original Cheers bar where they filmed the show. We had a couple of
drinks at the bar and got chatting to another English couple who we went for a
curry with that night and spent the next couple of days with. We decided to
share an Uber home even though we were staying in different parts of Boston,
and it was a good job too, because I left my phone in the back and our new pals
retrieved it.
The next morning we picked up my mobile phone and arranged to meet
our friends for lunch after we had been to the Boston
Tea Party Ships and Museum. We got the tickets on Groupon and as we walked
in, we were given a feather and a card which assigned us a character from the
time of the Boston Tea Party. In 1773, in a rebellion against the
British-imposed taxes, a shipment of tea arrived which was promptly thrown into
the waters of the harbor by the angry Bostonians. The British government closed
the port of Boston, and soon after was the American Revolutionary War,
resulting in independence in 1776.
All of the staff at the museum were in character and the first
part of the museum tour was a reenactment of a town gathering where the events
of the ‘tea party’ were discussed and debated by the characters. After that, we
were taken onto a replica boat used at the time, and some of us got to throw
tea chests overboard.
It was a great interactive experience and an interesting way to
learn what happened in Boston, which had huge implications on the quest for
independence.
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| Boston Tea Party |
We met our new friends at a well-known seafood restaurant, the Barking
Crab. The venue is right opposite the museum and overlooking the harbor. It
is a bit like a big marquee so was a little bit draughty, but we ordered a jug
of sangria and lots of oysters, lobster and mussels and we were happy.
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| Barking Crab restaurant |
After lunch we traipsed through the snow to the Museum
of Contemporary Art. One of the exhibitions there was from Mika Rottenburg
called NoNoseknows, a video showing Chinese girls cultivating pearls while
their Western boss suffering with allergies sneezes out plates of noodles. The video reel was in a small dark room and we
were in hysterics when a man walked in to the room to sit at the front and
walked straight into the wall.
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| Museum of Contemporary Art |
Another was a video made by Steve McQueen of footage in 2002 of a
young fisherman in Grenada, posing and playing in front of the camera. This
footage was shot for another project but was never used and McQueen returned to
Grenada 11 years later to catch up with the fisherman Ashes, who he discovered,
had sadly been murdered after finding a bag of drugs on the beach, and being
repeatedly shot by the dealers. McQueen paid for his tomb.
We said goodbye to our friends after the museum, as they were flying
up to Canada that evening, and we headed across to the Black Rose, an Irish pub
in town to catch up with another friend we’d met while travelling in Brazil,
who was briefly visiting Boston.
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| Quincy market |
We had a few Guinnesses there before our friend had to fly out,
and we wandered down to Quincy market for food and then onto a couple of local
Irish pubs to check out somewhere to go for New Year’s Eve. Quincy market is
primarily a food market but has a few touristy stalls selling Boston caps,
hoodies, magnets and the like. There are a couple that sell things like
jewellery and other artisan products. There is a huge range of food stalls,
selling clam chowder, lobster and other local delicacies, then there is
Chinese, Indian, ice cream, coffee and pizza.
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| Main shopping street |
We had a few more drinks in a couple of Irish pubs in town before
heading back to the hotel to plan for the next few days. We were really
struggling in Boston because it was so cold and snowy and we had about a week
left of our epic trip before heading back to London, so we didn’t want to be
stuck indoors!
The next day, we decided to get out of Boston and head for warmer
climes. Over breakfast we checked out hire cars and we booked one to pick up
that day from the airport. We headed up there to pick it up, but it was no
longer available and every other car hire place was charging $300 + tax a day!
Scrap that idea. So we headed back to Boston and resigned ourselves to the cold
weather for a few more days.
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| Boston |
We spent the rest of the day planning the rest of our trip and we
managed to find a reasonably cheap flight to New Orleans for 2 January, so we
only had a couple more days in Boston including New Year’s Eve.
The next day was New Year’s Eve and we braved the weather and
walked around Boston
Common and down to the Ether
Dome at Massachusetts General Hospital. This was the hospital’s operating
theatre between 1821 and 1867, and the very first surgery using ether as an
anaesthetic was performed there.
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| Boston Common |
We strolled on through the town and what did we spy?! The tidiest, quietest,
cheapest Primark in the entire world!
That evening we headed down to an Irish pub for New Year’s Eve
celebrations. It was quite a muted celebration because most people were
sensible and stayed at home, but it was a nice evening all the same and we
spent the next day relaxing in the warmth of the hotel.
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| Ether Dome |
Boston
is a beautiful city but we were foiled by the weather, and our plans to hire a
car and drive around New England for the last part of our journey were thwarted
sadly. We will definitely go back to do it properly in warmer weather. Cape Cod
is still calling me but we’ll wait for warmer weather.
#boston #cheersbar #bostonteaparty #bostoncommon #etherdome #mocaboston #barkingcrabboston #oldstatehouse
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