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Another training course, another city. The course was in Parsippany, New Jersey this time. Parsippany. Well there wasn't too much to talk about there. The big attraction was the close proximity of New York City, about 30 miles, or 45 minutes by a local bus line, Lakeland Transit. The idea of New York has never really been all that inviting because of the immense size of the city and it's reputation as a somewhat dangerous city. Well, that's certainly the way the media portrays it in spite of the fact that millions of people who live and work in the city never have a problem. Still, you always figure if you are a tourist, you are a target, right? I'm on the conservative side but on the other hand, did I want to spend 5 days looking at the inside of a hotel suite? No, I did not. How dangerous could New York be on a Saturday morning or afternoon? Couldn't be any worse than Boston, Rome and London as long as I stayed in the common tourist areas and I survived them! Right! New York it would be on Saturday, and, it turned out, on Thursday evening as well.

First, though, I thought I would begin with my overall impressions of New York City.

Big, fast, crowded, and yes, dirty. Not too smoggy though and I didn't see a lot of litter around. We didn't look too closely at the unidentifiable puddles in the gutters when you know it hadn't rained in some time! When I am asked what I thought of New York, my first answer is "Colourful"! I don't just mean it's inhabitants either. I mean there is a lot more colour than you would expect for a city consisting of so much concrete, steel and flesh! The streets are filled with endless streams of bright yellow cabs. There are big, bright billboards on and between buildings. There are brightly coloured advertisements in shop windows. There are flags and banners hanging from stores, museums and public buildings. Many people are dressed in bright colours and the sidewalks are dotted with news agents selling newspapers and magazines. And let's not forget the frequent food vendors and fruit and vegetable markets with their bright canopies and umbrellas.

My second impression is the constant smell. Now, it's not a bad smell. Well, not all the time. As you walk the streets, you are constantly walking in and out of one smell after another...perfume from people or stores, garbage, diesel fuel from busses and subway vents, food cooking, people, freshly cut grass, the scent of a flower bed and car exhaust.

The pace of the city is so much faster than I am used to, too and you find yourself speeding up to keep up! Not too many cars use signal lights... the car horn seems to be the weapon of choice but traffic lights seem to be more than just a suggestion. You will see a few cars run the red when it first turns but then, generally, the cars hold back and let the cross traffic take their turn. I took two taxis and both drivers quickly but competently dodged traffic and safely manoeuvered the lanes. I had heard horror stories about taxi drivers but I guess I got lucky. They were both ok. I decided not to brave the subway this trip as it seemed too intimidating to try to figure out how to get where I wanted to go and stay alert, minding all the cautions I had been told and had read about.

So, ok. The first foray into the city was a Thursday evening when several classmates who were all staying at the same hotel as I was decided to go into New York since their plane was leaving Friday afternoon. (I was staying over until Sunday because the plane fare was much cheaper if you stay over a Saturday and my company decided it was worth the extra hotel nights in the long run.) We waffled between a train which was further away and the bus and in the end the bus won out. That would be Lakeland Transit and it cost $5.15 one way. You are advised to buy your return ticket as soon as you arrive in case you are late going back and the ticket windows are closed. This we did and we headed out towards 8^th Avenue. First stop, Times Square which isn't very far away from Port Authority Bus Terminal. It's still only about 7:00 so still light out. Not many neon signs lit up yet. Lots of people but no throngs like I imagined. In between rush hour and theatre time I expect. We marvelled at the billboards and advertisements and the giant screen tv's. No time to waste though, we had it in our mind to go up to the observatory on the Empire State building. I had a pretty good idea where it was since I had been perusing guide books before I came.

Off we walked towards Fifth Avenue through the garment district of 7^th Avenue. There's a giant needle and button outside one building and lots of little fabric stores on the cross streets around 42^nd - 40^th streets. Down Fifth Avenue, past a beautiful classical building with an outdoor patio restaurant behind overlooking a little park. We didn't know what it was but thought maybe a museum. We saw an ordinary building across the intersection diagonally that had "New York Public Library" on the side of the building and we thought that was rather small for a library. Must be a branch "office"! Yes, the next day I found out that the classical building was actually the library and the other building contained a gift shop. A library with a restaurant and a gift shop? Only in New York! The Empire State Building was further down than we expected but we soon came to it and entered. The entry lobby is all marble with Art Deco trimmings and expensive stores (closed at that time of day) lining the halls. We got in line for tickets to the observatory ($6.00) and stood in line for the elevator to the 80^th floor and again for another elevator for the 86^th floor. The observatory is outside with high walls and the rest is caged off. Terriffic views with the lights from a few buildings just coming on in the dusk and the sun just turning orange in the sky over New Jersey. We all took pictures and checked out the view, all 360 degrees. The gift shop was crowded so we didn't linger and waited in lines to go down again. It's getting close to 8:00 and we decided in the end not to eat dinner in the city but catch the 9:00 bus back to the hotel and eat there. Walking back to Port Authority we saw mounds of garbage bags stacked 4 feet high outside some apartment buildings and a few homeless people wandering but with two other people for company, I didn't feel unsafe though I was a bit nervous and watchful, just in case. Walking across at an intersection, I think it was 7^th or Broadway, walking along 42^nd, I looked up to my right and saw the lights of Times Square! Wow! I stopped right in the middle of the street, turned and took a picture. Thank you Kodak for inventing 800 ASA film! :) A whirlwind 2 hour sightsee and home again.

I was glad I had the short excursion because that meant when I went in by myself on Saturday, I would be more oriented with the lay of the land. I caught the 8:30 bus, arriving at the terminal around 9:20 a.m. No traffic near and through the Lincoln Tunnel like there was coming in on Thursday night. Right out and I got a cab to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had visited the website so I knew there were several special exhibits I wanted particularly to see. In fact, finding that website and discovering what was in the museum was the main thing that decided me on going into the city at all though I'm sure I would have ended up going in anyway, in the end. On the way there, the cab passed the Christopher Columbus statue and the Trump tower going up Central park West. I watched for a building that might be the Dakota but i think it was further uptown then were the driver turned off to take the cross-park street, 86th.

The Met is immense. A newer building constructed around an older one which was completed around the turn of this century. You can see the red brick of the older facade in some of the open courtyards between the wings. My list of things to see included the Unicorn Tapestries (visiting from the Cloisters branch), the Edward Burne-Jones show, the Tiffany displays and the 19^th Century paintings, primarily the Impressionists. All were astounding in their own way. My favourite thing was the Impressionist paintings, which always give me goosebumps! You can take pictures without a flash in many of the permanent exhibitions so I took some of my favourite paintings. The special exhibits prohibited any sort of photography but those galleries were generally kept too dark to take a photo without a flash anyway. I wasn't disappointed in the Tiffany exhibition but I thought there would be more of the stained glass and lampshades but it mostly focused on glassware, vases, plates etc. There were a few lampshades and a "template" set up with the tools used to create these beautiful creations. There were paintings and detailed drawings used as patterns for lamps and windows.

The Unicorn tapestries were beautiful and so intricate! They were woven around 1500 and must have taken many hands many hours' work! Parts have had to be restored but they are largely as they were created. I was pleasantly surprised at the Burne-Jones show. He was a Victorian artist and extremely talented. There were examples of his work in a number of media: wood furniture painted with two backgammon players, detailed drawings, paintings, watercolour, paintings on walls, tapestries. He worked with William Morris and they collaborated on many wonderful creations from tapestries to a lovely illuminated printed version of Chaucer's works. My favourites were a series of five tapestries depicting the search for the Holy Grail. There were also a series of tapestries depicting the mythological (i think, or allegorical) tale of Perseus. I don't know the story but there was a woman carrying around a little girl, about three years old and describing the story to her as they proceeded from one tapestry to the next. It was clear the little girl knew the story and had obviously not been in the habit of going to sleep with Mother Goose tales!

I bought a 1999 calendar featuring Tiffany glass windows and a number of postcards though I wasn't able to get cards of the paintings and works that I liked the best. Figures! I passed a great many other things that I would have loved to have spent time examining but I find in a museum of that magnitude, you can only look at things for a couple of hours. After that it all starts to run together. Information Overload. I went up to the outside sculpture roof garden to have a look at all the skyscrapers ringing Central Park. Did I mention that the museum backs on Central Park at about 81^st street on Fifth Avenue? I could tell it had turned out to be a hot humid day.

It's after 12 noon now and I had arranged the night before to meet an internet pal and his wife for lunch at 1 p.m. He and I have been exchanging postcards and notes for about 2 years. They both work in Sak's Fifth Avenue so, although he was not working that day, we met in Sak's since his wife was on duty. I took a cab down to Sak's and discovered St. Patrick's Cathedral is right beside it! I took a couple pictures but ran out of film. Instead of going inside the cathedral I though it best to hunt down a store that sold film. Rockefeller Center is right across the street so I circled the plaza there but found no little Kodak signs. Rockefeller Center is another colourful place with flags from all the countries in the world, or a large percentage of them, flying on flagpoles surrounding a sunken plaza filled with tables and umbrellas from the circling restaurants. The golden statue of Prometheus backed by a fountain overlooks the plaza. I found a camera store on Fifth Avenue on the block next to Sak's so bought what I needed and loaded the camera. Into Sak's now as it was nearly 1:00 and I managed to find my friend's wife, Susan in her department, Men's Furnishings. Or rather, she found me just as I figured out which one she was. We chatted for a few minutes, waiting for Michael. We went to a little soup and sandwich cafe around the corner, Au Bon Pain for some excellent Tomato Florentine soup and a turkey sandwich on lovely crusty grain rolls. We chatted about postcards, travel, New York, Halifax and Canada in general. Susan had to go back to work but Michael stayed with me for a couple of hours which was really nice.

We walked around Rockefeller center, looking into one or two shops, in one of which you can actually buy souvenirs of Paris! A French store full of books and magazines and lots of other things. I was amazed to be told that the sunken plaza in Rockefeller Center containing the outdoor restaurant tables at this time of year is where you skate in the winter! It looked much smaller than it looks in pictures and movies. You would think it was open-ended but it's down a flight of stairs, enclosed on all four sides by stores and restaurants! It's not a small, small area but not nearly as big as I thought!

Down Fifth Avenue to find some cheap and not so cheap postcard racks and into a store filled with tacky souvenirs. Don't get me wrong, tacky souvenirs have their place. On my refrigerator, as a rule! :) I bought lots of postcards for my collection and to trade to other collectors. I bought a handful of fridge magnets for little gifts and I bought a bright colourful coffee much of Times Square. I didn't even see the lower level but I was just as glad! We walked some more, with a couple of stops for bottles of water since the heat and humidity really suck the moisture out of you! Back over to Broadway and up into Times Square where there were certainly more people than I saw the other evening. The center island was packed with people waiting in line for cheap theatre tickets. The billboards and advertising and theatre signs for all the plays fought each other for your attention and it was truly an assault on your senses! We wandered up Broadway, and I could see 4 or 6 theatres on every cross street that I looked down. We saw the CBS souvenir store and a store that only sold David Letterman memorabilia. (For those of you now saying: "David Who?", he is a very popular late night talk show host and all around sarcastically funny guy.)

Times Square. Even in the daytime, there are a few neon signs lit up. Even the police department office on Times Square has a neon sign! "New York Police Dept." in blue neon with the capital letters lit up in pink and the letters flash on and off. The subway station sign lights up like a Christmas tree and the garbage bags in the trash cans and on the sidewalks for morning pickup are PINK with blue Times Square logos!!!! Only in New York!! By four o'clock my feet were blistered and I was sagging with lost energy from the walking and the heat. Michael had to go anyway, having some work to do at the store so we said our good byes and I decided to catch the 4:30 bus back to Parsippany. Ok, I know I missed out not dining out in New York but I was so tired and sore that all I could think of was the hot tub back in the hotel pool area and that's exactly what I did! Bliss!

Considering all there is just to see (not to mention to do) in New York City, I really didn't see all that much. I didn't do any serious shopping or dining or theatre-going. I didn't take the subway or eat in a deli. But I did see some wonderful artwork, I did see New York from the top of the Empire State Building and I saw Times Square in the daytime and glimpses of it at night. I met a friend and rode in a yellow taxi cab. I can't say "I love New York" but I'm glad I saw it if only briefly. I've been in London, Boston, Rome, Paris and Toronto. New York is about as "City"  as it gets!

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Somewhere in the hard drive crash of 1999 I lost the travelogue I wrote for Boston. Luckily I still have my travel journal/notebook so here goes the rewrite... or...Go to the Photo Album for this trip

This was the first of four business trips I took between July 1998 and November of the same year. I flew to Boston on July 8, my sister's birthday. The plane left on time but because I asked for an empty seat beside me so I could lift the arm rest for a little more room, I was given a seat on the bulkhead which, yes, gave me more legroom but the armrests didn't raise and I was squished in which made for an uncomfortable flight. It was full so I couldn't change seats. The weather upon arrival was overcast and not too hot.

Since I was staying outside of the city of Boston, in the city of Waltham, I wasn't sure how to get there so I took  a cab. I'm here on a course so I do get travelling expenses, you see. I had to wait a bit longer for a cab that took credit cards though as I only had $50 U.S. on me. What a surprise as most of the cabs here will take credit cards. Anyway I noticed quite a large construction project in downtown Boston as we drove through to get to the interstate and the driver told me about it. There was a bit of confusion, however because he spoke with a foreign accent and told me this project was known locally as the "Big Dick". Hmmm. Guess they REALLY find this project inconvenient! LOL! I wasn't sure what to make of it so I did what any logical Canadian tourist would do... "Eh?" He said it again. The Big Dick... Oh , right, the Big DIG! I gotcha now! By the way this project is to dig an additional tunnel from the airport which is on an island in the Boston Harbour to the city proper and connect up with a new interstate access ramp, I think. It's been ongoing and will go on for quite awhile yet, making downtown Boston even more confusing that usual.

Well I arrived at the hotel and gave the driver my credit card number, signed and went in to check in. I stayed at the Doubletree Suites in Waltham, very nice so I had a bedroom and a sitting room. I wasn't in my room 5 minutes when the phone rang and I was asked to come back down as the cab driver had a problem with my credit card. He had radioed the number to be authorized and it wouldn't take! I guess the authorization computer they were using didn't take Canadian credit cards. I offered him my $50 which was short of the fare by about 5 dollars and a tip and in the end he took that with my sincere apologies though it should have been him that apologized. I did get back the credit card slips and a new receipt though. Great. Now I have no money and the hotel is in an area which seems to be populated mainly by other hotels and businesses. I had hoped to find a market and pick up a few groceries (tea, milk, bagels or something to nosh on) but other than a couple of small restaurants across the road and a large Home Depot center I can see from my window, there doesn't seem much hope for that. Well I won't starve because I can eat in the hotel and charge it to my room. I telephoned a former coworker who lives here and we made a tentative date to meet up on Friday night and also got in touch with an old internet chat friend who said she'll call back and we'll sort something out for the weekend.

I had dinner in the hotel restaurant and found out there is a drive through bank machine not far away so I can do that tomorrow. Found out the fastest way into Boston is using the subway/transit, called the T, from a station about 15 minutes away by taxi. There's also a commuter train that runs from Waltham as well.

I didn't sleep well as the bed was too firm for me. Partook of the breakfast buffet in the restaurant and caught the shuttle to the training center. The training center also puts on a free lunch so that's one thing I won't have to worry about.  The training center is nice and bright, the instructor for this week's course seems ok and the free lunch was tasty. I got a ride back to the hotel with a stop at the bank machine from a fellow student and decided to try one of the restaurants across the street for supper. The road here is more like a highway but there were cross walks and walk signals. There is also a flock of ducks in the area and there was a bit of tricky walking around the duck..er...leavings on the sidewalks. There's a lake nearby that we drove past to get to the training center so that's probably where they live. There are two restaurants, one Italian and one Thai I think. I went Italian, the restaurant is called Bertucci's and I think is  a local chain. Excellent Pizza and Italian imported beer! The smallest size pizza was still too  big so I took the leftovers back and stored them in the little fridge in the suite and had it for breakfast Saturday morning.  Weather is still nice. Sunny, clear and hot but not humid.

Today was the last day of the course which was only 2 days long anyway and it ended at noon. I'm here over the weekend as I am on a 5 day course next week. One of the other students had a rental car and three of us decided to drive into Boston for the afternoon for a look around. I knew I had to get back by suppertime to meet Ron but I figured I could take the transit back. We drove down the interstate with the top down on a hot sunny afternoon. We had a bit of trouble navigating around downtown with all the detours but found a parking lot fairly close to the historic property area of Faneuil Hall and the Quincy Market area by the waterfront.  We split up for an hour or so as we all wanted to go in different directions. I was mostly interested in taking pictures of some of the lovely old architecture in the area. Downtown Boston has a tourist trail called the Freedom Trail that guides you along the streets by way of a red painted strip or red brick walkway, passing by the historical buildings pertinent to the city's history. I followed this a little way and saw some lovely old meeting halls and churches wedged in around the modern office towers. When you see a map of downtown Boston you don't realize how compact it really is! I met back up with my new friends and we walked around the market area and checked out some of the shops. They had to leave as they had planes to catch. I stayed around a bit longer, bought and wrote one or two postcards and found the T station for the train I needed to the Riverside station where there were no taxi's waiting so I had to call one from the station.

Didn't meet Ron after all as he had to take care of a database crash at work so we're meeting up on Sunday instead. I ate in the hotel and decided to stay put and plan my day tomorrow. In to the city on the T again, and I want to go to the observation deck on the 60 story Hancock Tower for a bird's eye view. Then I want to check out the post Newbury Street shopping area in Back Bay and see the old houses on Beacon Hill. I also want to go out to the Harvard campus as well.

Saturday

Unfortunate start this morning, I took a taxi to the Riverside Station but it was all closed and locked up. Found out that it was being worked on and I had to take a free shuttle bus to another station. Got the bus and had to wait about 10 minutes for more people to board. Drove through some pretty streets with nice large houses and manicured lawns and gardens and lots of trees.  And ended up back at the station where we started! Seems the driver though a construction sign meant the highway was blocked and tried to take another route. Sounds like my driving! LOL! Anyway we finally got to the right station  after another 20 minute drive and on the train, wasting nearly 45 minutes!

I got off in Trinity square where the lovely church is and the Boston Library but my first stop was the Hancock Tower. They had visual maps and audio presentations of what you were looking at out various points, not a 360 view but you could see North and some of the East and West. The glass was tinted against the glare and there was of course a gift shop. The elevator took only 35 seconds to go down 60 storeys, I timed it! The car swayed a bit on the way down and bumped the side of the shaft which is a bit unnerving but on the way up the only thing you notice is your ears popping.

I decided to look into the public library on the other side of the square, the first publicaly supported library in North America and it's 150 years old. Lovely building on the inside though it doesn't look like much from the outside. High ceilings, marble staircase, frescoes all over the walls. The reading room is bright and sunny. There's an outside courtyard which the building is formed around. One room had dark marble and wood paneling and a marble fireplace and beamed ceiling.  Another small room contained glass enclosed dioramas of various scenes. For example there was one of  the Parisian painter Toulouse Lautrec backstage at a circus, one of Rembrandt sketching in someone's house and another artist painting a medieval building. Also a prize fight, and an army squadron marching across the Sahara desert. These were all donated by the artists wife.

After I left there, I walked through the Back Bay and Newbury Street section. This area of Boston was all water and swamp 150 years ago but was filled in and by the late 1870's it was a new development. The streets here are wider and straighter than downtown in the older sections. Lots of turn of the century mansions which, on Newbury Street are turned into shops and cafes. Newbury street has exclusive boutiques at one end growing increasingly funkier as you go along. Each street that crosses starts with a letter of the alphabet in sequence and the day I was there, someone was attaching bright balloons to each corner with that letter on it. I stopped at a sidewalk cafe for tea and a muffin. The weather is hot, sun in and out of the clouds.

From there I walked toward Boston Common and Beacon Hill and wandered the narrow streets and squares through Beacon Hill where the most exclusive residential area is. Charles street is full of antique shops and is a main thoroughfare through this area. I tried to get stamps but the lineup was long in the post office while the clerk seemed to be playing tour guide to someone, explaining directions and such so I left and headed back down to the Commons. I passed by the Bull and Finch which inspired the TV show Cheers but there was a lineup to get in and I wasn't all that fired up about it anyway.  The State legislature building overlooks Boston Common which is made of two sections, one has a lake and walkways among a few flower borders but not a patch on the Victorian style Public Gardens here in Halifax. The other section has sports fields and a fountain.

Time to head to Harvard so onto the T again. Cambridge is busy and the streets are full of commercial businesses of all sorts and shapes. The main campus has large ivy covered brick and stone buildings and there were tour groups being walked around. One group was close to me but I wasn't able to take advantage of overhearing the guide because it was a Japanese group! I noticed the same group a short while later posing for a group picture on the steps of a large library. It struck me funny really because the tour guide was continually leaning over to take a photo from each of about two dozen cameras lined up on the ground behind  him!

By this time I'm very tired and have very sore feet. I walked and walked around the blocks looking for a place to eat. I can't really find anything that suits me and I think I'm overtired at this point and getting cranky. But I managed to find a brew pub on a side street off the main square finally and had something to eat with a large cold beer. Feeling better, I headed out and passed a cyber cafe a few doors away. Taking advantage I purchased a half hour and sent some email and chatted for a few minutes with my Coronation Street friends.

Heading back downtown now, and I ended up past a few old cemeteries along the way until I found myself back in Quincy market and discovered a post office in Faneuil Hall. I started to walk towards the North End but found myself in a claustrophobic crush of people at an outdoor fruit and veg market. I got out of there and found a T station and went to the place where I could catch a commuter train back to Waltham. I had had enough walking for one day and was very footsore. Got the train back, a short commute but there were no taxi's to be found at the station and no pay phone that I could see. It was also after 6 o'clock and most of the businesses I walked past were closed. I bought some snacks and cold drinks at a convenience store and found a pay phone at the gas station next door and finally made it back to the hotel. My feet were so sore I could hardly walk! I ordered a light supper, onion soup and a fruit plate from room service. The fruit plate was huge and I had lots of leftovers for the next day.

Sunday

I partook of the breakfast buffet since I wasn't meeting Ron until noon and spent the morning with the huge Sunday paper. My other internet friend never did call me back and I found out after I got back that she lost the number of the hotel. I didn't like to keep calling in case she hadn't called back because she didn't want to meet after all. Cross purposes I guess.

Ron picked me up on time and since it was Sunday he suggested we drive into Boston. He doesn't usually but there wasn't much traffic today. We drove around Waltham first, seeing the campus where he works and a lovely historic house hidden in the woods. We got into the city and found a place to park in the North end, the Italian section. Turns out it was quite close to the train station I was at yesterday and didn't realize how close to downtown it was. That's when I realized how compact the downtown area is. We wandered through the North End which is an Italian neighbourhood. It looked like they were getting ready for a festival as there were banners being put up. We didn't see a restaurant that suited us so we walked down to the waterfront and ended up sitting outdoors at a place called American Joe's. We sat in the sun with the breeze off the water keeping it comfortable,  had a nice lunch and got all caught up.  The Boston Harbour doesn't really look like a harbour to me, compared to Halifax harbour. It's much more open and is really where the Charles River comes out to the coast.

After lunch we wandered the waterfront and we went to the Boston Aquarium. I have never been to one before and it seemed like something different to do. Just after we arrived there was a show put on in one of the out buildings. The Sea Lions were going to perform so we decided to check that out. We had to stand at the very top of the bleachers as it was full up so it was a bit warm. I never realized these creatures were so big!!! I always pictured them the same as seals but they are hundreds of pounds and look more like a walrus! The fully grown male was nearly 800 pounds!!! Back inside, the main fish tank is in a huge tube up the center with a ramp spiraling around it going  up several floors.  There is a big pool on the ground floor with all the different types of penguins and smaller aquariums lining the walls on each of 3 floors. We'd follow the ramp up and then check out the wall tanks on each floor. The big tank was cool, and there were even some small sharks in it and two giant sea turtles. I felt like I could stand there and watch the fish go by for hours! There were different species at different levels of depth in the tank, each adapting to their own preference. At the top you can look down into it and see the fiberglass coral.

I was fascinated at all the different kinds in one tank and wondered why they didn't eat each other as some of them must have been natural predators of others. Especially the sharks. Ron though that perhaps they were fed so well that they didn't have that ambition. We would often be startled by the size of the fish as they swam close to the viewing windows but again, I suppose they looked bigger than they were as water does affect the magnification somewhat.  There was one particularly ugly fellow that looked as though he must have had a few tries at escaping through the glass at the detriment of his poor face, all pushed in. There was a large white flat fish that had pink eyes like an albino rabbit. The tropical species in the wall tanks had some spectacular colours. It was difficult to take pictures as the light was low though the tanks were lighted, some of them.

We walked back to the car through the Quincy market area and drove back to Waltham along the river where I saw the concert shell the Boston Pops orchestra plays in summer. We took a quick look in a very upscale mall looking for a coffee shop but ended up just going back to the hotel where he dropped me off since it was well after 6 by this time.  We said good bye and I went into the hotel and had an early dinner instead of waiting until later. I had lovely crab and cod cakes in a mustard sauce and managed to get some change and did some laundry in the facilities in the hotel.

The course that week was a lot of work but it was interesting. Ron and I and another former coworker who had only just moved to the area hoped to get together and see a ball game in Fenway Park but it was sold out so I didn't get to see them again on this trip. I made friends with a gal from California on my course and we had dinner in Bertucci's one night during the week but all in all it was a quiet week. On Friday the course ended early. I took an early airport shuttle, thinking I might check my bags in and take transit back into Boston for one last look around, perhaps shopping at the famous Filenes. It was a really hot  and humid week and today was no exception. When I checked in the clerk offered me a seat on an earlier flight home and in the end I decided to take it. It really was too hot to be traipsing around.

Boston was a lovely city and I would like to go back and explore a bit more. There is a Fine Arts museum that I think I would like to see and I would like to do a bit more shopping as well. So maybe I'll be back, you never know.
 
 

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