Day 14 - Boston (27 October ‘23)

simonmtalbot

Oct 28, 20233 min read

Updated: Oct 29, 2023

This morning we allowed ourselves the luxury of a bit of lie in. We had a slow breakfast in the AirBnB and then headed into the city. As Boston is pretty big, doing a walking tour is a bit of a non-starter. Instead we opted for a 'Trolley' tour around the city which had been recommended to us by a friend who had been before. This was a hop on hop off type of thing, so we headed in for noon. We jumped on the subway from nearby our place and emerged in Boston Common, which is basically a huge park right in the middle of the city centre with a pond, statues, tennis courts and a couple of baseball fields. It was a hive of activity with people running, walking their dogs, eating their lunch and music from buskers. We could see many of the Boston high rises around the park as well as the Massachusetts State House which is a rather fancy looking building with a gold dome on top. It definitely felt like we had arrived into Boston!

We walked through the park and found what we thought was the first stop of the trolley tour. As it was hop on hop off and a circular route it didn't really matter. The first driver we had, had a Robin Williams style delivery. Fast talking, jokes being cracked at an incredible rate. To be perfectly honest, it was hard to keep up and many of his references were things neither of us knew (Baseball references, American celebrities etc). We definitely felt like tourists! I won't detail every stop and every fact (you'd need to come to Boston to do that yourself), but it was a great tour. Our first driver stopped midway for lunch, so we jumped on another Trolley with a different driver who was very good - but with there being so much construction going on in Boston, over zealous use of car horns and very loud trucks and vehicles it was hard to hear everything she was saying. We decided to do the full circuit in order to get our bearings in the city.

After completing the full circuit we got off and thought it was time for lunch. We wandered into Chinatown (surprise surprise) and found a place that did Xiaolongbao (surprise surprise). The dumplings were absolutely stunning - though I can't say the rest of the meal was the best I have ever had, but I didn't really care as the XLB were so damn good. We sat for a minute to plan our next move, which was to head back to the Boston Common to have a proper look around and go and take a closer look at the State House. As it was now late afternoon, the park was even busier - likely to be the end of working day/week crowd. There was a bar open in the park with a band playing with loads of people sat outside. We wandered up to the State House took a couple of photos and then both agreed that we should probably just a take a breather. The tour was strangely tiring (information overload) and certainly for me it felt like the last two weeks had caught up on me today. So we found a spot on a hill in the park to just sit and people/dog watch for a while. The sun was just starting to set and for about an hour we were sat in amongst a whole bunch of other people doing the same thing, taking in the atmosphere, watching about 20 dogs mucking about in the off-leash area and listening to a busking band that were playing the other side of the hill. There was a Glastonbury feeling to it all (grass, sunset, live music, people watching etc) and it was a great way to spend a bit of time.

When the sun had set we had to make our way to the subway to head to the evening's activity. As it was halloween weekend, we thought going to see the Addams Family musical would be a good way to get in the spirit of it. It wasn't on the Boston equivalent of Broadway/West End, it was at a fairly sizeable theatre outside of the city centre on the campus of Boston University. For those from Oxford - it had a similar vibe to the Playhouse theatre. It was a very good show and a really nice atmosphere. These Americans take Halloween very seriously!