…makes a man grumpy when it’s 1:18am and the fire alarm at the hotel goes off. Mind you it was a much more polite ding than the blaring one we had the same issue with in London. To their credit the hotel did explain over the loudspeaker that no it wasn’t a fire and the source had been determined and there was nothing to worry about. But I still heard lots of doors being opened and closed as people must have decided it’s better to be safe than sorry. Took me a fair while to get back to sleep but all good eventually.

The first proper mission this morning was to View Boston. It doesn’t sound that difficult, you just … open you eyes, right? Well in this case View Boston is their ‘get up above it all and look over town’ – 52 floors up seems to be the highest building, and it sure gave a great outlook all across the town. Naturally I took too many photos, some of which are here:

On the way out of the View Boston they had an excellent model of the city with really good projection mapping doing some impressive displays – I counted about 30 projectors in the ceiling, making it all happen. After that, and a very cool 360 degree video display, it was time to exit-through-the-gift-shop and then down the elevator to, I dunno, become more grounded 🙂

I give myself extra credit because I managed to do all this before getting coffee. If this were Sydney I’m sure there’d be like three cafes at the top of the viewing area, but no. Not to worry, once we were back doewnstairs in the Prudential building complex, there was ‘Eataly’ – an Italian grocery but also cafe but also restaurant … kind of like a DJs food hall but only serving Italian. Delighted to say the coffee was brilliant, a solid 9.0 on the iScott Coffee scale. There was heaps of pasta and pizza and ingredients and gelato and cakes and chocolate and… yeah it’d be a nice shop to have nearby at home for all the cooking that I never actually do 😀

Now suitably caffeinated, next on the agenda was a visit to Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, so we hopped in the train via the very fancy looking entrance at Copley, and went up to Government Centre, for a short walk to the hall and the market. Boston sure loves making signs about itself. And why not, it’s a nice place.

The hall was good, full of shops, and Quincy Market, and South Market, and whatever-other-market were all part of one big market district, kinda like Covent Garden on steroids. It was great, even if my feet were killing me, so found a Starbucks which was the one place with spare seats available. Phew.

Duly rested, we wandered over to Long Wharf nearby, saw they had a boat tour, so what the heck on a whim we bought tickets since it was leaving in half an hour. Glad we did – it was a perfect day, all the way up to a balmy 17 degrees, so it was nice to get out on the water for an hour and learn a bit more about this really-quite-lovely city. Also glad I’d bought my Dad a cap as a souvenir – I wore it to save myself getting completely burnt to a crisp. Here’s a bunch of pictures from the boat tour.

We learnt a few things

• Boston has its own version of a tiny Harbour Bridge, the Story Bridge and the Anzac Bridge. Not sure who copied who though.
• The USS Constitution is still regarded as an ongoing proper seafaring ship – to maintain that status it has to sail at least one nautical mile a year, which it does, always on the 4th of July.
• On a good day, the airport will have a plane landing every 90 seconds.

After the boat tour, we jumped on the train (Blue Line, Aquarium station), changed at Government Centre for the Green line and then back to ‘our’ stop, Arlington. Yes it’s too much irrelevant detail but I know in years to come I’ll probably want to know how got to where we were going. Another boring nerdy fact is the green line used overhead wiring and the blue line uses a third rail to power the train. Thrilling, I know.

Next, it was time for the opening of show season! No, that’s not a thing in Boston, it’s just the first show we’re seeing on our trip, a kind of entree to Broadway I guess. The show is called Shucked! and it’s playing at the Opera House – a handy 11 minute walk away.

After a surprisingly tasty chicken Greek salad from Cafe Nero, in we went to the Citizens Opera House. I thought thats a feather egalitarian name, but no, Citizens is the name of a bank, so it’s just a sponsorship thing. Anyway, the Opera House, built in 1909 is just beautiful! The set design was also very good, setting the scene and fitting the show perfectly.

I knew absolutely nothing about this show other than the name when I walked into it, so I wasn’t sure what I was in for, The show itself was brilliant, the jokes were, of course, incredibly corny. (I mean, one of the lead characters is called Maisy (Maize-y)) The songs were good, all the cast were incredible, The story was pretty light but that was perfect, even I could follow it 😀 I guess it had that all-important kernel of truth to it. And the ending was much more heartwarming than expected, so I guess for a light story it still had a pretty good plot twist. It had its moments of homage to other shows, at one point I thought it was going turn a bit Book of Mormon, and and another part it very much did turn briefly into The Music Man – there were probably other references that I missed. But it was fun, very smart, very very funny, and highly recommended. Should you ever get a chance to see it, definitely take that chance. It’ll have your grinning from ear to ear.

Now back at the hotel to finish this off, hit publish, and off to bed. We leave Boston tomorrow, for a new town. Start spreadin’ the news…