Boston June 1999 - An Affair to Remember

My girlfriends all have relationships with men (well, come to think of it, so do some of my guy friends). I, on the other hand, gave that up long ago. I now have relationships with CITIES. I went to Boston again this weekend and I can definitely say this is going to be a life-long affair.

One of my co-workers accompanied me on this trip....we drove and what should have been at most a 6 hour trip took NINE hours......due to traffic tie-ups in, where else, NYC.

On Saturday, Mary Ann took the trolley tour that I had taken before while I went off to do some more exploring on my own. First stop was the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY. What an awesome place.....not only it is architecturally fabulous, but it is full of art, sculpture, rare books, etc. I could have spent the whole day there, but allowed myself only two hours.....I can't wait to go back!!! Across the street from the library is the TRINITY CHURCH, another architectural delight!!! It's built on a body of water and they have to keep pumping water underneath to keep it standing. Also, in the same area, known as COPLEY SQUARE, is the John Hancock building. I caught up with Mary Ann there and we went to the top to the observatory for an extraordinary view of Boston.....it was a beautiful, clear day and you could see all the way to Vermont and Maine.

I then headed on down to the HAYMARKET an, open-air farmer's market. YUK!!!! It was nasty!!!! Food and fish every where.......really gross. You couldn't have paid me to eat anything from there, yet there was a mob of people buying stuff like crazy!!!! I walked on over to the NORTH END, which is the Italian area, to see Paul Revere's house. People kept giving me directions, but I never did find it.....the streets just keep going off in all kinds of crazy angles!!! But, I really enjoyed just walking thru the neighborhood....it's very quaint and pleasant.

Saturday night, Mary Ann and I had dinner at the marvelous, wonderful restaurant I told you about before and then went on a sunset cruise of Boston Harbor. It was lovely......the weather was pleasant though a little chilly when we were sailing into the wind.

Sunday morning our plan was to go to Salem, a bewitching town just a few miles outside of Boston. Unfortunately, my car had been sideswiped while in the parking garage so I spent most of the morning at the Cambridge police station. We did have time to run down to FANUEIL MARKET before heading out to......

FENWAY PARK where we watched the Red Sox beat the Rangers 5-2. Fenway is a neat, old ballpark. The Sox want to build a new one and there is a lot of controversy concerning it.......I enjoyed reading all about it.....the pros and cons and all the editorials that the paper is full of these days. We had box seats and there were only four seats in our row. The guy I sat next to was from Arlington!!!! He was there visiting his father who lives in Boston. The Rangers were playing incredibly bad ball that day, but I was still clapping and cheering when they occasionally did something good (and I wore my Rangers' tee-shirt too). This brought on many comments from people around us, but they were all very nice and friendly. I really expected Bostonians to be stuck-up and snobbish, but I have encountered nothing but friendliness (I avoid using the word "DALLAS" now when I tell them where I'm from).

Well, it's home for the weekend this Friday and then I've got lots of fun plans for the month of July. I'm meeting my sister Cyndee and my son in Washington DC for the weekend of the 4th.....my sister has friends in Ocean City, MD and we're going to visit them as well. The following weekend, my friend Tangela is coming to Philly and we're going to pop up to New York for a play. Later in July, my friend Julie is coming and we'll take a weekend trip to Cape Cod.

Oh, one neat thing about Boston is that everybody there READS!!! In the subway, in restaurants, everywhere people have books or newspapers!!!! It's kind of like New York......where everybody goes to the theatre......even people you wouldn't think had any class at all. It's just part of their culture.

Oh, and in some of the subway stations there are book exchanges. You can leave a book you're thru with and take one someone else has left.