Boston

Me and Mr Clicky had a lovely weekend in Boston.  As predicted it rained, an awful lot.  After a two hour plane journey we took a short bus trip and the subway into Boston.   The subway came up under this building, the old Massachusetts State House.  

We got caught in a rainstorm on the way to the hotel,  when we arrived we were soaked through to the skin, so much so that the receptionist took one look at us, disappeared and fetched us towels to dry ourselves, and ungraded our room.  I warmed my toes up in the slippers and then we found a Primark and bought anoraks although I had to resign myself to wet toes as I only had flip-flops.

As you can see from the pictures it was a very dull and wet weekend.  Boston is a fairly small city which I really enjoyed after the size and noise of Chicago.  The office blocks were not very tall, but this one still disappeared in cloud.

Never seen this before, so I had to snap a pic.

We wandered around the city and down to the Atlantic, which smelt really salty

there were tall ships.

Some of the harbour front has been re-developed, these apartments looked directly out to sea.  

The building on the left is the Institute of Contemporary Art but we didn't visit.

We stayed here for a while watching planes landing at the airport on the other side of the bay, can you see it in the distance?  Always a bit hairy landing over the sea I think.

We also came across the Northern Avenue Bridge.

A swing bridge that looked quite forlorn facing out to sea.

When we got the other side it had flashing lights and a sign that said NO PEDESTRIAN ACCESS WHEN LIGHTS ARE FLASHING.  Clearly there was a story here, so we checked it out when we got back to the hotel.  It was built in 1908, used by cars until 1999 and pedestrians until December 2014 when it was closed altogether because it was unsafe.  At the moment there are plans for development, the current mayor has pledged $46 million for this.  

The next we day we went to Boston Common which is the oldest park in the U.S. dating back to 1634, it is 50 acres in total.  

We wandered on and through and found a graveyard with no other than Samuel Adams residing.

And we carried on back down to the harbour to take a Duck Boat tour.  These are modelled on the WW2 amphibious landing craft used by the troops.  They are newly made I hasten to add.

After we admitted to our fellow passengers that we were British, a few boos there, the tour took us around some of the city sights we hadn't seen.  This is Boston State House.

Our guide told us lots more about Boston that we didn't know and then we came to the best bit of the tour, driving straight into the Charles River.  It was a strange sensation but we were soon chugging up the river.

Another Duck Boat in the water.

The tour gave us another view of Boston and was definitely worth it.

We left the hotel and got to the airport to find that our plane had been delayed for 3 hours.  We found the Admiral's Club ~ which I could use as Mr Clicky is a member ~ and settled down with snacks and a nice gin.  Mr Clicky got a bit bored, and you all know what I did, yes, knitted socks.

I had another week in Chicago with Mr Clicky and then travelled back to the U.K. to find the weather had broken and cooled down a bit.  

I'm back to school tomorrow and the kids are in Tuesday, those lovely relaxing days by the pool, a dim and distant memory.  Wish me luck!

Have a great week............Clicky Needles.