Monday 2nd
Our flight from New Orleans to Boston left at 9:15 AM on Monday 2nd October and so we had an early start getting ready to get out to the airport. We woke at 6 AM to the sad news that there had been a mass shooting in Las Vegas and that new filled the media at the two airports, New Orleans and Charlotte, that we traveled through on our way to Boston.
Our flight landed at Boston at 3:15 pm and we caught a taxi to the apartment for arrival near 4.30pm. Our apartment was located in the Beacon Hill district, very close to the CBD, was one bedroom and, whilst smaller than what we had in New Orleans, was still adequate for our stay.
After settling in to the apartment we headed out for a walk down to the historic Quincy Market area where we stopped and had a beer and a wine at Anthem Bar before heading towards home to dine at the restaurant below our apartment, Scollay Restaurant. We were pretty tired, despite having done little on the day, so we turned in early for the night.
Tuesday 3rd
Our day started with the usual morning walk and we choose the waterfront area as our destination. Boston Harbour is quite beautiful so we greatly enjoyed the walk.
We then headed home to get ready for the day. Our plan was to catch an open top bus tour so that we could get an overview of the city. We had some trouble finding a bus that would take us and then trying to find somewhere where we could buy the tickets but we eventually solved these issues and made it onto a bus by around 11:30 AM.
One full loop of the city tour took about an hour and a half and so we ended up back at Stop One, down near Quincy markets, by about 1.30 pm. We decided to walk over to the North End area to have lunch and found a nice Italian restaurant, Mother Anna’s, that had outdoor seating allowing us to dine outside and enjoy the sunshine. The North End district of Boston is sometimes referred to as the Italian section, it was historically 90% Italian but is now only 30%, so there were lots of Italian restaurants and wine bars as we walked around. It’d been my plan to come here for dinner and the area look interesting enough for that to stay as the plan.
After lunch we decided to catch another trolley tour around the city because our ticket was for the whole day so we thought we’d get maximum use out of it. Our guide for the afternoon was Michelangelo and he was fantastic, much more informative than the guide we had on our morning loop tour. So much so that, whilst we had thought we might get off at some point, we decided to stay on for the whole route just to hear him talk about his city. Michelangelo was a local Bostonian and, as it became obvious later on, was a bit of a larrikin. He had lots of very interesting anecdotal information to embellish the tour and it ended up being a really, really interesting afternoon, despite the two very rude elderly French couples that spoke at volume for the whole tour!
The trolley tour concluded near Quincy Market and so we headed back there to stroll through the mall area, albeit with a pit stop for Mark to buy some tops at his favourite store, Banana Republic; and this from a guy who hates shopping. Lol!
We wandered through the markets for a bit longer and then headed back out to the North End to find somewhere to have dinner. This was not an easy task as there are hundreds of venues to choose from and we eventually decided on Scopa but had just the one drink there with an appetizer.
This ended up being sufficient for us though, given our large lunch, and so we then wound our way towards home with a stop of at the Omni Hotel, where JFK proposed to Jacqui and also had his bucks night (an anecdote from Michelangelo), before calling in at Emmets Irish pub for Mark to have a final cleansing ale before bed.
