We started the day by taking the Boston trolley tour – another one of these ‘it’s a bus in drag’ vehicles that winds its way around Boston narrow streets and gnarly traffic. It’s a great way to feel right at home – but drivers here use their horns even more than Sydney.

The windows on the trolley were those plastic curtains rather than glass, so next to no photos during the tour because I thought they’d look pretty bad. And since the weather was sitting at about 6 degrees in the morning, no way I was going to open the window.

Our driver/narrator did a great job and give us a whole lot of facts and history during the tour, bits of which I did my best to jot down. So here’s a very random collection of bits and pieces, without much context, that I haven’t bothered to weave together in to some kind of followable narrative.

About 80% of Boston is re-claimed land.

Tomorrow is 250 years since Paul Revere had his midnight ride to keep the Massachusetts Provincial Congress aware of the movement of the British army.

Edgar Alan Poe was born in Boston, maybe 100 years or less from where this statue of his has been put. Apparently he hated the place, go figure.

The swan boats in the Boston Common have been around since 1877.

Speaking of Boston Common, it is the first public park in the USA. It used to be used for such things as livestock, and public executions – fortunately both of things no longer happen in the park.

Beacon Hill was de-hilled (flattened) by about 65 feet, and then became Boston’s fanciest neighbourhood at the time.

Parker House Hotel is America’s first hotel, and home of the apparently famous Boston Cream Pie (which we still haven’t tried yet)

And in another first, Boston had the first public school in America.

Gillette the razor company started in Boston.

Faneuil Hall – rhymes with Daniel.

It snowed here last Saturday.

Paul Revere had 16 children – the only reason he was able to sneak out for his midnight ride, was because having 16 children in the house, he was one of the few places not to have any of the British army staying with him, as it was at the time their right to stay in any house they pleased. And who’d want to stay in a house with 16 children?

Best joke from our driver/narrator – “This street is so narrow I saw a dog walking down it wagging his tail vertically”

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone here in Boston.

A church in Boston conducted the very first same-sex marriage, in 2004.

There was a ton more in the two hours that the trolley wound its way around the city, but those are the bits that I wrote down.

But in a shocking plot twist .. there are two trollies! The other one was a short tour around the Back Bay Area. It passed by the famous ‘Cheers’ bar, Apparently for a while when the show was still on, once a year the whole cast would go out to the bar and work the bar for a day.

The driver/narrator then gave us the cheery fact that there are 30-50 thousand bodies buried under the Boston Common. Paupers, alleged switches, that kind of thing.

Also, for much of the time about 1/3 of the population is students, it’s a big university/college town.

There endeth the tours, and the random facts.

Lunch was at P.F.Changs, which was right next to the where our trolley tours started and ended. Tasty food and a really nice pomegranate lemonade drink.

After that we went back to Boston Common and yay, more squirrels etc!

There is also a series of bronze ducks, from the apparently-famous children’s book “Make way for Ducklings” but Robert McCloskey. Apparently the ducks regularly get dressed up – when we were there, they all had parasols. Lovely.

In the evening we walked down Boylston st in search of somewhere for dinner, passing this rather impressive looking building

We ended up at the ‘Back Bay Social’ – a bar/restaurant with good food and good cocktails,

That was about it for the day – now to hit publish and fall asleep, ready for whatever adventures tomorrow may bring.