Return to Boston

Since Stan and I were in Boston with Megan and Ashley a few years ago, we decided to forgo the pricey excursion tours offered by the cruise and see what we could discover on foot.

Boston is a fun place to visit, with lots of interesting history to explore.

 

 

Right away we took a little detour. I'll let you figure out which sign we were here for. 

 

Next we visited the Boston Aquarium. It was well worth the visit, full of interesting exhibits, like these living penguin ponds.

 

I had no idea there are so many kinds of sea life, from the ugly,

 

to the fanciful,

 

to the aptly named "Flower Hat Jelly Fish"

 and garden eels. These guys buried their bottom two thirds into the sand, pretending to be

 plant life.  When food came by, they shot up, now nearly 2 feet long, to grab a morsel. They made for a very convincing grass patch.

 After exiting the aquarium, we came across this poor women, trying unsuccessfully to flick a pigeon off of her head.

 

There's lots of interesting

 buildings in Boston, like the old city hall. Unfortunately, all of them were either not open to tourists or charged an entrance fee. We toured most of them on our last visit and didn't feel the need to see them again.

 

Ben stands out front of city hall, forever waiting for the next meeting.

 

If you've been to Boston, you've no doubt seen their version of the yellow brick road. They call their red bricks "Freedom Trail". Since we walked the Freedom Trail last time, we decided to visit only the free things along the path which included

   King's Chapel, built in 1688 as a wooden structure. In 1754 a stone church was built around the original wooden building, after which the wooden part was disassembled, passed through a window, and sent to Nova Scotia to build a church there. How's that for recycling?

 

This is an Anglican church, very simple, but lovely.

 

According to a informational sheet I picked up, it looks much as it did in 1754. The organ had to be replaced in 1964, but the woodwork is original.

 

This fancy canopied pew Stan is reading up on belonged to the Paul Revere family. You could rent a pew for an equivalent of $650 a year in today's dollars.

 

As is customary, this old church had an ancient cemetery connected to it, full of very old headstones. Some of them were incredibly well preserved (although many were not).

 

It didn't take long to notice that nearly every headstone had a version of a face and wings.

Most of them were this grim depiction

 

in one form or another.

 

Stan decided that's because there was only a couple of headstone makers: The popular Grimm Brothers, 

 

The less common Sweet but Solemn Brothers,

or the rare Double Brothers. Whatever the explanation, the early settlers clearly liked to mark their burial spots with faces.

It was a beautiful day to be in a cemetery.



 

One thing new since our last visit: Boston has a program called "Play me, I'm yours". A group has set old, upright pianos around town, there for anyone to play.

 

Some of them were elaborately decorated, and we saw several in use. Great idea! I'm not sure how long they leave them out, but it was raining when we visited and the pianos didn't seem to mind.

 

They also have decorated globes, much like Billings has decorated horses and Portland has pigs. 

There are 49 globes in all, each making some point about climate change.



After a nice 1000 mile (more or less) all day stroll, we headed back to the ship. Tomorrow we will be in Bar Harbor, Maine.