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Assault the Senses with a Bit of Boston, MA, USA
Boston is to be savored -- a city so thick with history and culture, it assaults the senses to overload. So many sights to be seen, flavours to be tasted. The history so near it may be touched ...
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DRINK IN A BIT OF BOSTON ... LIKE A SAVORED DISH
By Rob DeMone
Publisher of TravelWise Online Magazine
Boston is to be savored -- a city so thick with history and culture, it assaults the senses to overload.
So many sights to be seen, flavors to be tasted. The history so near it may be touched. To drink it all in takes time, and requires assistance. Without either, you risk missing tidbits that are the pearls of quality vacation memories.
Like the statue of Civil War General Hooker astride his horse overlooking Boston Common. The women who flocked after the handsome general became known as Hooker's Women. And, later, just hookers.
Or Mrs. Quack and her seven ducklings, sculpted of bronze and waddling in slightly slightly-larger-than-life glory along a stone walk in the Public Garden. So enamored were visitors with the work, they wanted the same for their city. The sculptress obliged, but insisted Mrs. Quack be placed on dirt from Boston Public Gardens. And so another Mrs. Quack leads her brood into eternity on Boston soil - in Moscow.
Such tales are the banter of drivers who pilot for Boston Duck Tours, the brainchild of a New England entrepreneur who launched his dream into the Charles River and onto the narrow streets of this city barely five years ago. What started with one, has grown to a fleet of 16 World War 11 amphibious vehicles. In them, visitors are treated to a 90-minute open-air ride through Boston.
The endless dialogue of the drivers - they spend six weeks in the off season boning up on Boston history and lore - gives one so much history it's tough, if not impossible to keep up.
Like the Back Bay fire hall, one of the oldest in New England, where history was preserved to the point the fire trucks were custom made to fit through its arched doorways. Or Boston Public Library, the oldest lending library in the U.S. (This is a city, our driver warned, rife with The Oldest and The First )
After circling Boston Common - the oldest public park in North America (circa 1634) - the Duck deftly skirts Black Heritage Trail and the monument paying tribute to the U.S. Army's first all Black regiment, made famous by Hollywood in the movie Glory!
And, as we learn Boston was the first U.S. city with a fire code (and a ban on wooden chimneys), our driver brings us to the lip of the Charles, and, after making a few adjustments to the huge Duck, we dive in.
The amphibian is slow and quaintly clumsy on the water, giving the driver chance to explain the sites, and even allow young James, a visitor from England, a chance at the helm.
The history keeps coming, as we glide under the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Bridge, with the skyline of Downtown Boston before us. Farther down is stately Harvard Bridge, where Harry Houdini once escaped from a box tossed into the chilly Charles.
We circle back, and soon rejoin Boston's midday traffic. Skirting Bunker Hill we are treated to some newer history - the site of the Brinks' Robbery in the 1950s, when a gang of burglars made off with millions. (Peter Falk turned that into folklore in the movie of the same name.)
And thus ended our introduction to Boston's many attractions, offering us a glimpse of what was yet to be discovered in this historic city.
IF YOU GO:
Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism c/o Shandwick Canada Inc. Suite 500 - 160 Bloor St. East, Toronto, Ont. M4W 1 B9 Email www.mass-vacation.com
Sheraton Boston 39 Dalton St. (617) 236-6087 Undergoing a $23 million renovation this winter to modernize and expand facilities to meet incredible demand for meeting and conventions in Boston, MA, USA.
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