Beat in Beantown

Wow, how the heck did we survive the last 36 hours? An 820k drive from Toronto to Boston, then a harsh nights sleep (Jo with a sore throat and Cam with a nasty cough) and now here we are after walking back and forth through downtown Boston three times. The drive was actually pretty good, we left as planned just after 5am and made good time across New York state. Following the Interstate and then the Massechusetts Turnpike we hardly saw a single town, both sides of the freeway where mostly bordered in trees turning on their fall glory.We arrived in Boston after 2pm and after settling into our hotel the kids hit the pool for a dipo before dinner. My mate Ram had recommended Legal Seafoods for awesome New England cuisine and it was good stuff. Better yet it was across the road from the hotel so the walking distance was spot on for our pooped troop. We all had some clam chowder, and even Abs enjoyed it after initial fear. Jasmine had a 1 pound lobster to herself and finished the sucker before playing with the shell like some gruesome puppet :-). Cam has demanded popcorn shrimp at every meal since. Jo's crab cakes where decent, though perhaps not as good as the ones I had in Montreal. My stuffed shrimp was a disapointment, I should have had the lobster. Oh well we're headed for Maine so there's a lot more opportunities for seafood over the next two weeks.Boston is a great town, not a big city but there's a heap of history here. The American Revolution started in these streets and they celebrate it proudly. This is the town where the declaration of US independence was born, home to Paul Revere, Sam and John Adams, Benjamin Franklyn (yeah the guy with the kite, he had a hand in writting the Constitution). The war of independence, made inevidible by the Boston Tea Party, started with the battle at Bunkers Hill overlooking Boston harbour. It's a great town today, centered around the 42 acre Boston Common where we walked in the awesome sunshine today. A day that started off pretty cold actually and we shivered a little as we ate breakfast outside at Thornton's, none of us could stand to wait in line for a seat inside. Breakfast Burito, banana pancakes and Amareto-Vanilla French Toast later we were fueled up and ready to see all that Beantown had to offer. We walked down through Boston Common and took up a guided tour on the far side of the park. Cost about $40 for us all and worth every penny as the tour guide, dressed in full 1770's garb, gave his all in delivering the history of Boston as we walked the 'Freedom Trail'.The trail is a red brick or painted red line that wanders 2.5 miles through Boston and passes all the major historic sites along the way. Our tour lasted about 2 hours and covered about the first mile or so of the trail. One of the burial grounds had over 12,000 bodies planted in it and it was only about 1/2 an acre in size, they used to stack em in the old days... Ending the tour near Quincy Market the kids somehow found themselves hungry, after the size of breakfast I have no idea how but... So as they chowed down on a hot dog, or Boston Barker to be more precise, we were entertained by a street performer. Cam ended up volunteering to help and was a star of the show.Now it was time to head back across town to near where we had breakfast, we had tickets for the 3:30pm tour on the Boston Duck. The Duck's are WW2 amphibious vehicles converted into tourist buses. We enjoyed a guided tour of the city, a lot of the places we had already seen on foot, and for added excitement the DUWK (that's the real name of these beasties) hit the Charles River and we cruised through the water and got a unique view of Boston. As an extra treat all three kids had a turn driving the Duck for a few minutes.Sadly we didn't visit the memorial at Bunkers Hill, it was too far from downtown on a day where we asked the kids to walk a fair bit. And more walking was in store as we walked back across town again to the market and Durgins Park resturant for some genuine New England cooking.Wow! We all enjoyed our meal here, Cam had more clam chowder (pictured above), Jo a Shrimp Caesar and I had the Yankee Pot Roast (melt in the mouth beef). The place is a really genuine down-home eatery, no frills here just great New England comfort food and friendly service. The Boston Creme Pie lasted about 15 seconds. Anyway we're back in our room, kids bathed and ready for bed hopefully. We don't have to start really early tomorrow as the drive to Salem is less than an hour, but we only have tomorrow there and have to leave Tuesday morning for Maine so if we want to make the most of Salem we have to try to get away in good time, maybe by 9am. Mmmmm, must sleep. Heaps of photos on the site.

Andy, out.