Boston has a reputation – in the US
at least – for being a city Europeans feel comfortable in (perhaps
because of its inhabitants' other reputation as being rude and
standoffish). The first reputation, I can report, is well-deserved;
because it's a pre-car city (unlike, say, Las Vegas or most of LA)
it's built on a human scale as far as distance is concerned: it's
also known as “
the walking city”. The town centre is small and a
bit higgledy-piggledy – not the ramrod gridlines of midtown New
York (or indeed Nashville, of which more later) and many of the 18
th
and 19
th century buildings have been preserved: in short,
it feels a bit like home.
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| State House (1700s) with skyscrapers |
The second reputation, however, is
quite undeserved: Bostonians are just as friendly as any other
Americans (and friendlier than nearby New Yorkers) – even though
they don't indulge in the slightly alarming Southern habit of
touching your arm when giving directions/advice. The people are ever
so happy to help (yes, even tourists) and the general have-a-nice-day
quotient is pretty high.
One of the most important things to do
in Boston is find somewhere decent to stay: it's an expensive city
and accommodation is at a premium. Bex did the best she could with
the Rough Guide info she had, but unfortunately our youth hostel at
40 Berkeley Street was both pretty expensive ($135/about £90 for a
two-bed private room per night) and a little … prisony (see below).
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| One night's hard labour, no parole. |
Holloway-tastic! A Travelodge – if
they existed over here – would have been cheaper and better, but
that's Boston for you. Also, their promised wifi was down, which sent
me into a spiral of withdrawal symptoms complicated by jetlag on the
first night, resulting in a bout of extreme sulking: if Bex weren't
used to dealing with problem teens she probably would have lamped me.
Luckily we found a rather better place for the second night for only
$30 (about £10 each) more.
This was the recently relocated
Hostelling International Boston, a place so hip and exclusive
that they didn't answer the phone and their website had no details of
what they offered, room pics, facilites etc. - only a booking form.
But we were pretty desperate to escape Berketraz so we booked the
last room and humped our stuff half a mile across town. This is what the bedroom and ensuite
bathroom looked like (it was communal bathrooms at Berketraz, before
you ask):
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| Map of Boston tube on shower curtain! |
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| Wow! Nice beds, a desk and a telly! Our cup runneth over ... |
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| Swipe me! A sexy lobby full of pretty people (and Bex) |
Now that's more like it. HI Boston had
working wifi, a TV in the room, sleeping space for three(!) and was
five minutes from downtown – the theatre district, the cinemas,
and, crucially, the trolleybuses. I can highly recommend it for
anyone visiting Boston with about £50/$80 per night to spend on
accommodation: it's basically a hip, minimalist hotel ... although if
you want bacon & eggs in the morning you'll have to go out,
because the breakfast is pretty basic; self-service bread, bagels,
cereal & yoghurt.
But anyway, back to the trolleybuses.
These are a staple of the Boston tourist scene, and are so popular
that there are three rival companies competing for your custom:
OldTown Tours (wooden seats, old-timey-looking buses, Top Deck
(two-storey open coaches with fully padded seats for the more
comfort-seeking/obese tourist) and another one I forget. All tours
are narrated by the drivers, with varying degrees of humour and
success; all also include some freebies.
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| Inside of the trolleybus |
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| Outside (with waving idiots) |
Old Town are the most expensive
at $42 per (two day) ticket – and also, be warned, they don't go to
Harvard, though they do cross the Charles River into Cambridge and
show you MIT. But their driver-guides were great and their service is
the most frequent – every 15 minutes, which is useful if you intend
to use the trolleys as a sort of supplementary public transport
(Boston also has a swift and efficient five-line underground system
called the
T). Unlike normal buses and the T, the trolleys
only go clockwise around the city, but if you're not in a hurry this
won't be a problem … and you'll get to see Fenway Park (home of the
Red Sox for whom Babe Ruth played), the Christian Science HQ
(a mahusive domed church), the eighteenth-century State House, Boston
Common (beautiful public park) and its swan boats, the
Cheers bar
(outside only) and more.
The Old Town ticket also includes a
45-minute tour of the inner Boston Harbour – which was great, as
you can hop off to visit the
USS Constitution – built in
1797, it's the oldest continuous-service warship in history – and
poke around (admission's free, though security is a bit of a pain).
Finally, you get into the
State House (see above), from the balcony of
which the Declaration of Independence was first read.
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| Where everybody knows you're a tourist ... |
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| Hancock's togs |
Squee! It only takes about 30 minutes to go round as it's so small, but it's a lovely Georgian building with a great gift shop and you get to see John Hancock's coat and Bible.But enough of history and culture! What
about the food? Well, for that I'm going to need a whole separate
blog post, so hold your horses – in the meanwhile I give you ...
Dunkin' Donuts is BIG in Boston.
I mean
really big – their slogan is “America runs on
Dunkin'” and if you lived in Boston, where there is literally one
on every street, you'd believe it. (It's less evident in the South –
Nashville didn't have a branch that I saw). The great thing about
Dunkin' Donuts is that it does more than just do(ugh)nuts: it does
decent-strength coffee (with syrups which I LOVE) and it has the best
vegetarian selection of any major chain: veggie burritos, egg and
cheese muffins, egg white flatbreads and
Texas Toast Grilled Cheese are all on the menu.
If you're a vegan you're
pretty screwed, but that's true of much of the US. The only thing you
could eat – potentially – would be the spinach and artichoke dip
which appears on almost every bar menu and seems to be a local
speciality. But I'm pretty sure they put cheese in that :/
Next stop: Nashville, Tennessee, where we go bar-hoppin', drive to Jack Daniel's distillery, discover why you should always carry a credit card, and Bex buys some cowboy boots.
