rstb: Boston: Part One!

Well, I was in Boston yesterday (I'm now in Providence) and the going was short but good. I was with Jonathan, the other contributor to this blog, and Connor Steen, a trombonist who we were rooming with. We were determined to tour the beauties of Boston and ride its wonderful transit system.

Both Connor and Jonathan had not been to Boston before. I was born there and have been multiple times ever since. Could we manage to do anything worthwhile in our short time window of just three hours?

After a practically sleepless night on a crowded red eye flight from Seattle, we decided that our first priority was breakfast. We had oddly enough been dropped off around Harvard, so we made a trip to the nearby Au Bon Pain, a chain of decent café - bakery stores.
After our feast at the bakery, we made a trip to the nearby Harvard T stop. This would be our ticket to the city.

The first order was to get CharlieTickets (subway passes) for the newcomers. I refilled mine, and subsequently left my coffee on the ticket vending machine. I obviously hadn't had enough.
On the T, we decided that it was time to get around the city. We got off at Park Street, and took a peaceful, lengthy walk through Boston Common. We could tell we were nearing the far end of Boston Common because we could hear the atrociously loud screeching of the green line trains, and they were even underground. That's how old and classic the first part of the Boston subway is.

Once we got to the end of Boston Common, we walked up to the North End to get a look at Faneuil Hall and the adjacent marketplaces. We stayed and toured around for awhile, because by then one and a half hours of our time, half of our available time, had passed away. So we walked over to Government Center station, boarded a Green Line train for a stop to Park Street, and then boarded a Red Line train back to Harvard.

After touring the beautiful campus for a significant amount of time, it was time for lunch and a Starbucks run for iced tea (we are from Seattle, after all) before we had to board the bus to Providence for an orchestra competition.

In conclusion, we didn't ride as much transit as we could have, but we took a very nice walk around the central area of the city. Before Part Two comes out on Monday, when I get back (hopefully), here are a few photos of our tour.

Here's a video I took at Park Street Station as well: youtube.com/watch?v=1_V3pXKSk6Q