Summer is back, twenty four hours with no heating!! Woke up to a foggy start to the day, but it soon started to burn off. We headed out to the Mass Turnpike for the 80 mile journey east.
As you should know by now we are early risers, so managed to miss the rush hour traffic…. by arriving after it had died down. Thankfully we had the GPS with us as navigation around Boston would have been a nightmare just map reading (especially as someone forgot the map!).
In recent years we have become firm believers in using the “Hop-on Hop-off” method of guided city tours. The one that we chose used the type of bus/trolley that had higher seating, a bit like the intercity buses. This had the advantage of keeping us above the cars and allowed for easier photo taking. As we left the freeway I had a moment of panic as I realised that I had never taken the truck into a multi-storey parking lot before; I have enough trouble getting it between the lines in the shopping mall. Anyway we found a parking lot (the wrong one as it turned out) and it was fairly empty and easy enough to manoeuvre in. The reason it was the “wrong” lot was due to the fact that the tour company had a deal with another lot for all day parking at $4. We paid a little more than that.
The tour was about 21 miles around Boston and Cambridge, with 25 stops. One of the stops we got off at was the old naval yard where the USS Constitution is moored. At the moment they are busy getting her ready to go back to sea for the first time in 37 years. Evidently she is the oldest naval vessel still afloat anywhere in the world. Any one want to challenge that? HMS Victory maybe, or is she dry docked now?
USS Constitution
After lunch at the shipyard we got back on the bus and eventually completed the tour. A part of the ticket you get a choice of a bonus “free” trip. We elected to take a boat tour on the Charles River. Well worth it, particularly if you remember how we felt about a similar boat trip in Savannah last year. The river went past both MIT and Harvard and was full of sail boats and rowing boats as the students started practicing for various regattas, felt sorry for the captain trying to avoid all the traffic.
Unfortunately, the boat tour ended very close to The Cheesecake Factory so we just had to go in and try some…. Delicious! We were so full we couldn’t manage dinner when we got back home.